‘The CHRO role has become more demanding, more transformational, and more connected to the value agenda’
Fortune 200 companies are turning over their human resource leadership more frequently, and they are increasingly looking within their own ranks for successors, according to a new report.
In 2025, 31 Fortune 200 companies appointed a new CHRO or CPO, representing a 16% annual turnover rate. That rate is the highest since 2019, when 36 companies appointed new HR leaders. In addition, the turnover rate suggests an average CHRO tenure of about 6.25 years.
“I attribute most of the uptick in CHRO turnover to new or increased role demands,” says Zac Upchurch, COO of the Talent Strategy Group, which released the survey. “The CHRO role has become more demanding, more transformational, and more connected to the value agenda. Boards and CEOs increasingly have heightened expectations for the CHRO. Add to this the area of artificial intelligence, which is disrupting how a company thinks about labour, and the CHRO role itself is evolving, resulting in increases in turnover.”
So goes the CEO, so goes the CHRO
Leadership changes have cascading effects. The report found 39% of new CHRO or CPO appointments in 2025 were preceded by a CEO transition within the previous 12 months. Meanwhile, 47% of Fortune 200 CEOs appointed in 2025 replaced their CHRO or CPO.
Upchurch says the relationship between CEO and CHRO turnover is a fascinating one. In short, a new CEO has to decide whether an incumbent CHRO is capable of driving new strategies. Another factor, he says, is trust.
“Given the typical CHRO's tenure of six to seven years, it's common that a CHRO who spent years building that trust with the outgoing CEO may not have the drive or even timeline to rebuild this relationship with the incoming CEO,” he says. “Thus, CEO turnover becomes a natural point of transition for the executive team, including the CHRO.”
Internal succession for CHROs
When companies do replace their CHROs, they are increasingly looking to their own ranks. In 2025, 68% of CHRO and CPO appointments came through internal succession, which is a 15-percentage-point increase from the previous year and one of the highest internal succession rates since the Talent Strategy Group began tracking the data in 2017.
The report also found that organizations with a history of appointing their CHRO internally largely continued that practice: 81% again selected an internal successor. By contrast, among organizations whose predecessor CHRO had been appointed externally, 53% selected an internal successor and 47% hired externally.
The average company tenure before appointment was 11.2 years. Nearly half of internal appointees had been with their companies for 16 or more years, including 29% who had more than 20 years of tenure, finds the Talent Strategy Group.
Deep HR experience remains central to the role. Eighty-seven percent of new CHROs had prior HR experience, and 56% had 20 to 30 years of HR experience before assuming the position. For Upchurch, the finding underscores the need for technical proficiency in the field, much as a CFO would need to be fluent in a company’s financials.
The external route, meanwhile, places a premium on prior experience at the top of the HR function. Ninety percent of externally appointed CHROs had previously served as a CHRO, underscoring two distinct paths to the top: one that favours deep institutional knowledge and another that places a premium on prior executive experience.
Business experienced required
At the same time, business experience is emerging as an increasingly important part of the CHRO profile. The report found that 42% of 2025 CHRO appointees had experience outside of HR, while 35% had global experience, which is up from 23% in 2024.
“What has changed is the increased expectation that the CHRO approaches their work with a business-first orientation,” says Upchurch. “The highest-performing CHROs wake up every day thinking about the business and how to create value for the company, leveraging human capital as their mechanism. This requires the CHRO to deeply understand how the company makes money, how value is created, and how people decisions connect directly to these items.
“The CHRO needs to be so fluent in the company that they could speak to an experienced and skeptical financial analyst and hold their own in the discussion. Great CHROs have operated at this standard but they were rare. Going forward, I expect this standard to become more of a baseline expectation.”
The nature of that outside-HR experience is also broadening. The report found that 2025 appointees with non-HR backgrounds came from a range of functions, including operations, supply chain, general management, marketing and project management, and not just the legal backgrounds that have historically been more common.
And while HR experience remains the norm, the small group of 2025 appointees without prior HR experience followed a notable pattern: all were internal successors. Their backgrounds included legal, general management, supply chain and customer relations.
Women accounted for 73% of 2025 CHRO appointments and 90% of external CHRO appointments. The 73% figure was down from 80% in 2024 but remained above the 71% share of women among Fortune 200 CHROs overall.
CHRO or CPO: What’s in a name?
Finally, the language used to describe the top HR executive has reached parity. Forty-two percent of 2025 appointees held the title chief human resources officer or CHRO, or a close variant, while another 42% held the title chief people officer or CPO, or a close variant. The remaining appointees used broader human resources or human capital titles.
Whatever the title, Upchurch points to three key factors when considering a CHRO: a love of business, an ability to productively challenge others, including the CEO, and experience across different domains of HR.
“The value a truly high-performing, business-first CHRO can bring to a large, complex company far exceeds the assumed or standard value,” he says. “It can be one of the most important strategic choices a company makes.”
