We Need to Talk About...

Maria Dinu, fractional HR and culture expert, joins Louise for a fascinating conversation about why most transformation projects fail - and the surprisingly small tipping point that makes them succeed. Drawing on twenty years of experience including leading culture at the Coca-Cola Company, Maria explains why you only need 25% of your people to genuinely adopt a change before it starts to ripple o...

Emma Redfern, ER and Change Lead at Leeds Building Society, joins Felix to talk about what it takes to prepare a workforce for transformation before the restructure lands on their desk. Three months into a new role with a brand new exec team and a major digital transformation underway, Emma shares why pre-deployment beats redeployment, how Leeds is launching a skills fest to shift towards a skills...

Lucile Flamand, partner at Perfect Rebel, joins Felix to challenge the idea that culture is something that just happens. Drawing on a career spent redesigning organisations alongside technology, Lucile makes the case that culture is the single biggest driver of high performance - and that without psychological safety, leadership alignment, and real clarity, most AI transformations are dead on arri...

Eve-Lynn Ansley, People Director at UCC Coffee, joins Louise to talk about what she found when she walked into an HR team that sat behind a closed door, never spoke to each other, and was only ever approached with complaints. From ripping directors out of their private offices to creating an environment where making mistakes is encouraged, Evelyn shares how she transformed the function from the in...

Louise Rogerson, CPO at law firm DWF, joins Felix to talk about what happens when a legal business goes from LLP to publicly traded to private equity backed - and what that means for the people function. Louise shares how she's transforming management capability in a profession that was never designed for it, why her team has seen an 80% year-on-year increase in grievances and a 100% increase...

Stuart Price, Chief People, Product & Transformation Officer at Zenith Vehicles, joins Louise to share what he learned from running both the people and technology functions - and why merging the two isn't as straightforward as the headlines suggest. Stuart also makes a compelling case for empowering leaders to make judgment calls rather than hiding behind policy, explains why inclusion sho...

Steph Evans Hill, People Director at William Jackson Food Group, joins Felix to talk about what it's really like to leave the corporate machine and join a sixth generation family business. After nearly two decades at the likes of Nestlé and PPG, Steph shares what she gained from big corporate, what she had to shed, and why building a high performance culture and treating people well aren't...

Emma Tolhurst, independent consultant specialising in culture, communications, and transformation, joins Felix to explore the concept of the human library - and why most organisations are sitting on a goldmine of generational knowledge they're not tapping into. From reverse mentoring programmes that cost nothing to scale, to why AI is consuming transformation bandwidth at the expense of more h...

Emmy Rumble-Mettle, VP of People and Culture at Aristocrat, joins Louise to explore a model that could change the way you think about every interaction at work. The transactional analysis framework - parent, adult or child - is a simple idea with profound implications for power dynamics, conflict, and how leaders show up. Emmy also gets into why burnout has become so normalised, why boundaries hav...

Sophie Tolley, VP of People and Culture for EMEA at RES, joins Felix to explore what a career in HR actually looks like in 2026, and where it's heading. From how grad roles are being reshaped by AI to the reality of working four days a week while staying ambitious, Sophie shares an honest take on trade-offs, career breaks, and why the organisations cutting entry-level HR roles now are storing...

Janine Chamberlin, VP Talent Solutions & UK Country Manager at LinkedIn, joins Felix to cut through the doom and gloom around the jobs market. Yes, UK hiring is down 24% on pre-pandemic levels - but the full picture is far more nuanced than the headlines suggest. Janine shares what LinkedIn's data actually shows about where the new jobs are, why small businesses are completely bucking the...

Simon Russell, Instant Impact's Head of AI and Data, joins Felix to lift the lid on what large language models actually are, why they're brilliant at conversation but terrible at maths, and what that means for how organisations should be thinking about AI adoption. With 16 years of experience across the Ministry of Defence, EY, and a Google spin-off, Simon breaks down the rise of agentic A...

Jonny Friedman, Chief People Officer at Acumetis Global, joins Felix to talk about what happens when you merge five businesses into one across nine countries - all under private equity pressure to deliver double-digit growth. Jonny makes the case for why culture and commercial performance aren't competing priorities, how his team co-created a set of values and behaviours with every level of th...

