Is HR investing in its own growth?

Executive summary:

In this article, Elspeth explores whether HR is truly investing in its own growth at the pace today’s organisations require. As traditional providers like the CIPD struggle to keep up with digital and data-driven demands, HR teams face growing capability gaps. Elspeth argues that if HR is to lead transformation credibly, it must first model continuous learning – applying its own frameworks inward to build the skills, agility, and strategic influence the modern function demands.

The modern HR professional navigates a landscape defined by rapid change, shifting employee expectations, and evolving business models.

As organisations increasingly recognise talent as their most valuable asset, HR’s strategic role has expanded.

Yet questions persist about where HR practitioners turn to in order to deepen their own expertise. Are traditional learning bodies keeping pace with contemporary workplace needs, or are organisations now turning to coaching and similar approaches instead?

At Catalyst, we consistently hear this tension from HR leaders and Chief People Officers: they are expected to design world-class learning cultures for everyone else, while struggling to find the time, budget, or relevant frameworks to invest in their own growth. That disconnect is where capability gaps and credibility gaps start to appear.

The traditional anchor: CIPD’s role

For decades, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has been the go-to source for HR accreditation, professional development, and thought leadership. From foundational qualifications in people practice to advanced strategic credentials, the CIPD built its reputation on rigorous standards and a global community of practitioners.

For many HR professionals, CIPD learning pathways played a big part in their early careers, offering workshops, research summaries, and networking events that helped build knowledge in areas like labour law, talent management, and organisational psychology.

Despite its long history, the CIPD has been the subject of critiques concerning its current relevance.

In conversations with clients and candidates, we often hear a similar pattern: CIPD provided an excellent foundation, but it isn’t always enough to keep pace with the realities of today’s data-driven, tech-enabled HR landscape. The question isn’t “CIPD or not?” – it’s “CIPD plus what?”

A new set of challenges – and expectations

Digital transformation has paved the way for new challenges – data analytics, agile workforce planning, and hybrid-first cultures – that demand rapid, flexible upskilling. Yet some members report that course content feels dated or too theoretical, lacking the hands-on toolkits and tech-driven insights needed today.

Others point to rising membership fees and less frequent local chapter engagement, leading smaller HR teams to question whether the return on investment remains worthwhile. As the talent marketplace intensifies, HR professionals wonder if the CIPD can retool its offerings fast enough to stay relevant.

This is not about undermining the CIPD, but about acknowledging that the learning needs of HR have outpaced any single provider. The organisations we work with are starting to take a more portfolio-based approach to development, where CIPD is one component rather than the whole solution.

How HR is broadening its learning ecosystem

Recognising these gaps, forward-thinking HR professionals are diversifying their learning sources. Online platforms such as LinkedIn Learning offer bite-sized modules on data visualisation, people analytics, and DEI strategy.

Networking events / Roundtables – often run by startups or academic institutions deliver deep dives into niche topics like AI-powered talent assessment or blockchain for credentials.

Peer-to-peer forums, mentorship circles, and cross-industry secondments further enrich the learning ecosystem. By triangulating these experiences, HR professionals can curate a personal development roadmap that responds directly to their organisation’s strategic priorities.

We see the most effective HR leaders becoming “learning curators” for themselves as well as their teams – blending accredited programmes, micro-learning, coaching, and exposure to other functions (finance, product, operations) to build true business partnership capability.

The gap between what HR builds and what HR gets

While HR meticulously builds learning ecosystems for the wider organisation, such as career frameworks, internal academies, mentorship, and skills tracking, it often invests less systematically in its own capability.

Given HR’s advocacy of learning for others, one might assume practitioners invest equally in their own development; yet internal surveys frequently reveal disparities.

Pressured by operational demands, policy updates, payroll deadlines, and employee relations cases, HR teams deprioritise their own upskilling. Budget constraints can funnel L&D resources toward business-critical functions, sidelining HR’s continuous education, and the very skills HR now needs, such as data storytelling, digital facilitation, and agile project management, often sit outside traditional learning budgets.

Combined with service-first incentives, enterprise-level metrics that overlook HR capability growth, and diffuse ownership for internal upskilling. These dynamics create capability debt in areas such as people analytics, AI, and strategic workforce planning, heighten burnout risk, and weaken credibility when advising others on growth.

From a Catalyst perspective, this is the core tension: HR is being asked to lead transformation while operating with outdated tools, limited exposure, and very little protected time for its own development. It’s hard to be a strategic partner when your own function is running on fumes.

Applying HR’s own playbook inward

A pragmatic remedy is to apply HR’s own playbook inward: ring-fenced learning sprints, capability OKRs for the HR team, a focused internal curriculum, structured peer coaching and supervision, a clear skills taxonomy for HR roles, and a visible, dedicated budget.

To lead transformative people strategies, HR must become its own exemplar of continuous learning.

This is where we often support clients: helping HR leaders articulate a clear capability vision for their own function, and then designing practical mechanisms – OKRs, curricula, coaching structures – that make that vision real rather than aspirational.

From principle to practice: A simple framework

Here are actionable steps:

In our work, we’ve seen that even small changes – like formalising quarterly “HR learning days” or linking HR’s goals directly to capability metrics – can have an outsized impact on credibility and confidence at the executive table.

The claim: HR must model what it preaches

As the role of HR continues to mature, its practitioners must claim the same sense of urgency for personal learning that they champion for the workforce.

The CIPD, while still a valuable pillar of the profession, must reinvent offerings to reflect the digital, data-driven realities of work today. Meanwhile, HR teams must broaden their learning horizons, integrating agile, tech-enabled modalities to stay ahead of organisational needs.

By turning the lens inward and investing in their own development, HR professionals will not only sustain their relevance but also model the very ethos of a learning organisation.

At Catalyst, we believe this is now non-negotiable: if HR isn’t visibly investing in its own growth, it will struggle to lead change with conviction. The HR teams that will shape the next decade are those that treat their own learning as strategically as they treat everyone else’s.

If you’re rethinking how to future-proof your HR function – whether that’s capability building, org design, or hiring for new skills in Reward, People Analytics or broader HR – we’d be happy to share what we’re seeing in the market and explore what might work in your context.