From seat to staying power: How HR leaders keep influence strong

When HR is part of the executive team, the impact shows up on the balance sheet. Research shared in our recent webinar found that companies with strong, strategic HR practices can see revenue growth up to 364% higher than those that don’t.

That’s a big number, and one that proves the point. HR is no longer a support function. It’s central to growth, innovation, and resilience.

But there’s a major challenge: getting a seat at the table is only step one. The harder part is staying there. Influence fades quickly if HR leaders slip back into firefighting or admin. The next era of leadership in APAC will belong to those who keep pushing forward, with AI, automation, skills-first thinking, and purpose-led leadership at the top of the agenda.

From operational to strategic leadership

For years, HR carried the label of being the ‘people department’. The department that hires, fires, and handles policies. That’s no longer enough. Today, HR is judged on how well it drives business outcomes: growth, innovation, and resilience.

Making that shift means changing behaviours, mindset, and language.

One shift is knowing what keeps the CEO and board awake at night. If growth is the concern, HR needs to show how talent acquisition fuels it. If innovation is the priority, it has to link back to upskilling and workforce design.

Data also needs the same treatment. Turnover rates and engagement scores don’t mean much on their own. What matters is the impact they have on revenue, risk, or retention. For example, saying ‘onboarding time dropped 20%’ doesn’t carry much weight. But ‘accelerating time to productivity saved $50,000 per new hire’ really does.

Essentially, if you want to keep your seat, you need to speak the language of the business and those who lead it. 

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Doubling down on AI, technology, and automation

Three priorities that kept coming up in our webinar: AI, technology, and automation will shape the next wave of HR leadership in APAC.

AI

AI is already in play across HR. Some teams are building internal groups where people share use cases and trial new tools together. It helps them move faster, spread knowledge, and build confidence in using AI day to day. Done well, implementing AI goes far beyond just speed. It actually shifts how organisations think about skills and learning.

Technology

HR tech has moved past record-keeping. The value now comes from showing the business impact behind the numbers. Instead of reporting turnover as a percentage, leaders use tech to connect it to cost, productivity, or customer outcomes. That shift in how HR leaders frame data is what’s getting traction in the boardroom.

Automation

When the admin eats up time (and it does), HR ends up stuck in the weeds. Using innovative HR tools to automate the basics like onboarding, leave approvals, and payroll removes that drag. It creates the headspace to focus on harder questions. For instance, culture, capability, and the skills the organisation will need next.

In a nutshell, AI, technology, and automation are now table stakes for HR leaders who want to stay influential.

Common traps after earning influence

Getting a seat at the table is one thing. Keeping it is another. Influence can fade quickly if you fall into these traps:

• Firefighting: If you spend all your time fixing immediate problems, you become known as a problem-solver. That reputation makes it harder to be seen as someone shaping long-term strategy.

• Stagnation: Once you earn credibility, it can be tempting to settle in and stay comfortable. But without fresh ideas, influence weakens and you lose momentum.

• Outdated toolkit: If you don’t keep pace with AI, analytics, and automation, you can fall behind fast. The practices that worked five years ago no longer carry weight in today’s boardroom.

To sum it up, sustaining influence requires constant adaptation. If you rely on old ways of working, you risk sliding back into an operational role and losing the trust you worked hard to build.

Analyse, automate, and orchestrate anything.

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5 strategies to sustain HR influence

Keeping your influence at the top table takes more than one big move. It requires daily practice of a ‌combination of habits and mindsets. Below, you can find five strategies to help you stay relevant and credible:

1. Evaluate and innovate

You can’t afford to recycle the same initiatives year after year. Start by reviewing the outcomes of your existing programs and ask yourself if they’re delivering what you promised, or if they’ve become ‘tick-the-box’ exercises. 

Look at where your organisation’s priorities are shifting. For example, scaling into new markets, improving productivity, or navigating tighter budgets. Then, come up with new ideas that respond directly to those shifts. Influence comes from showing you’re one step ahead, rather than merely keeping up.

