Hunter Adams was delighted to host Edinburgh’s latest DisruptHR event on 26th November 2025.
Guests joined Hunter Adams hosts Holly Milne and Jennifer Marnoch at Edinburgh’s impressive SKYBar for an evening of networking and energising five-minute talks, where our fantastic line up of speakers informed and inspired with their chosen topics.
Huge thanks to all of our wonderful speakers, to Lisa Wilson and the team at Vialto Partners for their kind support and sponsorship of the evening’s venue and refreshments, and finally to our guests who took the time to join us for what was a unique and special evening.
Our speaker line-up in full below:
Our thanks to Mallard Productions for once again filming and editing the presentations.
Look out for our next DisruptHR events coming in 2026.
Full transcripts of speaker presentations below:
Cyndi Dodge – Mind the (HR) gap: tea, tribunals and totally different rules
My name is Cindy, and yes, I am an American. Now, Americans have a long, proud history of being disruptive. Some might even here say treasonous. I am here today to spill the tea on some of the many cultural differences that I’ve discovered between the US and the UK in HR.
My friend Winston, who was half American and proud of it, was known to say, “The US and the UK are two nations divided by a common language.” He wasn’t wrong. You say, “Discriminatory.” I say, “Discriminatory.”
Diversity looks very different in the UK than in the US. America is known as the melting pot because every American arrived as an immigrant at some point. This dynamic defines the American experience. I recently went to a UK event about inclusion. Award-winning, apparently. Every single person in the video, white British. The discussion, neurodiversity. Important, yes. Inclusive?
Here in the UK, you can ask job applicants for protected characteristic information, purely for monitoring purposes. Of course, very civilized. In the US, we can’t ask any of that. Not for any reason. Not even politely.
And just recently, the UK rolled out a duty to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment. Welcome to the party. We’ve been doing mandatory interactive training in the US since 2019. And yes, that is as awkward as it sounds. Interactive training is required annually and must include role play, without the fun outfits, scenarios for active discussion, and of course, question time, which looks slightly different here in the UK.
Now, let’s talk employment at-will. Some of my UK colleagues call it the Wild West of HR, a gun-slinging free for all of terminations. Sure, it sounds dramatic, but we don’t actually wear cowboy hats. Well, maybe in Texas, they do. Yes, in theory, an employer can fire you because it’s Tuesday, but you can also quit because it’s Tuesday. It’s a quality through mutual chaos.
Then I discovered the mystery that is consultations. The meetings, the minutes, the scripts, all for a simple conversation. Oh wait, and employees can bring a support person? In the US plus-ones are reserved for weddings and family events. Now don’t get me wrong. I love a good play as much as anyone. But if we need a script to talk to our own employees, we might just be over complicating a heartfelt, “How can I help?”
Now Americans. Americans. We are the worst at switching off. We go on vacation, but we take our laptops along like emotional support animals. You have out of office. We have out of office-ish. After I moved to the UK, I went back to the States for three weeks. Silence. No emails, no calls, no Teams message. I actually thought I’d been fired. It turns out that’s what actual leave is supposed to feel like.
And don’t even get me started on maternity leave. A year off, job protected and mostly paid. In the US, we’re lucky if we can deliver the baby by lunch and get back for the 2:00 PM meeting. No, actually we get six to eight weeks off, so it’s just slightly more than lunch.
And let me get this straight, sick leave. So it’s to actually recover. And the US sick leave comes out of your paid time off bucket, which means it’s just one less day on the beach reading your email. And the leaves. Parental leave, compassionate leave, carers leave, sporting activities leave. I’m still waiting on the leave to plan your next leave. Oh wait, did I miss that one?
Now the holidays. The banks really, really run the show on the holidays. Every holiday is a bank holiday. It’s like the bank said, “We’d like a long weekend.” And the government said, “Say no more.” The holidays are even different across all parts of the UK. It’s like four countries who forgot to sync their Outlook calendars. And then, and then, I learned that you can work a holiday and add it to your annual leave. To an American, that’s basically witchcraft. Now, I love that American holidays have a reason and a purpose. Anywhere from honouring our presidents, most of them, to remembering those who discovered our country. We remember, we reflect, then we barbecue and watch the game.
At the end of the day, it’s all about balance. Neither side has it all figured out, but together we’ve got potential. Now, tomorrow is Thanksgiving in America, so have some turkey, be thankful. Thankful for all of the HR people doing their very best to keep everyone compliant, no matter which side of the pond you’re on. Happy Thanksgiving.
Jack Ramage – Maternity pay: a 32-year-old white man’s unexpected hill to die on
What is the maternity, paternity, or family leave policy? In my opinion, this shouldn’t be a question any prospective candidate has to ask during a recruitment process. Today, I want to make that point to you all by telling you a short story from my role at W&A, a real conversation and situation that genuinely stopped me in my tracks. Now, before I go on, for context, and thank you, Jen, for the kind introduction. I’m Jack, finance recruitment from W&A in Edinburgh. If anyone feels an overwhelming compulsion to boo at this point, then please do. Thank you, [inaudible 00:00:44] and the post, thank you.
