How HR Leaders Change the World

Akhona joins us with a recent promotion from Chief People Officer to General Manager at KFC Africa, showing the trend in people leaders moving to the top job continues its momentum.    Sharing her strategies to empower women and achieve gender parity, Akhona describes the incredible results from programmes such as 'Women on the Move' and 'Shine', and speaks about her aspiration for representation...

Mary describes her experiences in building inclusion across sectors, from television to technology. Discussing the links between inclusion, commerciality and ESG, Mary describes why the work, and measuring its outcomes, is important to investors and customers – alongside employees. Sharing her personal connection to neurodiversity, Mary provides thoughts on how to ensure a neurodiverse colleague t...

Emma shares her approach to people strategy as a business design principle, providing an example that brings together business objectives, employee focus, community impact and sustainability, with the example of creating a new office in Cardiff. From hybrid working to the impact for the city, Emma explains how a commercial approach is a key part of being an HR Leader. Emma describes her passions f...

In this special episode to mark International Women's Day, hear Erin Brockovich's keynote at How HR Leaders Change the World- Live!, "Being bold in the corporate world – personal empowerment and persistence". Erin was so passionate and inspiring she moved the room to tears! Erin assumes you've seen the film, and goes behind the scenes to her upbringing, her family and her relationships to explain...

Celebrating International Women's Day and the 2023 theme, #EmbraceEquity, Vanessa shares the steps in her career that led her to create WeAreTheCity – which helps progress female careers. Suggesting ways that can best advance gender balance and inclusion at work, Vanessa recommends considering an equity (rather than equality) model and a focus on sponsorship - describing what best practice sponsor...

Stephane describes both small actions in creating opportunity for colleagues and his approach to leading change at scale.  Sharing the example of the Listening Circle at L'Oreal, Stephane explains why a deep willingness to listen and understand is a fundamental starting point to creating a culture of belonging, and reflects on the emotions involved.  Discussing the posture we choose at work, how t...

In this special episode Cecilia shares cutting edge initiatives that are enhancing family friendly culture in the workplace. Covering the 5 key trends in From Babies with Love's 2023 Guide, Cecilia summarises the latest policy and practice on gender inclusive leave, fertility, neonatal, pregnancy loss and baby loss leave, in recognising returning to work and in grandparents at work.  With insightf...

Mary shares her experience in how to support business leaders to lead differently, and the changes she has seen in what's required of successful leaders today. Considering changes in working practices and culture, Mary advocates that HR must be intentional in designing the spaces in which we work, to ensure they contribute to talent strategy, and reflect company culture and values. Explaining why...

Leila advocates for the importance of intersectionality in diversity and inclusion, describes the ten facets of diversity analysed in the DIAL Diversity Review, and shares examples of how they map to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Discussing the work of DIAL Global, Leila considers how DE&I is an incredible lever for businesses to grow profit and at the same time have positive impact...

Stephen describes the role of culture in the transformation that has taken place at Panasonic Automotive over recent years. Summarising before and after metrics, Stephen openly shares successes and learnings along the way. Sharing the benefits of building transparency in an organisation, Stephen describes his approach, and examples of how a transparent culture has helped identify and address oppor...

Noting the shift in the role of HR in business leadership, Anabel provides thoughts on how to reinforce the importance of HR's role, including the relationship with the CEO and adding value for all C-Suite leaders. Anabel shares her approach to sustainability as part of people and business strategies, and shares her passion for impact as a driver for career development, explaining how individual p...

Sharing his experience at First Bus and Royal Mail, Kevin introduces the modernisation strategies he has and is helping lead. Describing people strategy in the context of decarbonisation objectives, Kevin gives example initiatives such as considering colleagues' commutes to work to repurposing legacy assets in ways that benefit employees and communities. Kevin provides thoughts on diversity, high...

