© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ert.20159 No one doubts that the bar has been raised on human resources. The HR profession began with HR professionals focusing on terms and conditions of work so that employees would feel fairly treated. Today, the business world faces enormous change, and HR professionals must do more than manage employee terms and conditions. As the bar has been raised on HR, some lament that HR professionals cannot meet these higher expectations, and HR should be discounted or downsized and its functions automated or outsourced. We believe that instead of denigrating HR, we should upgrade HR professionals and HR departments to meet the challenges that confront contemporary organizations. To respond to the raised bar, we propose how HR professionals can respond to increased challenges. We begin with a brief synopsis of the business context that raises new expectations of HR, and then we report the results of our research, on over 10,000 respondents around the world, that defines what HR professionals must know and do to deliver value.