So, my story begins, I was working a senior accountant role for a large PSL client in Edinburgh, their process is pretty simple, they send us the JD via an email, and then it’s go, go, go, fastest finger first to the best candidate. No chit-chats, no briefing, no context. So, I was on the phone to one of my top candidates, I was telling her about the business, the role, the people, the package, the usual. She seemed keen. I was about to let her go away and have a think, and then she stopped me to ask one final question, no prizes for guessing what it was.
“Jack, do you happen to know what the maternity policy is?” Now, embarrassingly, my honest answer was, “I’m really sorry, but I actually don’t, but I’m going to go away and find out for you.” So, I came off the phone and it kind of hit me at that moment, one, why don’t I know that? And two, where do I go and find that out without jeopardizing her chances of getting the role, but also any future female candidates that I then submit to the process at that point as well? It was a conundrum. So, round the houses I went. I checked our records, I checked our records again, I asked colleagues, I asked my network, I asked employees not involved in the process that worked for the firm, if they had it in their contract or handbook, it was a total and utter faff, but we did get there in the end.
And do you know what the daft thing was? The maternity policy was actually great. It was a total and utter sell for her, she went forward for the job, but it was completely hidden. That’s when it completely hit me, this is broken. Why was it so hard, and what if I wasn’t there to subtly ask for her, would she have dropped out? Would she have gone forward and wasted everyone’s time by pulling out later, or worse accepted a job that didn’t support her family plans? It’s craziness. In my opinion, this should be super straightforward, or maybe I’m totally daft, or mad, or missing something. So, what did I do at this point? As a self-respecting recruiter, there was only one thing I could do at a critical and groundbreaking moment like this, post on LinkedIn about it. And the response was absolutely mad. There was almost half a million impressions, people messaging me from all over the world, telling me stories, patting me on the back, and actually a fair wack of abuse. Who knew fame came with a price?
And so, I guess we know that it happens, we know it’s an issue, we know that people care a lot about it, so how do we solve it? In my opinion, it’s very, very simple, we make it totally and utterly visible from day zero, not from day one. So, how do we go about doing that? How do we make it visible? We make it visible by putting it in job descriptions, we put it in benefits brochures, we put it in job adverts, we tell our recruitment partners about it, we do job briefings that our recruitment partners can actually ask about it, and we should ask about it by the way, I take full responsibility for it, as many touchpoints as possible, as early as possible.
And who benefits from this? All of us. Candidates win because they get psychological safety, they get dignity, and they get the ability to make informed decisions, which ultimately benefits the whole process. We benefit, recruiters, HR people, because we get better matches, we get smoother processes, and we get far fewer last minute surprises or dropouts. Employers win because transparency strengthens your brand. It attracts better candidates, it proves your culture, and it ultimately helps you keep your best people. And finally, dramatically, society wins. Better supported parents mean better outcomes for children, and those children ultimately become the future workforce we all rely on. So, can candidates find your family leave, maternity, or paternity policy without your intervention? If the answer’s no, then we’ve got work to do. Thank you.
Cat McClay – Why clarity is kindness: setting expectations
Good to go. So thank you, Holly, for the introduction and good evening everyone. Thank you so much for having me here this evening. I want to start with a statement that might sound a little counterintuitive and that is that clarity is kindness. If we think about some of the biggest frustrations that we come across in our workplace, I guarantee that most of them probably don’t come from a place of malice or even incompetence, but more likely as a result of miscommunication or more specifically, unclear expectations. And I think as managers, we can often fear being too clear, thinking it might sound like we’re micromanaging, but I think the opposite is true. And actually clarity is one of the greatest gifts that we can give people in order to succeed. I learned this lesson many years ago, that’s me there, and I want to share with you a story from my childhood.
So let me take you back to when I was about eight years old. It was a crisp autumn day and my dad asked me to rake leaves in the garden. Now my dad was a huge fan of a bonus incentive plan. And as an eight-year old who was super keen to have some pocket money, I was a very willing volunteer, match made in heaven. Now he promised me a generous £1 for every black bin bag that I filled with leaves. So my dad left me to it. I got to work, full of enthusiasm as an eight-year old would. And it didn’t take me long to begin filling up the bags with the leaves. Now, when my dad came back and I was finished, what he saw in the garden littered full of half empty bin bags with just a handful of leaves in each.
You can see where I’m going with this, right? And straight away he turned to me and he said, “These bin bags aren’t full.” To which I said, “You didn’t say how many leaves had to be in the bin bag. You just said you’d give me a pound for each black bag.” Safe to say my dad laughed and he learned two very important lessons that day. Number one, his eight-year-old daughter was right and she’d already outsmarted him, which was a worry for the teenage years ahead. But number two, the importance of setting clear expectations and that lesson really stuck with both of us.
So clarity isn’t about rules, it’s about being fair. If I’d known what the expectation was, if I’d known what good looked like, then I would have done the job properly. And the same thing happens every single day at work. Where there’s any ambiguity, it causes frustration. It then drives mistakes and it leads to a huge amount of wasted effort, time and cost. And I think that people want to do the right thing, but they just need to know what right looks like. And it’s our job to give them the context for them to succeed. Because let’s face it, it not only saves time, obviously cost and energy, but everyone’s half here when they do a great job as well. So how do we shift our mindset then? So if we think about the example with my dad, he could have framed it differently.
