PE’s expectations of HR are becoming more explicit: help make the investment thesis executable - faster.

In 2026, that means building the organisational capability for accelerated transformation, being genuinely comfortable with AI’s implications for roles, workflows and productivity, and connecting every major people decision more tightly to the value-creation plan. The HR mandate is shifting from supporting change to enabling it at pace: identifying the critical capabilities, leadership choices and operating-model changes that will unlock value. This also requires HR to challenge where work is done, how decisions are made and where capacity can be released or redeployed - not simply to introduce new tools. Recent industry thinking reinforces that the opportunity for AI in private equity is not merely isolated efficiency gains, but embedding new ways of working across the organisation and linking them to commercial outcomes. Portfolio CHROs in our community increasingly observe the same shift: HR is expected to be closer to the investment thesis, quicker in its interventions, and more confident in shaping how value gets created.