July 23, 2026 Saving Managers & HR Time to Focus on People, Not Processes

The following is based on the inaugural ASHHRA & Laudio Insights report, Reconnecting HR to the Frontline: How Leader Standard Work Translates People Strategy into Results. The report provides new insights into how innovative CHROs, HR leaders, and other people leaders partner with both their executive colleagues and frontline managers to meet organizational goals. 

Save managers and HR time to focus on people, not processes

Innovative CHROs are using AI and automation, along with centralized centers of excellence, to take on high volume work more efficiently and to free leaders’ time to engage with staff, patients, and colleagues. HR leaders emphasized that the fastest path to improving engagement, retention, and team stability is giving managers back the time and mental space required for relational leadership like coaching, recognition, and problem‑solving.

Many organizations have seen meaningful variation reduction improvements after centralizing and standardizing HR processes and policies, introducing automation, and redesigning workflows. The most notable improvements result from redesigning workflows to eliminate tasks that are high volume, time-consuming, and do not require operational input from managers. Leaders noted that much of the frontline manager burden comes from HR‑related administrivia. Removing or streamlining this work unlocks significant leader capacity for both managers and HR and can be achieved through the Lean practices mentioned above. Removing nonvalue tasks from HRBPs allows them to play a more strategic role in enabling more consistent relational leadership across the organization.

Across all interviews, the consistent takeaway was that saving HR and frontline managers’ time allows them to repurpose it for more meaningful activities that result in more effective, sustainable leadership. 

Reduce the variation in leadership among frontline managers

For CHROs, consistently executing the people strategy at the frontline is a defining strategic advantage. The interviews highlighted the importance of creating greater consistency in how frontline managers lead. Organizations are clear that their operations are only as reliable as the consistency of the teams delivering them. Frontline leaders play a critical role and are viewed as carriers of culture, keystones of engagement, and enablers of safety, quality, and retention outcomes.

HRO and Lean principles can be applied equally to leadership behavior, talent systems, and workforce processes as  they are to operations. In high-performing organizations, leadership expectations are not assumed: they are defined, taught, and reinforced. Leadership development becomes cultural infrastructure, and HR’s role shifts from a support role to the “architect of leaders.” Multiple interviews discussed HR’s design of standardized leadership systems to scale the impact, as opposed to only addressing individual leader performance.

Leaders noted that without shared routines and clear standards, frontline experiences vary significantly, leading to inconsistent engagement and results. Defining Leader Standard Work is the first step in reducing variation. An emerging goal of the people strategy is building consistency in leader practice without rigidity. HR and clinical  executives emphasized the need to systematize foundational leadership behaviors so that all managers operate from a common playbook. They also reinforced the importance of regularly aligning leaders around culture and expectations to ensure clarity and reliability.

Collectively, these efforts create a more predictable, empathetic, and supportive leadership environment and strengthen the foundation needed for engagement, operational excellence, and culture to thrive.