He could have said, “Fill the bags until they are tight enough to carry and you can’t possibly fit any more leaves in them.” And that simple clarification wouldn’t really have taken any more time to explain, but it would have ensured a better result. So as HR professionals and as leaders, I think we need to apply this lens. And I think it starts with three simple things. So one, define your success and your expectations. We have to be specific about what we want to achieve because what looks good to me, might not look good to you. Two, measure and support. So how will we measure the outcome? How do we know that it’s been a success? And critically, how will I support that person to succeed? Have they got the tools? Have they got the training? Have they got the skills? Were the expectations aligned? And three, celebrate and recognize. Really, really important.
How will we then celebrate and show others what good looks like? So clarity is a gift that you can give people every day, both in work and out of work. And I think it is a fundamental, cheap, easy, simple tool in your repertoire as a leader. So the next time you are setting an objective, you’re doing a probationary, you’re meeting with a client and think about the leaves and the bin bags. Be specific, be intentional, be clear, make sure expectations are aligned and remember that kindness is often in those details and that actually clarity is kindness at the end of the day. And to close, good question. Did my dad pay out? Yes. I can confirm that he did. He was a man true to his word. He did pay out. I got my pocket money and sadly, he passed away eight years ago, but he was a terrific leader. He was a wonderful coach, mentor. He was my role model. And he used to tell his own teams that story. So I’m sure he’d be thrilled to share it with you all tonight.
Thank you.
Hollie Kelly – Your brain as a business: why slowing down is the smartest thing you’ll ever do
So we talk endlessly in the world of HR about PDPs, about talent pipelines, and about annual performance reviews. We train using LMS systems and we are forever chasing the elusive purpose and alignment. But today I am going to challenge you all and say that we should bin some of these archaic processes and take a little bit of a leaf out of the book of what is five-star flex and luxury hospitality in the UK.
Now, training doesn’t always look like training in hospitality. Sometimes it looks as simple as a housekeeper noticing a teddy bear and popping it on a bed. It could be a receptionist quietly whispering before checking, “The guest in 214 has had a crap day. Let’s try and make it better.” Or maybe it’s a bartender sharing a micro story, “This family of vineyards wine was picked by hand.” That story becomes the experience in itself. Now, none of these moments have come about as a result of an annual performance review delivered across a stale table. I hate to tell you this. They also haven’t come across due to some online e-learning module either. They come through genuine moments of connection, peer-to-peer connection.
Now in HR, we are stuck, absolutely swamped between policies, processes, documents, you name it, we deal with it. And instead, I would be suggesting that we need to start refocusing on building capacity and capability through connection. We do this in HR in hospitality all of the time.
Now, on top of all of these moments, they are essentially driven as a result of our culture in an organization. And I just wanted to touch on a tiny way thing which has been a bit of a pain point recently. Culture is absolutely not a set of values and words that we pop on a wall, it’s not some flashy LinkedIn post, or any kind of town hall or seminar that goes out in the background. Culture is conversation. And they’re conversations which are seeded one tiny piece at a time. And we all know when teams feel deeply aligned with an organization’s purpose and they feel like they fit. That is when exceptional performance arrives.
So for exceptional performance to happen, it’s not accidental. High performance happens when people have capacity. And how do we create capacity in our organizations? Well, we slow things down. And thinking on you guys as an audience, I’d like to challenge you and say, when was the last time you actually gifted your team with the ability to step back from red work and move into blue work? When did you give them that chance to collaborate?
Well, Google, they do this all the time. They’ve actually created what they call casual collision spaces, opportunities for people to connect in the corridor. And we’re talking about billion-dollar ideas and concepts. If it’s good enough for Google, it’s probably good enough for us. And what about white space? So we talk lots about white space, this beautiful little space of time where we can connect, we can collaborate, we can ideate, we can do all of these things. But again, when was the last time that you slowed down and actually used it? Well, I have an idea. I think that we could come up with a concept called the One Table Learning Loop. It’s something we use in hospitality all the time. Now, you don’t have to have a physical one table. It’s more of a metaphor. But the important part of that idea is that it’s learning that doesn’t happen via a checkbox. It’s not something that happens in a six-month review, where quite frankly, we pretend to try and remember what somebody did in March.
It’s agile learning. It’s peer-to-peer conversations. And the best bit about all of this, you create the table, you decide what happens around it. So at my table, well, what do we do? My table looks like a space for bringing people together. It’s a place where we can share problems, we can talk about solutions, we can collaborate, and we can innovate. Really importantly, it’s an opportunity for you to shape what that looks like. Hello, talent webs; goodbye, talent pipelines.
Now, I suppose this is a great opportunity for you all to think about what your table looks like. You might not have that table in your organization. If you don’t, I would encourage you to build it. If you do, please use it and protect it. And if you have the same voices at the table all the time, change it. So my one challenge for you all today would be, and the real challenge really is to slow down. Culture lives in those slow moments. Real learning and capability creation happens in connection. So my challenge for y’all is to set the table. This is our job as HR. You set the table. And if you are very lucky, you might just get an exceptional bartender who tells you a great story about wine. Thank you.
