For a long time, talent strategy has lived quietly in the HR function. Important, but often treated as operational and something to sort out once the business strategy was locked in. Something focused on headcount, hiring plans, and workforce costs, but that framing no longer holds.

In today’s environment, talent strategy has become one of the most critical levers an organisation has to execute its strategy, manage risk, and protect long-term enterprise value. Why is why it should belong in the boardroom.

As Sarah Blanchard, Head of Talent Advisory at Solve, puts it:

“Talent strategy is no longer an HR exercise. It fundamentally determines an organisation’s ability to succeed.”

Strategy without capability is just intent

At a board level, organisations spend significant time defining where they will compete and how they will win, where growth priorities, transformation programs, innovation agendas, and risk frameworks are debated, refined and approved.

But too often, the capability conversation lags behind.

“While business strategy defines where value will be created,” Sarah explains. “Talent strategy defines how capability is identified and mobilised to create that value.”

When that connection isn’t explicit, organisations can end up with strategies that look compelling on paper but are difficult (or even impossible) to execute in practice. The result is slower delivery, increased operational risk, and a growing gap between ambition and reality.

This is where talent advisory services play a critical role: helping boards and executive teams connect strategic intent with the workforce capabilities required to deliver it.

Why boards can’t delegate this anymore

There are three forces pushing talent strategy into the boardroom.

1. The pace and scale of change

AI, automation, new operating models and shifting workforce expectations are reshaping work faster than traditional planning cycles can keep up. These are no longer just future scenarios, they’re already influencing productivity, cost structures and competitive advantage.

Decisions about technology investment, transformation, and growth inherently carry workforce implications, and leaving talent considerations until later introduces unnecessary risk.

2. Talent risk is business risk

The inability to access, mobilise, or retain critical skills has a direct impact on execution, resilience, and value creation. From a board perspective, talent strategy is no longer just about attraction and retention but about risk exposure.

“Defining and designing a talent strategy is now a risk management issue,” Sarah notes. “Because failing to access the right capabilities fundamentally impacts the bottom line.”

3. Workforce expectations have shifted

Different workforce segments now have very different expectations around flexibility, autonomy, learning, and purpose. Talent attraction and retention risks are no longer uniform across the enterprise.

Boards increasingly need visibility into which workforce segments are most critical to strategy and whether the organisation’s value proposition is deliberately designed to support them.

Moving beyond headcount thinking

One of the biggest shifts our team sees when working with leadership teams is the move away from traditional headcount-based planning.

While roles and FTE still matter, they no longer tell the full story.

Modern talent strategy is about capability: understanding which skills create value, how work is broken into tasks, and which capabilities should be built internally, bought from the market, borrowed through partners or contingent workforce models, or enabled through automation.

This broader lens is particularly important in conversations about the meaning of contingent workforce and the role of non-traditional talent in delivering strategy. For many organisations, a blended model that includes permanent employees, contingent workers and external partners is becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Effective integrated talent advisory helps boards and executives evaluate these options in a structured, commercially grounded way.

Governance, accountability, and ownership

Another reason talent strategy has moved up the agenda is accountability.

Without clear ownership, talent strategy risks becoming fragments that are part workforce planning, part HR initiative, and part transformation afterthought. Boards are increasingly asking:

• Who is accountable for talent strategy outcomes?
• How often is the strategy reviewed and stress-tested?
• How closely is it aligned to the business strategy?

“There needs to be clear ownership and accountability for talent strategy outcomes. That responsibility can’t sit solely with HR,” says Sarah.

When boards take an active role, talent strategy becomes more disciplined, more future-focused, and more tightly connected to value creation.

In practice, this means talent strategy should be reviewed with the same rigour as business strategy, as a living framework that evolves alongside market conditions, technology, and workforce expectations. When that discipline is missing, organisations often default to reactive, cost-driven decisions that undermine long-term capability.

From HR topic to board priority

The organisations that navigate today’s volatility most effectively aren’t necessarily the ones with the boldest strategies. They’re the ones who, at a leadership level, understand that strategy lives or dies on capability.

Talent strategy is about ensuring the organisation remains viable, competitive, and adaptable in an increasingly complex environment, which is why it needs to belong where the biggest business decisions are made – the boardroom.

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