There was a time when the person responsible for hiring, firing and payroll was called the Head of HR. Simple, clear, functional. Then, somewhere along the way, the role was rebranded as the Head of People and Culture. Or in some cases, Chief People Officer. And yet, when you strip away the glossy job title, the function remains largely the same. To make matters even more confusing, many organisations still refer to the role internally as HR.
So what is going on here? Why did HR suddenly become responsible for corporate culture, and why do we keep getting told that culture belongs to a support department? Surely leadership and line managers are the ones responsible for people, behaviour and how a company actually functions on the inside.
This post is my attempt to cut through the fog around the role of HR, culture management, and who really owns culture in a business. If you run a company, manage people, or simply wonder why your workplace insists on replacing clear titles with corporate jargon, then keep reading.
When Did HR Become “People and Culture”?
The rebranding of HR roles began in the mid-2000s and gathered pace in the 2010s. Large companies on both sides of the Atlantic wanted to move away from the bureaucratic image attached to “Human Resources”. Let’s be honest: HR sounds transactional and impersonal, like a department that manages factory machinery rather than people. It conjures up visions of compliance paperwork, holiday forms and contracts.
“People and Culture” by contrast sounds warmer, more human, more strategic. The idea is that HR is about more than administration. It is about nurturing the workforce, aligning values, and shaping company culture. On paper, this sounds progressive and modern. In practice, the actual responsibilities did not change overnight. HR still does payroll, policies, recruitment, grievances and performance management.
Some companies genuinely embedded culture into the role, making the CHRO or Head of People and Culture a driver of organisational transformation. But in many other businesses, the title change was little more than a coat of paint. Culture remained something dispersed across leadership, line managers and employees – not solely the responsibility of one department.
Why I Struggle With the “Head of People and Culture” Label
Here’s where my frustration begins. The phrase itself seems to subtly suggest that culture belongs to HR. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of what culture is and how it works in practice. HR cannot own culture. They can support it, shape it, reinforce it. But to say they own it is to shift a collective responsibility onto a single department.
Culture is not a policy document. It is not a poster on the wall with a list of values. Culture is lived daily through leadership behaviours, team interactions, decision-making moments and small, repeated actions. When you look at it like this, you see that culture belongs to everyone and must be modelled from the very top.
As a business consultant, I would never tell a client to outsource culture to HR. Imagine abdicating culture to a support department. You may as well hand over customer service experience to accounts payable while you are at it.
So Who Actually Owns Culture?
This is where the lines get blurred, and rightly so, because ownership of something as organic as culture cannot fall neatly into one box. Let’s put some structure around it.
Founders and Senior Executive Leadership
The original DNA of a company’s culture comes from the founder or senior leadership. Think about Apple in the Steve Jobs era, or Virgin with Richard Branson. Culture was not a human resources function. It was built into how the leader thought, spoke and acted. Values and vision cascade from leadership decisions, and employees adapt around them.
Line Managers
Managers play a massive part. Employees rarely quit jobs because of faceless leadership. They quit because of poor line managers. Day-to-day experiences filter through the person leading the team. How they support, listen, challenge and develop their staff is how culture plays out in practice.
Employees
Yes, employees shape culture. They do so through informal networks, shared behaviours, and peer-to-peer connections. Even the most idealistic founder cannot impose a workplace culture if employees refuse to live it. This is why culture is a shared, evolving asset rather than something neatly handed down.
HR’s Place
Where does HR fit then? HR supports culture by providing consistent frameworks. They design recruitment processes to bring in people aligned with values. They roll out training grounded in cultural behaviours. They set up recognition systems that reward positive alignment. But they cannot generate culture from thin air. They can only reinforce what leadership and employees put into practice.
Why Culture Cannot Be Outsourced
If you are a business owner wondering who should be the “Head of Culture”, here is my answer: you. You are the ultimate custodian of culture in your business. This role cannot be outsourced to HR, nor delegated entirely to managers, nor left to fend for itself among employees.
Culture is the composite reflection of what leadership says, what management delivers, and what employees embody. If HR happens to facilitate this effectively, great. But the moment you say “HR owns culture” you confess, perhaps without realising it, to a failure of leadership.
Is This Just an SME Thing?
Not at all. This renaming is alive and well in large corporates. Google calls it People Operations. Airbnb has a Global Head of Employee Experience. Countless FTSE 100 companies now have Chief People Officers. This is not confined to SMEs. It is part of a much wider trend to soften corporate language and position HR as a cultural strategist rather than an administrator.
There is logic in this, but the danger is accountability. When you label someone as Head of People and Culture without clarifying boundaries, you risk making them a scapegoat for cultural issues that only the CEO can resolve. Culture starts and ends with top-level leadership, not HR branding exercises.
The Reality of the “Chief Culture Officer” Trend
In some organisations, the trend goes further. There is now such a title as Chief Culture Officer, seen at companies like Zappos and rapidly spreading elsewhere. This role is meant to act as a cultural architect, ensuring everything from onboarding to daily rituals reflects core values.
Do we need it? Maybe, if the organisation is so vast that someone needs to coordinate alignment. But it rarely works if leadership behaviours contradict the proposed culture. You could have an office full of beanbags, well-being weeks, and value statements, but if executives publicly undermine those values, the Chief Culture Officer is pushing water uphill.
Culture is not a job title. It is not a department. It is what happens when no one is watching.
Final Thoughts on Who Owns Culture
Ultimately, the answer to “Who owns culture?” is: everyone. Leadership sets the tone. Managers deliver the behaviours. Employees embody the experience. HR supports and facilitates. Titles aside, culture is a shared organism that reflects the lived reality of work.
So the next time you see a job ad for “Head of People and Culture”, ask yourself: is this just HR dressed up with warmer branding, or is this company genuinely committed to aligning management, leadership and employees around a lived culture?
Because no matter the title, culture cannot be handed over to one department. If you are a leader, you own it. If you are a manager, you manage it. If you are an employee, you shape it daily. And if you are HR, your role is to back it with consistency and structure. Anything else is just corporate jargon.
References and Further Reading
- Chief Culture Officer: Job Description, Salary & ROI – ELM Learning
- What Does a Chief Culture Officer Do? | Indeed
- Culture Manager Job Description 2025
- What is a Chief Culture Officer?
- Director of People and Culture – AIHR
- Who Owns Company Culture: Leadership or Employees?
- Who is Responsible for Corporate Culture?
- The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture – HBR
- Korn Ferry – Every Leader a Chief Culture Officer
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