Shona Wylie – Fear kills teams
Yep, so when you’re on holiday, do you ever see these little fireflies flash on and off? Well, did you know that these fireflies, they light up in synchronicity, but they only do that when they feel safe to do so. Actually, they go dark if they sense any fear or any danger. And teams are really a bit like that. Teams will shine when they feel safe to do so, but they’ll go dark and they’ll stay quiet if they sense any fear.
So, audience participation now. Hands up. Who has held back an idea, maybe an opinion or a mistake, because they don’t know how the boss is going to react? Hands up. Yeah, we’ve all been there, that horrible feeling of I want to say something, but I’m actually not going to say it. No way, I’m not going to say that. So fear kills teams, and it’s where it doesn’t always start with bad intentions.
What happened to me was I stepped into a HR team a number of years ago really struggling. So there was lots of pressure from all sides of the business. There was new ways of working. The team were not really getting on, so there was lots of stress. And the HR services manager knocked on my door and came into my office, and she looked nervous. I said, “Sit down.” She said, “I’ve got a massive problem. There’s a serious issue that we’ve not paid the pension fund for six months.” That was my reaction. I was like, “What?”
So before I even thought about it, I was like this. “What are we doing?” And the big question I asked was, “Who’s to blame?” So of course, tears came into her eyes. She started to cry and she left my office. I then thought, what have I just done? I know about this stuff. I know how to set an environment, but I’ve just given her the ideal opportunity never to come to me again with some bad news because that’s how I reacted.
So it’s more likely that your reactions are actually chipped away in these small moments, not in these big emotional moments like I had. It’s your tone. It’s your expressions. It’s maybe just your day-to-day interactions with your team. And people don’t just go quiet because that’s who they are. It’s because something’s maybe happened to them in the past. And they’ll hold back concerns, they’ll hold back their ideas, but also they might hold back some truths. That’s the real cost of psychological safety and low psychological safety. What are you missing when you’re not hearing voices in your teams? What ideas are you missing? What areas of improvement are you missing? What innovative ideas are you missing? So have a think about your own teams, what’s not being said.
Now, I want to flip the story. I worked in an HR team that was supporting a senior leader, and he asked me along to say, “I’m really struggling. I’ve had the lowest leadership engagement scores for two years now.” So he was frustrated. He says, “I’ve even asked every single one of my team, ‘Did you score me low?'” I was like, “You did what?” I says, “What was the reaction?” He said, “They all said it wasn’t me.” I said, “Okay, let me talk to you about psychological safety now.” So I spoke about it and said, “Listen, you need to understand this concept. They don’t feel like they can trust to really tell you the truth.”
So I introduced him to the Fearless Organization Scan, which is a tool you can use to measure psychological safety in teams. He agreed to it. And we did some work at his, just before his strategy days, we were away offsite. And initially he was like, “This is a bit soft and fluffy, Shauna. We’re not really getting to that. They’re not really telling me what is really wrong.” I says, “Just wait.”
So as the day went on, we opened up and people started really being really honest why they were feeling like they couldn’t speak up. Two days later, he phoned me to say, “We’ve just finished our strategy days. What was the magic dust that was just sprinkled? Because we’ve just had the best strategy session ever.” So I says, “It’s not magic dust. This is just what you do when you start creating that environment where there’s really good psychological safety.”
So psychological safety, like I said before, isn’t shaped in these big emotional moments. They’re shaped in these small ones. Just this week, somebody will come to you and they will watch you every single time and take note about how you react to them. So in that split second, you get to choose your reaction. Just think about it. When you leave tonight, I want you to think about the fireflies. I want you to think about when the environment is safe, they light up, but when there’s fear, they go dark.
Lisa Wilson – Life’s a beach (but not when you work in HR)
Thank you. Welcome. So today we’re going to talk about why it feels like everyone’s living their best beach life, unless you work in HR where you feel like you’re actually the lifeguard.
So March 2020 flipped the world of work upside down. Employees discovered they could do their work well at home. Employers loved not paying the office costs. HR realized that not everyone was staying at home. So remote work brought freedom. Work from the beach, work from ballet. The turn lines, they didn’t lie. The employer benefits, great. Flexibility meant an increase in productivity. Real estate savings. It became a real tool to attract and retain talent.
HR, however, they realized that Zoom backgrounds were quickly becoming the new fake ID. So remote work can be summed up really simply with the three traffic lights. Green, you’re staying at home with the country you’re employed by. Tick. Amber, you’re going on a work vacation, taking your laptop to extend your holiday. Red, you’ve moved abroad. Surprise to HR. Red is where HR’s heart rate starts to increase a little bit there.
So that innocent hybrid policy you’ve put in place to work three days in the office, two days from anywhere. Okay, but where is that two days anywhere? Maybe starts at the sofa. Maybe go to Starbucks. One of your employees says, “I would love to work from my home in Paris for two days a week.” Brilliant. HR thinks oh my gosh, this is going to be an absolute nightmare. Suddenly, HR is having to Google. “What happens when I employ my UK person in France?” Spoiler, nothing good.
So HR suddenly have to Google tax, social security, payroll. Tax is one thing. UK social security is 15% for employers. For France, that could be an up to 45% contribution. So that nice two days a week has quickly turned in a huge cost for the employer. HR is suddenly Googling what the France is a double taxation agreement. HR suddenly has to become an expert on French payroll, French law, French everything.
