CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer)

The human resources director, known in French as the DRH and also referred to as the CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer), leads the company’s HR policy. They advise senior management and coordinate HR generalists and specialists. Their role connects the company’s direction with decisions affecting employees: skills, work organisation, remuneration and employee relations.

The function covers all areas of HR. It includes developing teams, overseeing personnel administration and ensuring compliance with employment rules. Leading this function does not mean personally handling every recruitment or payroll task. The CHRO organises the work of the managers responsible and handles strategic or sensitive matters.

Reporting to senior management or the company president helps define the CHRO’s authority. Which decisions are taken with senior management and which are delegated to the CHRO depends on the organisation. The title CHRO alone does not imply greater responsibilities than those of a DRH.

In a small or medium-sized enterprise, the role may combine setting HR policy with day-to-day involvement, supported by a small team. In a group, coordinating sites and aligning practices take up more of the role. Team size and the way establishments are organised therefore matter as much as the title when understanding the position.

CHRO, HRBP and recruitment manager: who does what?

• The CHRO leads overall HR policy and coordinates its different areas.
• The HRBP supports the managers of a business unit or teams and adapts HR responses to their needs.
• The recruitment manager organises recruitment policy and the process from sourcing candidates to onboarding them.

These responsibilities may be distributed differently from one company to another. To compare two roles, examine the decisions entrusted to each and the teams they actually oversee.

HR decisions determine the skills a company can draw on and the conditions in which its teams work. For business leaders, the challenge is to connect development plans with realistic opportunities for recruitment, training and internal mobility. HR policy should help prepare for changes in roles while taking economic constraints into account.

Consistency between decisions also matters. Remuneration choices commit budgets and need to reflect the responsibilities people hold. Organisational changes affect the work of managers and employees. The CHRO considers these consequences together to avoid treating each issue in isolation.

Employment relations are another central concern. Transformation requires listening to people’s concerns, preparing for dialogue with employee representatives and explaining decisions. Understanding the employment framework helps identify risks and organise the necessary actions. It does not remove the need for legal expertise suited to the matters at hand.

Hypothetical example: a company is reorganising several teams while some roles are changing. The CHRO examines the skills available and future needs, then works with managers to prepare decisions on training, internal mobility or recruitment. They clarify the consequences for employees and the issues to address in dialogue with employee representatives. A response limited to opening vacancies would overlook the need to adapt the work of existing teams.

One risk of defining the role poorly is a mismatch between the candidate’s experience and the responsibilities expected. A company that needs to structure its entire HR function must assess more than recruitment success alone. A poorly defined mandate can also leave the person appointed without clear authority to act.

• Define HR policy with senior management based on workforce, skills and organisational needs.
• Organise the HR department and allocate responsibilities among generalists, specialists and team managers.
• Coordinate policies for recruitment, onboarding, internal mobility and skills development.
• Prepare for dialogue with employee representatives and lead discussions within the mandate given.
• Lead remuneration policy, examining its consistency and budgetary effects.
• Oversee personnel administration, including payroll, contracts, absence and working time.
• Work with the relevant specialists to organise monitoring of changes in employment rules and of compliance with those rules.
• Support organisational transformation and changes in management practices.
• Monitor the results of HR actions using reliable information and adjust priorities with senior management.

Routes into HR leadership may involve studying human resources, employment law or the humanities and social sciences, or attending a French business school or institute of political studies. These courses provide knowledge that helps inform decisions about employment, organisation and employment relations.

Legal training can prepare someone to analyse an employment matter and recognise questions that require specialist advice. The humanities and social sciences help with understanding employment relations. Management studies help with examining economic constraints and the budgetary consequences of HR policy. However, the educational route chosen does not, on its own, demonstrate the ability to lead a team or manage a transformation.

Previous experience may be in generalist HR, personnel administration, employee relations, recruitment or HR consulting. Operational responsibilities can also prepare someone for the role. The ability to connect an understanding of roles with HR decisions that go beyond a single specialism is a useful foundation.

Coordinating specialists, supporting managers, preparing policy and handling sensitive matters are among the capabilities useful in HR leadership. The years associated with the levels in the salary grid serve as a guide to interpreting it. They do not replace an examination of the responsibilities actually held.

GetPro’s general approach

GetPro structures assessment around a framework of no more than ten criteria. It distinguishes aspects of a candidate’s background that can be verified from those that need to be explored in an interview, and assigns an assessment method to each criterion. The interview explores the key criteria through open questions and concrete examples. Reference checks complement this assessment by putting achievements into context and asking for examples of collaboration.

Advice on assessing a CHRO

The questions and exercise below are suggestions to adapt to the responsibilities of the position. They suggest how this general framework could be applied to a CHRO role, without constituting a specific protocol used by GetPro.

1. Define the criteria with senior management

Translate the responsibilities of the position into assessment criteria covering HR strategy, dialogue with employee representatives, management and analysis of decisions. For each criterion, specify the achievement or explanation that will allow you to assess it.

Involve senior management in assessing the organisational choices and priorities presented by the candidate. If no one has the necessary HR expertise, bring in a professional who can assess the candidate on the employee relations and technical aspects of the role.

2. Reconstruct decisions the candidate actually made

Ask the candidate to describe an important HR decision, from the initial problem through to the adjustments made. Ask them to specify the information available, the options considered and the people involved.

Distinguish their personal contribution from their team’s work and decisions made by senior management. Ask which documents they could describe or present in anonymised form without disclosing sensitive information.

Treat a precise explanation of choices and their limitations as a positive sign. Explore further if an answer attributes all results to the candidate without clarifying their authority or the context.

3. Examine a situation relevant to the role

Hypothetical example: present a company that is reorganising several teams, needs to develop new skills and has a limited budget.

Ask the candidate what information they would gather before recommending an action. Invite them to consider opportunities for internal mobility, training and recruitment, then the consequences for managers and employees.

Ask them to specify the discussions to organise with senior management and employee representatives. Request a short note distinguishing the proposed decisions, open questions and managers who need to be involved.

Assess their ability to prioritise and explain trade-offs. An answer that immediately rolls out a standard programme without examining the organisation warrants further questioning.

4. Test their reasoning about data

Return to the information the candidate proposed gathering in the previous stage. Ask how they would check its quality to inform decisions and what contextual information they would still need.

Ask how the candidate would monitor the actions selected and what might lead them to change those actions. Distinguishing a change in an indicator from evidence of an action’s effect is a positive sign.

If the candidate proposes inferring cause and effect from a single comparison of figures, ask how they would test that hypothesis. Also observe their ability to translate an analysis into a decision that senior management can understand.

5. Assess management and compare observations

Ask how the candidate allocated work between HR generalists and specialists. Explore a disagreement with a manager or an employee representative, the arguments exchanged and what happened afterwards.

Observe the clarity of explanations, attentiveness to constraints and respect for confidentiality. Probe an answer that remains vague about who was responsible for implementation.

With the candidate’s consent, use references to clarify their actual role, their cooperation with teams and how they led decision-making. Then compare the observations with the initial framework.

Identify the skills demonstrated and the areas still uncertain before deciding. Do not let a prestigious title replace an examination of the work actually done.