Ramneek Sohal, HR Director at Domestic & General, joins Louise to share what she's learned from 20-plus years of walking into businesses with no HR function and building high-performing teams from scratch. From Coca-Cola to Karen Millen to a multi-market regulated business, Ramneek talks through how she diagnoses what each organisation actually needs before hiring a single person, why HR t...

Sam Gibson-Massey, founder of Hope, joins Louise to unpack what proactive wellbeing really looks like once you strip away the gym passes and free pilates. Drawing on his own burnout and years in big tech talent, Sam makes the case for measurable ROI on wellbeing, why managers are the sandwich generation of work, and why the best company culture is the one that shows up on a bad day. A candid, prac...

Giac Soliman, former Director of Compensation at Monzo and founder of Range, joins Louise to explore what AI can and can't do in the world of compensation and reward. From why pay decisions are too high-stakes to fully automate, to employees turning up with their own ChatGPT salary benchmarks, Giac shares a practical and refreshingly honest take on where the function is heading. He also talks...

Claire Clarke, Director of Hospitality People Services at Moore Kingston Smith, joins Louise for an incredibly open conversation about what it's like to walk into a toxic workplace as an HR leader - and what it takes to walk back out again. Claire shares the red flags she spotted on day one but chose to overlook, why HR professionals are uniquely bad at recognising when the system is broken ar...

Céline Crawford, Director of Operations at Fertifa, joins Louise to talk about why pay gaps stubbornly refuse to close, what transparent salaries actually do in practice, and what proper support around women's health looks like beyond just updating a handbook. Drawing on her own experience of pregnancy loss and her work with organisations of all sizes, Céline shares why psychological safety ma...

Aleksandra Kucza, Senior Global HR Director at ACAMS, joins Louise to talk about why talent reviews are one of the most underrated business processes out there - and how to run them well when your workforce is scattered across the globe. From getting CEO buy-in to tackling proximity bias, Aleksandra shares practical advice on making talent conversations meaningful, why the annual review shouldn&#3...

Tim Mitchell, Chief People Officer at the Institute of Cancer Research, joins Felix to talk about what it takes to build a workplace where different ways of thinking aren't just accepted - they're essential. As a parent of a neurodiverse child and executive sponsor for disability at work, Tim brings both a personal and professional lens to the conversation. They dig into why encouraging mi...

Ellie Evans, seasoned Chef People Officer, joins Louise to challenge whether HR is guilty of over-complicating things - from rebranding part-time work as "fractured roles" to dressing up internal mobility as "talent fluidity". They get into what actually makes change stick, why people management is still the biggest unsolved problem in most organisations, and how apprenticeship...

James Zhang, a global HR professional with a background in mathematics, joins Louise to explore how AI is reshaping the way we think about organisational design, graduate careers, and what makes someone hireable in 2025. From using AI as a mentoring buddy for junior hires to rethinking whether you still need as many managers, James shares a practical and refreshingly honest perspective on what the...

Kameka McLean, Group Head of HR at Walker Crips Investment Management, joins Felix to talk about why HR professionals are burning out in silence - and what needs to change. With burnout among HR professionals reportedly hitting 82% in 2024, Kameka shares her own experience of pushing through when she should have stepped back, the moment she finally prioritised her own wellbeing, and why HR leaders...

Joanna Holmes, HR Director at Wilsons Solicitors, joins Louise to talk about what it's really like to move from big corporate HR into an SME. After 25 years in the profession - including stints at KPMG and B&Q - Joanna shares what she gained from large organisations, why she ultimately craved something different, and the lessons she's learned about getting stuck in, protecting your thi...

Sami Aintaoui, CEO of MBA Group, joins Felix to talk about what it actually looks like when a mid-sized business gets AI adoption right. From running an AI amnesty poll to uncover what tools people were already using, to building AI into their product set and pursuing ISO 42001 accreditation, Sami shares a refreshingly practical take on transformation. They also get into why the org chart is chang...