Governments have responded to this. Some are saying, “Digital nomads, welcome. Come here, spend your money.” Others are saying, “Okay, great. Come and work here, but you must pay here.” Suddenly, HR is becoming immigration advisor, tax advisor, payroll advisor, border control, all because somebody fancied some croissants from their two days a week at home.
Policy, what are the best policies? If you have none, it will be complete chaos. If you have a strict policy, you’ll just have secret chaos. People will still work remotely. They’ll actually just stop asking you. So what companies are getting it right? The ones that have got guardrails, simple day counts, countries that you can and you cannot work from, and actually think about if their roles can be done remotely as well. If you’re going to approve by exception, define what an exception is because if you don’t, everyone’s an exception and everyone needs to be approved.
So who are the winners in this space? Companies that have got a clear policy with quick approvals, no long soul-destroying PDF paperwork. You also need to think about your management team as well. HR are already having to think about tax, payroll, and social security. As if that’s not actually enough, you need to think about if they have the right to work. You need to think about IT security. Does it work for the client? Does it actually work for your wider team? So if you’ve got one employee that gets their remote work approved, what about that person that you’ve declined? Could you be opening yourself up to a discrimination case? So be careful that remote work doesn’t cause you sunburn.
In summary, remote work can be a really good tool to attract and retain talent, but you must know where they are. So what if that two days that you’ve approved is suddenly turned into two months? Remote work really needs a simple, clear policy. HR needs some visibility. And if you are going to let people work from anywhere, please make sure you’re not accidentally employing from everywhere. So thank you. And if you are listening to this remotely, please let HR know where you are. Thank you.
Catriona Aldridge – When the customer isn’t always right: the future of respect at work
Okay, so in the early 2000s, I worked as a waitress between university terms. I was not a natural. On one shift, I ended up in A&E, having poured chicken gravy down my leg. But there was a mantra from the training from that early job that always stuck with me. The customer is always right. And you can understand the business rationale behind that slogan, which in producing this talk I learned was developed by retailers like Henry Selfridge. When your business depends on customers parting with their hard-earned cash, it’s a sensible strategy to put them at the centre of everything.
But of course, the customer can’t always be right. Over the years, there have been a number of stark examples of workers being the subject of poor behaviour by customers and clients. Think the 2018 Presidents Dinner scandal. And of course, cultural attitudes to this type of behaviour have changed. Employers have acknowledged that their employees deserve to work in a safe environment. But as things stand, if a worker is harassed by a third party, so anyone other than a fellow employee, they can raise a grievance, they can potentially resign and claim constructive dismissal, but otherwise they quickly reach a dead end.
But that is set to change under the Employment Rights Bill, which provides that an employer can be liable if their worker is harassed by a third party in the course of their employment and the employer has failed to take all reasonable steps to prevent it. So when I say harassment, that’s harassment using the well-known Equality Act definition rather than any other type of discrimination. And the protection extends to the usual protected characteristics applicable in harassment cases, so age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion, or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
But you can see the tension here. What if a junior colleague complains about the behaviour of one of your highest-spending clients at a work function? What if a contractor supplies by a key supplier makes a racist remark about one of your employees? Doing nothing becomes a legal and reputational risk, but will the business be willing to ask that high-spending client to leave the event, for example? Remember, this issue applies to all sectors as a third party could be a client, customer, contractor, member of the public. And there are other balancing acts to contend with, so customers and service users themselves are protected from discrimination by a service provider under the Equality Act. And employers might believe that they’re doing the right thing by backing their staff, but may in fact be opening themselves up to other challenges.
The new law will likely take effect from October 2026. One instant of harassment will be enough for a claim to be brought straight out of the starting blocks, and that’s different to the old law when liability was triggered on the third incident of harassment. Under the new law, an employer will be judged to have permitted harassment of an employee by a third party if it fails to take all reasonable steps. So employers will need to be proactive as well as reactive, and that means different things for different sectors. Professional services might focus on contractual clauses requiring clients and suppliers to adhere to their values. Healthcare and retail might focus on staff empowerment. But reasonable steps are going to cause business tensions in themselves.
So for example, business leaders point out that no one wants to arrive at their venue of choice, just to be confronted with a sign that suggests that you are going to behave badly. But if there’s no sign, has the employer failed to take all reasonable steps? And training will play its part in employers meeting their obligations. So teaching that client service is important will need to be balanced with making it clear that if a client crosses the line, employees should report it and not be victimized for doing so.
So the challenge for HR is to cut through these tensions and bring stakeholders together to find the right way forward, including potentially working with the employer of the third party. So can you convince the business that this is not just another liability? To achieve this, I would say you need to approach it as part of the wider workplace transition to a place of tolerance, and that’s consistent with the approach that the courts are taking on clash of rights generally, weighing, for example, trans rights with gender critical views, with the overarching message being one of tolerance. And that’s going to involve reframing service values around mutual respect, not customer or client dominance. You’ll need managers to help call out and challenge inappropriate client behaviour.
The change of law can be helpful here. It becomes a compliance issue, which does, in my experience, help push these things up the agenda. But the organizations who will be most successful here will be those who recognize that it’s something much bigger. It’s an issue of culture and reputation, and those who are most successful will be those who recognize that the customer-is-always-right era is ending. Respect is non-negotiable, whoever you are.
