CHRO transitions are opportunities for HR executives
CEO transitions are an HR moment, not just a PR moment
Highwire, a strategic marketing and communications agency, recently published Passing the Torch: A Framework for CEO Transition Communication for Professional Services Businesses, built on its analysis of 50 professional services CEO appointments and 63 related LinkedIn posts from 2023 to 2025. The report is aimed squarely at communications leaders, and it's a genuinely useful playbook for that audience to help manage periods when CEO’s change out.
But read it as an HR professional, and a different story emerges. This isn't only about communications, and as a significant talent and culture moment, it belongs equally on the desks of HR.
Why this is an HR problem
Executive transitions are traditionally treated as a leadership or comms exercise: get the press release out, brief the board, update the website bio. But the moment a new CEO steps in is also one of the most consequential employer-brand events a firm will have all year. Employees, prospective hires, clients and investors are all reading the silence, or the noise, for clues about where the organization is headed.
Highwire's data backs this up. LinkedIn posts framed around legacy and succession planning drove engagement roughly 2.5 to 3 times higher than LinkedIn's average — the strongest-performing theme in the whole dataset. Highwire's EVP for professional services, Keri Toomey, shares that the posts that resonated most weren't the polished, produced pieces; they were simple and human, built around personal milestones rather than corporate talking points.
Strip away the comms framing and that's a culture finding, not just a content finding. People aren't only curious about who is taking over, they want a narrative bridge between the outgoing and incoming leader - evidence that something is continuing even as something changes. Building that bridge credibly depends on things that live in HR's territory, not comms'. The succession plan behind the announcement, the incoming leader's actual development history, and an honest read of how the workforce feels about the change. Communications can write the post, only HR can tell you whether the story it tells is true.
The framework is worth borrowing for HR's own purposes
Highwire's guide organizes transitions into three scenarios. Strategic continuity, strategic evolution, or crisis and corrective change; and pairs them with four communications anchors it calls the "Four Cs": Context, Course, Core, and Character. It also walks through a case study of a professional association with more than 107,000 members that managed a year-long transition with (by Highwire's account) zero stakeholder disruption and full operational continuity.
The Four Cs translate almost directly into questions HR should already be asking internally during any leadership change:
Context — what is staying the same, so people don't panic unnecessarily?
Course — what is changing, so expectations are set honestly?
Core — why now, and what's the real trigger for this transition?
Character — why this leader, and what in their background earns the organization's confidence?
Highwire built this framework to guide the external and internal messaging of a transition. HR's job is different but adjacent: making sure the underlying answers to those four questions are actually true before comms tries to tell that story. A well-written announcement can't manufacture continuity that doesn't exist.
What HR leaders should actually do with this
Treat the transition announcement as onboarding, not just PR. HR should be in the room when transition messaging is planned, not just when the new leader's calendar needs setting up. The way a transition is communicated shapes how the incoming CEO is received by the workforce for months afterward.
Coach new leaders on visibility, not just strategy. Highwire's data found that plain text posts had a 19.3% engagement rate which beat images, articles, documents, and video, which came in last at just 3.1%. The lesson isn't "produce less video”, it's that authenticity beats production value, and that's a coaching conversation, not a production budget. A short conversation about how and where a new leader shows up, even if just a single honest post, can shift how a transition lands internally and externally.
Build the succession narrative before the seat is vacant. Because "legacy and succession" content performed best, the firms that come out ahead are the ones who've already been telling that story quietly, through mentorship visibility and internal communications, long before the announcement goes out.
Don't let silence read as instability. In people-driven industries, an absent or awkward transition moment doesn't just underwhelm external audiences, it can rapidly unsettle employees who are watching for signs of direction and stability from their new leader.
The bigger picture
Highwire's framework is written for communications leaders, and as a guide to messaging a transition well, it's a strong one. But a CEO transition announcement isn't the end of a process but actually the opening chapter of a tenure, and increasingly, the opening chapter of that leader's relationship with the workforce. HR functions that claim a seat at that table, rather than leaving the moment entirely to communications teams, have a real opportunity to strengthen both employer brand and internal trust at exactly the point when people are paying closest attention.
About the Author
Sally-Anne is appreciated across her leadership network for her constructive honesty and care. As a senior partner she brings many years of career experience supporting executives in their search for new career challenges, and in their search for high performing talent for their own teams.