How CEOs Can Turn HR Around
The Engineer Who Found Out What the Company Really Valued
In February 2017, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler published a detailed account of her time at the company.
The story was not only about harassment.
It was about status.
Fowler alleged that after reporting inappropriate messages from her manager, she was told the manager was a high performer and that the company did not want to punish him for what was presented as a possible first offense. CNBC reported that Uber’s then-CEO Travis Kalanick ordered an urgent investigation after Fowler published her account. Later that year, CNBC reported that more than 20 Uber employees were fired after an internal investigation connected to allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, and other workplace issues.
That is the part CEOs should study.
Not because every company is Uber. Most are not.
The lesson is sharper than that.
Uber showed what can happen when a company has HR apparatus, but the status system still decides what actually matters.
There were reporting channels. There were managers. There was HR. There was leadership. There was a company fluent in the language of talent, performance, speed, and culture.
But when the issue reached the moment of consequence, the reported standard became conditional.
The alleged conduct was not evaluated only as conduct. It was filtered through status: performance, usefulness, internal value, and the cost of confronting someone the organization considered important.
That is where HR either has power or becomes evidence of the failure.
The visible question was whether HR handled a complaint properly.
The deeper question was whether HR had enough CEO-backed authority to make the standard stronger than the protected person’s status.
That is the real starting point for how CEOs turn HR around.
The Hidden Rule
The Uber story is useful because it exposes a rule that exists in many organizations, even when the names, facts, industries, and severity are different.
The written rule says employees should report concerns.
The operating rule says the report will be judged partly by who is involved.
That is the hidden system.
A low-status employee may experience the policy one way. A high-performing manager may experience it another way. A senior leader may experience it another way still. The formal process may say one thing, while the organization’s status system quietly decides how serious the issue becomes.
That is how HR loses credibility.
Not all at once. Not always publicly. Often, it happens through repeated moments where employees see the standard bend.
A manager ignores HR guidance and nothing happens. A high performer causes repeated damage but is described as too valuable to confront. A senior leader is treated as complicated rather than accountable. A complaint is reframed as a misunderstanding. A pattern is treated as isolated. A policy is praised in training and weakened in practice.
Employees learn from that.
They learn who the rules are for.
They learn who the rules are not for.
That is why CEO involvement matters. The CEO sets the status system, even when the CEO is not in the room. If the CEO allows rank, revenue, tenure, charisma, proximity, or performance numbers to outweigh the standard, HR cannot turn itself around from inside the function.
Why the Accepted Explanation Fails
The accepted explanation says HR needs to become more strategic.
That phrase is now too easy.
It is often used to suggest HR should be more commercial, more proactive, more data-driven, more responsive, more credible with leaders, or more aligned with the business.
Some of that may be true.
But it is rarely the root issue.
Many CEOs do not have a weak HR function because HR lacks effort. They have a weak HR function because the organization has assigned HR responsibility without giving HR enough authority to govern the leadership decisions that create risk.
HR is expected to reduce turnover, improve manager consistency, support performance management, handle complaints, protect culture, strengthen trust, reduce legal exposure, and advise leaders.
Then the company allows managers to ignore guidance, delay documentation, make exceptions, protect high performers, resist accountability, or involve HR only after the damage is already visible.
That is not an HR performance problem alone.
That is where the CEO has the decisive governance lever.
A CEO does not turn HR around by asking HR to sound more strategic.
A CEO turns HR around by making HR’s standards harder for leaders to ignore.
The Workplace Transfer
The Uber case reveals the transfer clearly.
The issue was not simply whether HR existed. It did.
The issue was whether HR had enough authority, backing, independence, escalation power, and consequence support to govern the moment when the standard threatened someone with internal value.
That is the same problem many organizations face in less public, less dramatic, but still consequential ways.
A CEO may believe the company has HR because the company has policies, reporting channels, employee relations processes, training, documentation templates, performance systems, engagement surveys, and HR business partners.
Those are important.
But they are apparatus.
They are the visible machinery of HR.
They do not prove HR has control.
Control exists when HR can affect the decision before the organization has to defend it. Control exists when HR can stop an inconsistent termination, require documentation before discipline, escalate a protected complaint, challenge an exception for a senior person, and force ownership back to leaders who want HR to absorb the discomfort.
The CEO’s question should not be: “Do we have HR?”
The CEO’s question should be: “Can HR govern the people decisions that create risk when powerful people want an exception?”
Apparatus Versus Control
Most HR turnarounds overinvest in apparatus.
The company updates the handbook. It buys new HR technology. It launches manager training. It redesigns performance reviews. It creates dashboards. It improves onboarding. It runs engagement surveys. It rewrites values. It asks HR to be more visible, more strategic, more responsive, and more business-oriented.
Those moves may help.
But they do not, by themselves, turn HR around.
A company does not have HR control because it has policies. It does not have HR control because it has training. It does not have HR control because it has reporting tools. It does not have HR control because HR attends more meetings.
The control point is whether HR can govern the live moment when pressure, preference, rank, revenue, or convenience wants an exception.