Claire Tocher – Fear is the mind killer
It’s kind of an intense title, Fear is the mind killer, and sorry Sean, I feel like I’m jumping a little bit on your topic earlier. As Holly mentioned, I am massively involved in power lifting. I’ve been involved for nearly a decade now. And as much as I wish I could tell you as an HR person, the things I’ve learned about resilience and mindset and building psychological safety have come from being in great HR teams, and some of it has been, most of what I’ve learned about those things has come from a decade in a sport that’s somehow both individually challenging, but also creates an amazing community that’s supportive and helps people overcome incredible fears.
Fear absolutely is the mind killer. It has a huge amount of power over us as individuals. It’s that kind of little voice in the back of your head, still to this day, 10 years later, whether it’s a club competition or an international saying, “Claire, this is literally how people end up on YouTube gym fails. Your spine is not ready for whatever you’re about to do.” And I see it all the time in new lifters as they come into our community looking to build their strength, their physical strength, their mental strength. And you know straight away as they walk onto the platform before they’ve even touched the bar, if they’re going to get that lift because the fear is written all over their face.
And we see this in our businesses. We see this in our teams. Walking into a boardroom for the first time as the only female, for example, walking in as the person with the least amount of experience, suddenly being asked to talk about the P&L when you’ve just had to ChatGPT what that was like five minutes previously. Fear is very, very real. And there’s a lovely part of this quote which says, “I will allow the fear to embrace me. I will overcome it. It will pass through me.” And that’s a beautiful, poetic way of saying it. The reality is it’s adrenaline. It’s that sick feeling in your stomach. It’s that sleepless night before you’re coming to the Sky Bar to talk to a room full of peers and colleagues.
And my experience has been from that sport and I guess in boardrooms, that actually the reality of how we can face into that fear is, not pretend it’s not going to exist, don’t pretend you are fearless. You have to be afraid of what is possible. Otherwise, where’s the excitement? That fear is your body telling you that you’re about to do something that really matters for you, for your team, for your organization, for your family, whoever it is.
And so for me, the real tool has been one word, and that word has been yes. Saying yes to things that make you feel uncomfortable is so, so powerful. Being intentional about putting yourself in those uncomfortable positions, being okay with the feeling of fear, accepting it’s going to be there as it was as I was pacing around the back of the room there just as Catriona was speaking, but pushing on anyway. And as HR and as leaders in our organizations, role modeling that for your teams, for your businesses, for your leadership team is so important. And again, I see this all the time in power lifting. Seeing somebody else be brave, seeing somebody else make themselves uncomfortable is empowering for others. Seeing someone try and not being afraid to fail or being afraid to fail, but doing it anyway is incredibly powerful.
So I guess my challenge to this group would be, if you go back to your businesses tomorrow, you go back to your leadership teams, you go back to your HR teams, what can you say yes to that you have been holding yourself back? If you want to make the exact same call, what are you saying no to today that could unlock loads of opportunity for you? What’s holding your team back? How can you help your team and your management team to say yes to new things? Because that in itself will build momentum, small incremental steps. Every rep in the gym, every failed lift on a platform, of which there have been many, all of these small incremental yeses will build incredible momentum. And that is what helps people to lean in, to keep turning up, to feel safe to try, and it’s such a powerful tool.
It is a commitment to action. It’s just putting yourself out there, accepting the fear is going to be there, make it your best friend. Maybe not best friend, kind of semi-friend, I think, but making sure that you are comfortable with yourself. Fear is so limiting, but the simple word of yes is incredibly liberating. And if push comes to shove, at least you’re not standing in front of people with a singlet, which is one of the most unflattering sports kit known to man. Thank you very much.
Stranger to Leader – climbing HR’s ladder with an accent
Today, I will be sharing my personal story of climbing HR ladder with, as you have probably established by now, an accent. You will see throughout my presentation famous Polish quotes translated into English. I came to Scotland from Poland 20 years ago, straight after uni. I had two degrees under my belt and I was ready for my first executive appointment. It didn’t work that way. There are a few Pols in the UK now. I would imagine that most of you probably have or had someone Polish in your circle. I think it’s fair to say that we are described as direct. I’m probably direct even for Polish standards, not Sheldon Cooper kind of direct, but somewhere in the middle.
I remember early in my career, my manager pulled me aside after a meeting with senior HR leaders and she asked me if I was okay because I looked a little bit disengaged. I said, “Well, yeah, I’m okay. I was disengaged because the woman was talking rubbish.” This manager later on gave me all the development opportunities that got me where I am today. My directness isn’t about ego. It’s about integrity. Over time, I realized that authenticity, not adaptation was my biggest strength. People didn’t follow me because I sounded like them. They followed me because they trusted me to say what I needed to say and doing what I said I would. I was going to be an accountant and I’m fully expecting CIMA to approach me at some point in my life to thank me for not pursuing my career in accounting. Like some of you, I fell into HR and I enjoyed every day since.
Let’s talk a little bit now about leadership, authenticity, integrity and courage. They say you lost the person when they become silent. I agree with that. When I’m bothered to have a conversation, it means that I still care. Does it sound familiar? Some of the conversations that you might have had with senior leaders or CEOs, given 90% of FTSE 100 CEOs are still male. How many of you have you experienced Donald Trump kind of leader? Did you have a courage to challenge them? When I get quiet, I know it’s a signal for me to move on. At that point where I feel I have done what I could and I said what needed to be said, it’s time to let them. Have you read the book? Focus on let me.
