Boardroom & beyond | Global shareholder activism is on the rise - does HR have a new stakeholder to win over?

HR professionals have historically found themselves in corporate no-man’s land.

Eager to keep employees engaged, managers motivated, and C-suite executives satisfied, keeping everyone happy is an impossible and thankless task. They are the messenger that stakeholders find all too easy to shoot.

While in recent years there has been progress – HR is increasingly known as the steward responsible for aligning a company’s people, operations, and strategies rather than the administrative executor or party pooper – a core challenge has been winning buy-in from fellow C-suite executives. Achieving greater influence has been a wearisome path to tread.

And now recent reports indicate there may be another senior stakeholder for HR professionals to engage with and, in some cases, push back against: Enter the role of the activist shareholder.