Your Board of Directors needs an HR person
I’ve been thinking a lot about the non-profit world recently and actually joined a local board. It made me realize that I don’t think I’ve ever been on a board with another HR person.
These boards have lawyers. Accountants. Former CEOs. Maybe a tech person if you’re feeling modern.
But no HR.
And before you say “we don’t need HR at that level” or “HR is operational, not strategic,” let me tell you what you’re missing.
Boards make decisions about people. They just don’t call it that.
Who should be CEO or ED? Is leadership equipped for what’s coming? Should we acquire that company or join forces with another non-profit? Are we investing in the right capabilities? Why is attrition spiking in our most critical division?
Regardless if the Board oversees a for profit business or a non-profit, these very strategic decision have a people component. But most boards are making those calls without anyone in the room who actually understands how people and organizations work.
Your lawyer can tell you if something is legal. Your accountant can tell you if the numbers work. But neither of them can tell you if your leadership team is actually capable of executing the strategy you just approved.
An HR professional on your board isn’t there to talk about benefits or recruiting pipelines. They’re there because they see things other board members miss.
They know when a CEO or ED is losing the room before it shows up in the numbers. They can spot culture crash before it becomes a retention crisis. They understand that your strategy might look great on paper but will fail spectacularly if you can’t integrate two completely different ways of working.
I’ve been told about boards where an ED shared some buried news about employee complaints that became a legal demand letter. In this case, there wasn’t a HR person or a lawyer present in the room. That note went unchallenged. It later turned into a class-action that was so big the ED was forced to resign when the Board found out.
If an HR person had been in the room during that first conversation, I know it would have been a different outcome.
They bring pattern recognition from actually working inside organizations. Not theorizing about them. Not looking at them from 30,000 feet. Living in them.
They know specific things to look out for. Things other people (like a CEO) might just sweep over to HR to take care of. Things people take for granted when they have a strong HR presence.
Most boards are great at evaluating what happened. Revenue. Margins. Market share. They’re terrible at evaluating why it happened and whether it’s repeatable.
They see high turnover as a data point. An HR person sees it as a symptom of something deeper that’s about to get worse.
They see a charismatic leader and assume capability. An HR person knows charisma doesn’t equal effectiveness and can spot the difference.
They approve compensation packages based on market benchmarks without understanding if those packages actually drive the behavior they want. (or in some cases in the non-profit world, approve packages that are so severely under the market that they lose great leaders)
The pattern is always the same. Boards make people decisions using non-people frameworks. Then they’re surprised when it doesn’t work.
I’m not talking about adding an HR person to check a diversity box or make the board feel good about employee engagement. I’m talking about someone who contributes to every major decision because every major decision involves people.
When you’re evaluating CEO or ED performance, they’re asking questions nobody else thinks to ask. Not just “did we hit targets” but “how did we hit them” and “can we do it again with this team.”
When you’re looking at succession planning, they’re telling you which high-potential leader actually has potential and which one just interviews well.
When you’re deciding between two strategic paths, they’re the ones who can tell you if you have the organizational capability to execute either one.
Take for instance a non-profit that is looking to expand into a new need within the community. An HR person could help you understand the talent landscape and realize that you don’t have the pool of talent you need in the area. They could then advise around the plan you’re going to need to build this program, and more importantly, call out if it’s not going to work long-term.
From a non-profit perspective, you need these HR people to call out these things. Because, in my experience, leaders in a non-profit run it like a non-profit, not like a business as they should.
Here is what I hear when I tell people my thoughts on this.
“HR isn’t strategic enough.” Maybe at your company. But that says more about how you’ve positioned HR than about the function itself.
“They don’t understand the business.” Find one who does. They exist. And if you can’t find one, that’s a signal about how your organization has been treating HR talent.
“We already get HR updates from the CHRO.” Updates aren’t the same as having someone in the room when decisions get made. By the time something becomes an update, you’ve already made the call.
I’m not saying every board needs an HR person tomorrow. I’m not saying HR knows better than everyone else. I’m not saying lawyers and accountants don’t add value.
I’m saying most boards have a massive blind spot. And they keep making expensive people mistakes because nobody in the room is equipped to see them coming.
You want better leadership? Better execution? Better culture? Better retention of the people who actually matter?
Put someone on your board who understands how those things actually work.
If your board is supposed to govern the organization and protect stakeholder interests, and if people are your biggest asset and your biggest risk, why wouldn’t you have expertise in that room?
I’m still figuring out how to make this case to boards who don’t see the gap. But the organizations getting it right aren’t the ones with the best strategy on paper. They’re the ones who understand that strategy only works if your people can execute it.
Does your board have someone who can actually assess that? And if not, what’s it costing you?