HR is not for everyone and not everyone will be good at it. If you want to go with the flow, don’t like the challenge or don’t like to challenge other people, self-preservation is more important than doing the right thing then, you will struggle in HR leadership or you will struggle to do it right. My career didn’t progress because I played it safe. It progressed because I took risk. The kind that make your heart race a little. You can hope something will happen for you or you can make it happen for yourself. I love the saying, “Confidence doesn’t confess. Courage does.” You only become confident once you have done something over and over again, but you need the courage to do it the first time. I sometimes do talks for HR students and I always tell them, “Go for it. If you get an opportunity, whatever it is, just go for it.”
If you don’t know how to do it, ChatGPT it, make it up, figure it out along the way. I mean, we work in HR. We don’t operate on open hearts. What’s the worst that can happen? For senior colleagues, take every opportunity to do the right thing. Call apples, apples. Tell the leaders they are wrong when they are wrong. Stand up for what you believe in. Make a difference. Be more Polish. If your Polishness doesn’t work and you get fired, please reach out to Hunter Adams. They’ve got brilliant recruitment team that will help you find another job.
Jane-Emma Peerless – Embracing difficult conversations
Right. So I am going to make a case tonight. I’m going to make a case for embracing difficult conversations and why we as HR leaders need to do it. I’m going to set the-
I’ve been called a bitch quite a few times in my career. I’ve been shouted at, I have been sworn at, and I have a nasty tendency to make people cry when I talk to them about something meaningful. And that’s good. That’s good because our people, we need to be having those kind of conversations. Those are the reactions we need because people are not okay. There is a global pandemic in mental wellbeing decline. And we are also living in an age of unprecedented instability. We have five generations working together at the same time, we have AIs disrupting our future, we don’t actually know where we’re working anymore. And people crave certainty and it’s the one thing we cannot give them.
And worse than that, our staff don’t trust us. Now business is the most trusted institution in the world, way above politics, way above media, and yet half of frontline staff do not trust their companies.
Why? Because we lie. We lie all the time. We lie to each other, we lie to them. We lie when we write the job description, we lie at interviews. We say a job is permanent and we can’t guarantee that. And we lie out of kindness and also to avoid confrontation.
And yet survey after survey globally tells us that the one thing that drives retention and engagement above everything else is trust. Way above career progression, way above workplace, everything. And yet we ignore it.
So what is the opportunity here? And I believe there is an opportunity. It’s I think we as HR professionals need to restore trust by embracing those difficult, awkward, tough conversations.
Remember that one conversation can change a life. It can change everything. And I can think of at least 29 reasons to have a conversation on work issues alone that probably annoy everybody in this room. If you add personal issues on top of that, if you add conversations you probably need to be having with the CEO, then actually that list will probably double.
So how do we do this?
Well, I think the first thing we must do in order to be successful is to create some space. We’ve got to create the space to allow people to be listened to and to be heard. And we need to step outside of the jet stream of working life and slow everything down. That’s something that’s come up before. We need to slow everything down.
How?
Well, there is lots of advice out there, and everybody loves a framework. But I would say there are just four principles that we all need to remember. And it’s what I call the Holy M.O.L.Y.
I came up with this myself, by the way.
First of all, we must move towards the conflict, not away from it. We must have difficult conversations with people. We must say, “I need to have a difficult conversation with you,” or, “I need to tell you something and you probably won’t like it,” “We need to have a chat about something a bit awkward.” And remember that one chat can change someone’s life. One conversation can be transformational.
So get straight to the point, present your reasoning, be factual, state the case, state the impact it’s having, and then one very simple question; ask what’s going on. And then all you have to do is listen. Listen deeply with everything in your fiber, every fiber of your body. Listen to the words they’re saying, listen to the way they’re saying them. Listen to what is not being said, but still being communicated, and read the body language.
And remember, your job is not to fix, not to rescue. I mean, you might have to fix a few things, but actually it is to be there, to listen and be present. So keep your voice warm and keep it low.
“Ah,” you might say, “Well, what about the worst conversation of all encoded in law, conversations about redundancy?” I would say these are the best conversations to have. We went through a process last year and we publicly told the company where we had completely cocked up and it wasn’t going to be an easy process, and we reset trust in the organization.
So we want happy cultures, we want happy people, but avoiding difficult conversations doesn’t protect people, it exposes them. And it’s up to us because we are the glue that binds everybody together. We know that senior leaders will do everything to avoid having a difficult conversation, so I’m afraid it does fall to us.
And remember, no single conversation is guaranteed to transform a company, a relationship, a life, but a single conversation can. So if not you, then who?
Thank you.
Gillian McMichael – The great return: from doing to being
So as you know, I’m Gillian McMichael and my topic today is the great return from doing to being. There’s a pause for a reason. So think about this. When was the last time that you were just being at work, not doing? Think about how we go about our day. You’re all professionals. You’re busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. But when was the last time you stopped doing, you stopped fixing, not rushing, just being? When? Most of us can’t remember the last time because we are constantly doing all the time. Our workplace is now worship doing. And if we’re not doing, then what are we doing? So instead we were busy like a badge of honour. We own it, we love it. We cherish the fact that, my God, I’m so busy. But actually that doesn’t really work for us all the time. And it doesn’t work for our teams either.