2. Lead with empathy and data

Empathy earns trust, but data earns credibility. If you want to hold your ground at the leadership table, you need both. An example is listening deeply to what employees are saying through surveys, pulse checks, or exit interviews and then presenting the findings as evidence tied to business outcomes. 

For example, instead of reporting ‘low engagement,’ frame it as ‘engagement is dipping in sales, and it’s costing us X in missed targets.’ You’ll come across as someone who balances care for people with a sharp commercial lens.

3. Practise critical thinking

Don’t just deliver what people ask for. Ask why, how, and what impact it makes. If your organisation invests in leadership training, press on how to measure success and how it links to revenue or customer outcomes. When leaders roll out a new policy, question whether it solves the real issue or just adds more admin. 

Critical thinking means you stop taking problems at face value and instead look at the knock-on effect across the business. That’s the difference between being a function that responds and being a leader who steers.

4. Focus on metrics that matter

Turnover percentages and engagement scores only tell half the story. If you want executives to take notice, you need to translate those numbers into business impact. That could mean linking turnover to the direct cost of hiring and lost productivity, or showing how faster onboarding is reducing time to revenue in sales. 

You can even reframe cultural metrics. For example, you might position a rise in employee referrals as proof of a stronger employer brand and lower recruitment costs. When you make data tangible, you speak in a way the board can’t ignore.

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5. Treat HR like a product

Think of HR as something that requires constant refining. With every initiative you roll out, whether it’s a new learning program, a performance process, or a wellbeing benefit, you should test, validate, and iterate.

Start small, gather feedback, measure the impact, and then scale. If something doesn’t work the way you planned, adjust quickly rather than defending it out of pride. This mindset shows you’re pragmatic, commercial, and focused on delivering outcomes, as well as processes. It can also make HR feel like a dynamic part of the business, rather than just a static one.

Future-facing HR: What comes next

The next few years will reshape what HR looks like in APAC, and leaders who prepare now will have the best chance of holding their ground. Four shifts stand out:

• Skills-first organisations: Job titles don’t always reflect what the business needs. By shifting to skills-based planning, you can move talent quickly to where it adds the most value.

• Purpose-led leadership: Beyond pay, employees want meaning. Your role is to tie purpose and culture to measurable outcomes like retention, engagement, and employer brand strength.

• AI as an everyday toolkit: AI is moving from pilot projects to daily practice. The opportunity is to spot high-value use cases, while keeping an eye on risks like bias and transparency.

• Workforce architects: Rigid org charts don’t always work in fast-changing markets. HR leaders who design agile structures can help their organisations adapt to growth, regulation, and hybrid work.

Rippling: Freeing HR to stay strategic

It’s hard to focus on strategy when you’re drowning in admin. Rippling solves that by unifying HR, payroll, and IT into a single platform built on one source of truth. Every update flows through the system automatically. So, when you hire, promote, or offboard someone, payroll, permissions, devices, and reporting update in real time.

Automation runs through everything, from onboarding and tax filings to role-based access and compliance. Instead of battling ‌disconnected systems, you get a clean, connected view of your workforce. Rippling also operates globally, supporting payroll, benefits, and workforce management around the world. This means you can scale without being ‘road-blocked’ by complexity.

HR leaders who want to keep their seat at the table can use Rippling to redirect their time and energy from ‘keeping the lights on’ to shaping what comes next.

The seat is only the beginning

Getting a seat at the leadership table is a milestone, but it’s not the finish line. Influence fades if you stop adapting. The next few years will belong to HR leaders who keep pushing forward, those who embed AI into daily practice, design agile workforce structures, and balance empathy with data to drive outcomes.

With the right tools and the right mindset, HR does more than just sit at the table. It helps lead the business into its next chapter.

This article is based on the webinar run by Rippling: Owning HR’s Seat at the Leadership Table | Watch now