Last year, LinkedIn listed chief people officer (CPO) as the 13th fastest-growing role in its Jobs on the Rise List 2024, an annual report that analyses the fastest-growing jobs over the last three years. CPO was the 10th fastest-growing role in 2023. 

However, CPO did not feature in this year’s list, published on 7 January 2025, at all. 

Instead, AI and sustainability-related roles featured in the top 25 fastest-growing roles, which included artificial intelligence engineer in the top spot, data governance manager at number four and energy manager at number eight.

LinkedIn’s research team examined jobs that it identified as having seen “consistent positive growth” among the professional networking platform’s membership from January 2022 to July 2024.

“The chief people officer role saw significant growth during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic due to an increased focus on employee wellbeing when remote working practices became the norm for many businesses,” said Maxine Blackwell, people and culture director at internet service provider Zen Internet, speaking to HR magazine.

Read more: HR’s role in aligning a people and sustainability strategy

The decline in demand for the role could be explained by increased caution towards executive recruitment, she suggested.

Blackwell added: “The more recent slowdown is centred around economic uncertainty with more caution broadly around investment in executive roles. You’ll now see many traditional C-suite roles with much wider remits than we had previously.

“HR strategy remains a top priority and requires continuous focus. The rise of AI and sustainability roles reflects the expanding remit and value that people strategy brings, linking organisational design and how you grow and develop existing talent, and attract new talent.”

LinkedIn’s team also found that 45% of HR professionals in the UK reported that their company doesn’t have a clear view on the skills it will need in the coming years.

Two fifths (43%) of HR professionals indicated that sourcing candidates with technical skills was ‘most challenging’, while 19% cited sustainability skills. Meanwhile, 20% of employees worried that they didn’t have the skills needed for the future. 

LinkedIn’s Global Green Skills Report 2024, published in November 2024, showed that the green talent pool will need to be doubled by 2050, to keep pace with projected demand for green skills.

More than one in 10 (13%) of jobs in the UK required at least one green skill in 2024, however the global demand for green talent grew twice as quickly as supply between 2023 and 2024, the report explained.

HR will play an instrumental role in the rising popularity of AI and sustainability skills jobs in coming years, Janine Chamberlin, head of LinkedIn UK, commented.

Speaking to HR magazine, she said: “This shift doesn’t mean that HR roles are becoming less critical.

Read more: How can HR prepare for green jobs?

“With nearly 55% of these emerging roles not existing 20 years ago and skills expected to change by 65% by 2030, HR remains essential in helping professionals identify future opportunities and build the skills they need to stay competitive.”

Laura Fink, people and culture director at HR software provider HiBob, suggested that HR will be increasingly responsible for embedding AI and sustainability across the workforce.

“LinkedIn’s research underscores the rising importance of HR strategies as companies move from experimenting with AI to embedding it intentionally and more broadly across how work gets done,” she told HR magazine. 

“In 2025, the CPO’s leadership in rapid workforce skill development and thoughtful work redesign will be pivotal to developing human-AI collaboration, unlocking productivity, and driving innovation.”

LinkedIn analysed aggregate job data for its Jobs on the Rise List. It also commissioned Censuswide to survey 2,000 respondents aged 18 to 77 across the UK between 27 November and 12 December 2024.