So we measure worth by output, not necessarily by presence. What do we think of that? And somewhere along the way, like me, I’m sure you two have done, is we forget how to be human. Humane, respectful, considerate. Because all this doing leads to one thing. It has a cost. Burnout. Exhaustion, disconnection, emptiness, lost. Who am I? I don’t know. Because I’m too busy doing, I can’t remember who I am. And our leaders are exhausted.
We’ve heard it so many times today already. Teams are disengaged and more than anything else, cultures I believe are sleepwalking, sleepwalking through their day. And we’ve become human doings, not human beings. And that makes me feel quite sad. Somebody who works with leaders and executives all the time, you see them dazed and confused. And when I do work with leaders and executives or any other employees when I’m coaching them, I will ask, who are you when you’re not performing? And I’d like you to ponder on that thought because that question stops everybody in their tracks because the mic is always on and most people don’t know.
So do you know who you are when you’re not performing? But what if the next frontier of leadership, of organizational culture, isn’t more doing? It’s more being. Can you imagine what that would be? Being present more of the time, if not all the time. Being real, being connected in a way that makes us human. I think that’s important. So when we be, we’ve talked already about we listen differently, we create space, we connect with others, we understand, and we lead differently. Equally, we live differently. And I believe as HR professionals, it is our job to actually take the lead on this and take action in a way that will create this return back to wholeness.
We are responsible, I believe, for creating cultures that value the pause equally as much as productivity, presence as much as performance. And I think we’ve lost our way because being isn’t passive. Just like Brene Brown talks about vulnerability, it is powerful. It is empowering. It isn’t passive. So when we learn to be, what we do transforms. It could be just that little micro moment that makes the big shift, the big transformation. And maybe the greatest disruption to HR is this, quite simply put, is the courage, again, that word, courage to pause, to stop doing and to start being. Because doing built our workplace, but being will make it whole again. Absolutely guaranteed. Thank you.
Tsvetelina Hinova – Turning cynics into champions
We all know appreciation can lift performance and trust. Yet every team has a cynic who gives it a big cross. Today, we meet two and watch them turn. First up is Sarah. In a conversation with Sarah, I ask her what she thinks about recognition and appreciation, and I’m excited. This is my favourite topic, well after F1. But then she slays me with one word, pointless. My first instinct is to run. Her loss, right? But then I remember I have to be a grownup and I lean in. When there’s disbelief, there’s normally a reason for it. So I asked Sarah, when did it last feel real? When did it feel hollow? When did it last land? And then I zip it. Despite loving the sound of my own voice, listening actually lower Sarah’s guard. She tells me about a past program. It was theatre, a tick box to stay in HR’s good books.
It taught her to distrust the whole idea of appreciation. She never wanted that again. Now, if you leave the story here, you risk it spreading across your whole organization. One person’s disbelief becomes the team’s default. Ignore it, and the fire spreads. Tackle it, and you might just have time to save your culture. So we dig deeper. Sarah tells us that public praise feels like karaoke to an introvert to her. She prefers private thanks from her peers who sees the workup close, and then I get the light bulb in the head. I now know what to do. No stage, no leaderboard. We designed private notes of thanks from her peers about a past project and why it mattered. It’s delivered quickly, and it’s specifically built for her. It lands because it’s personalized and from the right people. Sarah’s armour starts to loosen up. Her behaviour changes, and her disbeliefs shift.
A week later, she thanks a QA for a save during a recent project. She passes it forward. Her story starts to travel, but this time in favour of appreciation. Momentum shifts when you feel it for yourself. What’s the learning here? Well, be a grown-up. Ask the question. Be ready for the answer and act on it, and match the momentum to the person. Don’t let one fire burn your whole organization. So this was a human side. Next up is the numbers. This was me four years ago. Meet Alex. Alex is great, just allergic to fluff.
If something moves the needle he’s all for it, and if not, “next please”. So Alex tells me, “I don’t have time for appreciation. I need NPS up in support, sales up by 20, first-year retention improvement. How is appreciation going to help me with any of that?” And then I hit him with the stats. Happier teams serve better, which increase customer ratings and profitability. When people feel valued and seen, their service improves, their loyalty rises, and revenue follows. Appreciated people are 36% more productive. So next time, show your sales team all the amazing things they do well and watch their confidence rises, activity improves, and quality sharpens. Did you know that one-point increase in employee engagement can actually increase your MPS by 1.5? So start appreciating your support team, the big wins, the small wins, the everything in between, and watch this being passed on to your customers. And lastly, it costs six to nine months of salary to replace an employee, yet 45% are less likely to leave if they feel appreciated and valued.
It’s really simple math, so start saying thank you. Now, I know all of that might sound really obvious. Yet, how often do we share the right appreciation regularly to the right people? No praise. Real thanks for real work. The habit of appreciation is your strategy. Two takeaways from today. First one is, ask the questions and match the medium to the person. And the second one, align your thanks to your goals and share your thanks regularly. Don’t let one story of cynicism define your culture.