That means HR must have defined authority around:
decision ownership;
escalation requirements;
documentation standards;
manager accountability;
complaint governance;
retaliation risk;
exception review;
performance management consistency;
executive visibility where risk requires it;
consequences when leaders ignore people-management standards.
Without that authority, HR remains advisory until something goes wrong and accountable after the damage is done.
That is the trap CEOs have to break.
The CEO’s Role
The CEO does not need to run HR.
The CEO needs to make HR governable.
That means defining what HR owns, what managers own, what executives cannot override without review, and what happens when leaders ignore the standards HR is responsible for protecting.
HR cannot be credible if managers can treat its guidance as optional.
HR cannot protect culture if influential people are exempt from the rules.
HR cannot reduce risk if it is brought in only after a manager has avoided documentation for months.
HR cannot improve performance management if leaders use HR as a cleanup function rather than a decision discipline.
HR cannot govern complaints if executives are more committed to protecting relationships than protecting standards.
The CEO sets the status system.
If the CEO treats HR as administrative support, the organization will do the same. If the CEO treats HR as optional advice, managers will hear permission. If the CEO praises HR publicly but allows leaders to work around HR privately, employees will understand the real rule.
That is why CEO sponsorship is not enough.
CEO-backed authority is the standard.
What CEOs Should Stop Doing
CEOs weaken HR when they demand better HR outcomes while leaving the power structure unchanged.
They should stop treating HR transformation as a function-level improvement project when the real issue is decision governance.
The most common CEO errors are predictable:
asking HR to be strategic while using HR mainly for administration and cleanup;
praising culture while tolerating exceptions for powerful people;
expecting HR to reduce risk without authority to interrupt risky decisions;
allowing managers to avoid performance conversations and then blame HR for slow action;
treating employee relations as an HR issue rather than a leadership system issue;
measuring HR responsiveness without measuring manager ownership;
involving HR late and then criticizing HR for not preventing the issue earlier.
These patterns teach the organization that HR is responsible for consequences but not authorized to prevent them.
That is not a turnaround.
It is a credibility drain.
What CEOs Should Start Doing
A CEO turns HR around by making people decisions governable.
That requires more than better HR language. It requires decision discipline.
The CEO should require clear standards for when HR must be involved, when managers must document, when exceptions require review, when escalation is mandatory, and when leadership must own the decision rather than outsource discomfort to HR.
The CEO should also make clear that HR’s role is not simply to help leaders do what they already decided. HR’s role is to test whether the decision is consistent, supported, documented, lawful, ethical, and aligned with the organization’s stated standards.
A stronger HR system allows HR to ask:
Who owns this decision?
What standard applies?
What facts support the action?
What documentation exists?
Has this been handled consistently?
What risk is being created?
Who is approving the exception?
What consequence follows if the standard is ignored?
What does the organization need to do before this decision is defensible?
Those questions do not make HR anti-business.
They make HR useful.
The Governance Test
A CEO who wants to turn HR around should begin with a governance test, not a branding exercise.
The test is not whether HR is liked. It is not whether HR is busy. It is not whether HR has a seat in meetings. It is not whether HR has a modern platform, a polished employee experience strategy, or a more sophisticated HR business partner model.
The test is whether HR can affect the decisions that create risk, inconsistency, and credibility loss.
The CEO should ask:
Where does HR have responsibility without authority?
Which people decisions can managers make without HR review?
Which exceptions are allowed because of rank, revenue, tenure, results, or personal preference?
Where are complaints, performance issues, and conduct concerns being minimized before HR sees the full pattern?
Which leaders repeatedly ignore HR guidance without consequence?
What issues reach HR only after managers have delayed ownership?
Where does the organization say one thing in policy and do another under pressure?
That is the real HR audit.
Not the paperwork.
The power map.
The Stronger Standard
The Uber story was never only about a complaint process.
It was about the system that decided what mattered when a complaint threatened someone with status.
That is the lesson CEOs should take seriously.
HR does not become stronger because the CEO asks it to be more strategic. HR becomes stronger when the CEO changes what the organization is allowed to do around HR.
The popular explanation says HR needs more influence.
The operating reality is that HR needs CEO-backed authority over the people decisions that create risk, inconsistency, and cultural damage.
The standard should be clear: HR must have the authority to define expectations, require consistency, escalate risk, challenge exceptions, and force ownership back to leaders when they try to avoid responsibility.
That is how CEOs turn HR around.
Not by protecting HR.
By making HR’s standards enforceable.
Audit the Leadership System Around HR
Seattle Consulting Group’s Leadership Accountability Audit helps organizations identify where leaders, managers, and executives are creating people risk by ignoring HR standards, delaying ownership, protecting exceptions, or treating HR guidance as optional.
The issue is not only whether HR is effective.
The issue is whether the organization allows leaders to work around HR until the damage becomes visible.
This audit examines decision ownership, escalation discipline, manager consistency, documentation expectations, complaint governance, exception handling, and the consequences that follow when leaders fail to uphold the standard.
If HR is being asked to reduce risk without the authority to stop weak decisions, the issue is not only HR capability. It is leadership accountability.
Assess Where Leadership Accountability Is Breaking Down.