HR leaders spend a great deal of time designing people strategies, mapping employee experiences, shaping talent systems and building programs that support a healthy, high-performing organization. But in today’s environment, strategy alone is not enough. The way HR designs and delivers work must adapt just as quickly as the conditions around it.
One useful lens comes from outside the traditional HR world: how product teams operate.
Product organizations do not exist to maintain processes; they exist to create value. They obsess over the user experience, test and learn quickly, measure what matters and work cross-functionally to deliver solutions people actually use. HR can apply the same principles to the employee experience.
In stable conditions, this approach is powerful. But 2026 will not be a stable year for most companies.
See also: Stagflation’s impact on recruiting
HR leaders are entering a landscape defined by:
- ongoing layoffs and hiring freezes
- rapid AI adoption and automation-driven role changes
- mergers, divestitures and shifts in operating models
- political and regulatory volatility that affects workforce decisions
- investor and board pressure for immediate ROI
In periods like this, a product mindset does not disappear; it evolves. The principles remain the same, but the tempo shortens. User empathy, iteration, clarity and impact still matter; they simply move from a quarterly roadmap to a crisis-level horizon.
So, what happens when your carefully designed people strategy meets disruption?
5 ways CPOs can apply product thinking when the business is under pressure
If you want your people strategy to stay relevant when conditions shift, these five moves anchor product thinking in real-world turbulence.
1. Anchor every decision in ROI
When the business is under pressure, executives default to financial logic. Every proposal must answer a single question: What is the return? Quantify value in business terms: revenue protection, cost avoidance, risk reduction, productivity lift. Use pilots to lower perceived risk. “A $60K investment in manager capability prevents an estimated $240K in turnover-related productivity loss. Break-even is under a quarter.”
2. Design for the worst days
Some of the most defining moments in a company—layoffs, investigations, restructurings—are also the ones most likely to be mishandled. They are often rushed or overly scripted because leaders are uncomfortable or eager to “get it over with.” Yet these moments shape organizational identity more than almost any positive initiative.
From a product lens, these situations are still employee experiences. They require the same clarity, sequencing and user empathy that you would apply to any critical moment in the employee journey. Your job is not to make the news feel good; it is to make it clear, direct and humane. Thoughtful execution stabilizes the organization, reduces speculation and protects credibility inside and outside the company. Former employees do not leave your ecosystem. They become customers, competitors, references, advisors and storytellers. How you handle the hardest days becomes part of the company’s long-term story—remembered far longer than how you handle the easy ones.
3. Hold the cultural line
Under pressure, people watch leaders more closely than ever. Culture stops being aspirational and becomes visible in how decisions are made, communicated and lived. In moments of uncertainty, these behaviors become part of the employee experience just as much as any formal program or process.
This is where fundamentals matter most:
- Communicate clearly and consistently, even when answers are still forming.
- Do not let “stress” become a justification for poor behavior.
- Ensure leaders model steadiness, accountability and fairness.
- Give employees orientation: what is happening, what it means and what comes next.
When information is scarce, people fill the gaps themselves, and the imagined version is always worse. Strengthening cultural fundamentals during pressure points is what keeps employees grounded when they need it most.
4. Reprioritize fast and protect the core
Consider a scenario many HR leaders are facing today: You are mid-launch on a refreshed performance process when the business hits a sudden financial shift. Hiring slows, budgets tighten and leadership redirects attention to immediate stability. The work is not wrong; it is simply mistimed.
This is where product thinking becomes practical: Protect the core, ship a smaller version and time your next release to the organization’s readiness.
Immediate triage
Pause the rollout so managers are not absorbing something new amid competing demands. Align quickly with the CEO and CFO on the few priorities leaders must stay focused on this month.
Stabilize
Move to a minimum-viable version of the process. A short, two-question expectations check-in keeps feedback alive without overwhelming an already strained system.
Adapt fast
Once the organization regains its footing, reintroduce the parts of your redesign that genuinely help leaders right now, such as expectations clarity or short-cycle feedback. The rest can wait until the timing supports full adoption.
5. Rebuild for resilience
When the acute phase passes, resist the impulse to snap back to “business as usual.” The recovery window is one of the most valuable moments for a people team. Treat it like a product post-mortem and focus on what the disruption revealed, not the narrative you hoped was true.
Ask the questions that matter:
- What broke first?
- What held under pressure?
- Which leaders created clarity, and which created noise?
- Where were employees asking for support you were not ready to provide?
This is the real data—the gap between the experience you intended and the one people actually lived. Use it to build elastic systems, structures that can take pressure, stretch when needed and return to form without breaking.
Capture what held, what strained and where the organization reached its limits. That is where your strategy needs reinforcement, and where the next iteration of your people design begins.
The final word: Don’t lose yourself while leading through it
Periods of volatility often turn CPOs into emotional shock absorbers, steadying teams, translating uncertainty and carrying pressure from every direction.
The real risk is losing your center while trying to hold everything else together. Protect your judgment, your boundaries and your sense of self. The organization needs your clarity more than your self-sacrifice.
A sustainable people operation is not about having a perfect system. It is about teams that can operate through volatility without losing their grounding or their humanity. Sometimes your carefully prioritized strategy gets sidelined. Sometimes your roadmap becomes “do what keeps us moving.” That is not failure. It is what real leadership looks like under pressure. The most mature people teams do not just survive disruption.
They stay steady, stay strategic and keep building something people want to come back to.
