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When I talk with HR professionals, a version of the same question keeps coming up: "Why do some people thrive in this work while others burn out or check out?"
HRCI decided to stop speculating and look for a real answer. What the data showed us was instructive, and possibly not what most leaders would expect.
Compensation, benefits, and other incentives matter, but they don't move the needle the way most organizations assume. Our research points to factors that may be less tangible: professional development, a visible career path, adequate resources, and a culture that genuinely values HR.
HR teams are absorbing some of the most disruptive workplace forces we've seen in generations—return-to-office friction, anxiety over artificial intelligence, a shifting regulatory environment, and geopolitical polarization and conflict. Understanding what truly drives fulfillment can help ensure we are appropriately attracting, recognizing, and retaining the "people responsible for our people."
We started with HRCI's 2026 State of HR report, which examined how HR professionals feel about their job and their field. The top-line numbers were encouraging: 76% of respondents said they enjoy working in HR, and 64% are hopeful about the future of the profession. But underneath that, stress levels are high, workloads are growing, and more than a quarter of respondents said they have no clear career path.
To understand what was driving those differences, we asked our data specialists to go deeper. We wanted to know what separates genuinely fulfilled HR professionals from everyone else, and what workplace conditions create that distinction. That work became our latest white paper, The Secret Ingredients of Workplace Fulfillment.
Our data specialists began by defining a group we call HR Evangelists: people who enjoy working in HR, who would recommend the field to others, and who aren't considering leaving the profession. About 37% of respondents met all three criteria.
I wanted to understand what set them apart—and what, if anything, leaders could do about it.
Initial results showed clear patterns. HR Evangelists are more likely to be managers and more likely to work in departments that are stable or growing. Departments with steady or rising budgets and staffing produce HR Evangelists at a rate of 45%, compared with 35% in departments showing signs of decline.
We wanted to understand the conditions leaders could shape, so we looked specifically for variables within a manager's reasonable control—ones with a measurable impact on whether someone becomes an HR Evangelist.
Four themes emerged: preparedness, purpose, relevance, and support. None of them surprised me... but what did was how clearly the data showed their weight.
Preparedness. The single most powerful driver of HR Evangelist status is whether someone feels they have access to relevant, high-quality professional development. Those who describe their department as completely prepared are nearly three times more likely to qualify as HR Evangelists than those who feel minimally prepared.
Purpose. Being an HR Evangelist is closely tied to believing you have a future in this profession. When people see (or are shown) a path forward in their organization, it changes how they show up. When that vision doesn't exist, it shows too.
Relevance. HR Evangelists want to make a difference, and HR Evangelist status correlates strongly with whether leadership visibly values HR and whether people believe their department operates strategically. The honest picture here is sobering: only 22% of HR professionals feel highly valued by leadership, and just 37% consider their department a strong or essential strategic contributor. Building a more visible, strategic, and relevant HR function has been a rallying cry in our profession for years, and this data gives us one more reason to stay focused on it.
Support. Forty percent of HR professionals report extreme or high stress. Lower stress is meaningfully associated with HR Evangelist status. If our people are overworked or understaffed, the other factors are less impactful.
It can feel overwhelming to address all four themes at once. The good news is that the factors with the most impact are also the ones most directly within a manager's control.
Invest in relevant, high-quality HR training. Many managers give their teams latitude to choose their own development. While some flexibility is important, those individual choices aren't always well aligned with team or enterprise needs. A better approach is to proactively vet options. Curate a range of formats, price points, and time commitments, and resist the temptation to equate cost with quality.
Strengthen HR career pathways. HR professionals are constantly pulled in several directions, but that doesn't negate that HR is its own distinct and important function with real growth potential. Define the challenges your team needs to solve, lay out the skills and experience required to meet them, and make clear that building those skills leads somewhere.
These themes reinforce each other—and can undermine each other when they're out of balance. A manager who invests in development without clarifying career paths may end up with professionals who are skilled but directionless. One who elevates HR's strategic voice without addressing workload may increase pressure rather than engagement. The leaders who build the most fulfilled teams treat these elements as a system.
HR has never needed strong, committed professionals more than it does right now. This research tells me that those professionals don't appear by accident; they're built, deliberately, by leaders who understand what matters to the people doing this work.
About the Author Amy Schabacker Dufrane, Ed.D., SPHR, CAE, is CEO of HRCI, where she drives strategic conversations about building high-performing HR teams. An award-winning thought leader at the intersection of talent strategy and continuous learning, Dr. Dufrane is a celebrated keynote speaker on the human side of successful business strategy.
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