Steve shares his approach to life and work, based on the concept of flourishing. Describing what this looks like, Steve summarises elements that contribute to a culture where everyone flourishes, and what the human and business benefits are. From preventing illness to promoting wellness, Steve provides steps and questions you can ask of your organisation to help create culture that supports mental...

Elaine advocates that to win a business case and create change, we need to win hearts and minds, and to do this, we must give a bit of ourselves. Starting with cataloguing your life and what you've learned along the way, Elaine describes how to adopt this approach and how it can help you achieve your goals. Discussing the momentum in creating representation in the workplace, using your sphere of i...

Karen discusses her experience in transforming culture to connect colleagues with business purpose and their wider societal impacts. Sharing her experience at Capital One, Karen describes the emotional impacts for customers and employees, and how by understanding emotion employees helped transform the lives of customers. Advocating both the colleague and commercial benefits of vulnerability in the...

In this episode host Cecilia Crossley summarises the discussions from our recent conference, How HR Leaders Change the World – Live! From UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 Good Health & Wellbeing to SDG11 Sustainable Cities & Communities, plus all the environmental goals, Cecilia recaps the examples the CHRO panellists provided at the conference – showcasing how commercial, strategic, HR work is a...

Natalia discusses the impact HR creates by empowering people; how many small actions by HR support people to achieve their dreams. Natalia describes Ahold Delhaize's moto, "Open for Everyone" and the culture this drives for both customers and employees, and shares examples that are having significant impact in achieving inclusion goals, such as training in Inclusive Leadership and Business Resourc...

Gian shares the personal experiences that led him to create TLC Lions; with the goal to create a more human working world. Explaining why storytelling can be one of your greatest strengths, Gian describes the first steps you can take to create a culture where colleagues share and harness the power of their stories. Advocating for the power of listening, and the need to enhance training in listenin...

Passionate about gender balance and inclusion, Asma shares initiatives that build opportunities for both customers and employees. Harnessing the power of commerce to create positive change, Asma describes her leadership role in a business growth strategy that also developed opportunities for women in rural areas, contributing to SDG5, gender equality, amongst others. Asma calls on everyone in HR t...

Carolanne describes examples of key shifts she helped create for inclusion at work, including enhancing parental leave, designing a return-to-work programme, and working with health insurance providers to support transgender colleagues. Providing a step-by-step calculation to help secure sign off for equalising parental leave, Carolanne shares how this worked, alongside sentiment analysis. Carolan...

Yetunde shares what leadership means to her, focussing on the notion of love, and results. Reflecting on her long career and portfolio of experience, Yetunde describes her response to the murder of George Floyd and setting up Solaris, and how she views the opportunity for HR to create a human-centred workplace and bring justice through the world of work. Yetunde provides a step-by-step plan for ho...

Orlagh describes her experience in responding to the financial crash in 2008, and how her learning, sharing in particular the importance of clear anchors, is helping her lead her organisation through current shocks society. Discussing the shift to hybrid working Orlagh advocates measuring performance on outcomes and describes the benefits of team charters, and using them for cross team collaborati...

Saskia describes Henkel's drive for gender parity, discussing activities across the employee lifecycle that, working together with the whole business of over 50,000 colleagues, contribute to creating change. Providing the examples of role modelling and influencing, Saskia discusses laying aside competitive behaviours, the power of working together and tips for best practice. Saskia shares her long...

In this special episode we take a look at examples of how HR delivers the E, the S and the G in ESG. It's brilliant to see the momentum in linking how your commercial HR work is also driving ESG results, and contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. So, we selected a few examples from a handful of CHROs' episodes, and we connect the dots. We only scratch the surface of the topics and c...

Discussing that the role of HR leaders is as a powerful catalyst for others creating change, Elly shares her views on how the culmination of small changes over many years creates tectonic shifts in approaches to people and business. Elly also shares her personal passion for understanding of race and ethnicity in society, and a wonderfully simple one line to summarise her approach to inclusion. Hig...