Episode 225: How HR Can Lead Successful Digital Transformation Initiatives (Interview with Lucy Adams)
Digital and AI transformation is reshaping workplaces across the globe, but why do some organisations succeed while others struggle? What sets the leaders apart in navigating change effectively?
In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, host David Green is joined by Lucy Adams, CEO of Disruptive HR and former CHRO at the BBC and Eversheds. With years of experience modernising HR practices, Lucy has helped thousands of HR professionals move beyond outdated, process-heavy models to adopt agile, people-focused strategies that align with today’s fast-evolving business landscape.
Together, they explore:
The biggest challenges HR teams face in driving transformation
Practical strategies for breaking large-scale change into manageable steps
How to address the emotional and behavioural hurdles of transformation
Tailoring change approaches to different groups (early adopters vs. resistors)
How HR can equip business leaders to be effective change champions
The key skills HR professionals need to thrive in an era of rapid transformation
If your organisation is in the midst of change—or preparing for it—this conversation is packed with insights you can start implementing today.
This episode is sponsored by Amazing Workplace, an AI-powered platform designed to help companies grow and succeed by unlocking the full potential of their people. By providing the most accurate insights into how employees feel and why, Amazing Workplace equips leaders with powerful tools to drive meaningful improvements where they matter most.
With Amazing Workplace, companies have reduced turnover by up to 90%, have increased revenue by over 400%, and solved recruitment. Find out more at www.amazingworkplace.com
[0:00:00] David Green: It's safe to say that almost every organisation across the globe is undergoing a digital transformation. Some succeed, and from the conversations that we are having here at Insight222, many are struggling to navigate the complexities of rapid change. So, what sets successful companies apart? I'm David Green and today on the Digital HR Leaders podcast I'm joined by Lucy Adams, who spent more than 15 years as a CHRO at companies including the BBC and Eversheds, and is now the CEO of Disruptive HR, a well-known UK-based consultancy and training platform that helps HR leaders modernise their approach to people management.
Lucy is helping thousands of HR professionals and business leaders move away from outdated process-heavy models and adopt more agile people-focused strategies that align with the modern workplace. And today, we are going to be exploring the biggest challenges HR teams face when driving transformation, the practical strategies for breaking large-scale transformation into manageable steps, how to tailor approaches for different teams, and how to equip business leaders to champion change effectively. So, whether your organisation is in the midst of transformation or preparing for it, this conversation is sure to give you some golden nuggets that you can start implementing today. With that, let's get the conversation started.
Today I'm delighted to welcome Lucy Adams to the Digital HR Leaders Podcast. Hello, Lucy, welcome to the show. To kick off the conversation, could you please introduce yourself, your background as a practitioner, because obviously you've been a Chief People Officer, you were for a long time, and then what you're doing now at Disruptive HR as well and maybe the inspiration that led you to starting the company?
[0:01:58] Lucy Adams: Yeah, I think it's probably a little bit less inspiration and more frustration actually that led me to create Disruptive HR, and it links back to what I'd been doing. So, as you say, I'd been an HR director for more years than I really care to think about, and big organisations, so Serco PLC, the BBC, most people have heard of that. And it was really during my time at the BBC where there were so many changes, whether it be digital disruption, changing expectations of the workplace, new competitive landscape, but basically all of our leaders, managers, staff having to do things in very different ways. And there was I, as the Chief People Officer, still doing HR like I'd done it in the '90s. And so, that's where Disruptive HR comes from. It was a desire to try and find ways to help HR innovate, be more agile, build credibility, have a bigger impact, but in essence just do things in a way that are relevant for a disrupted world.
So, I mean it's ten years next year, which I can't really believe, so ten years that we've been going. And, yeah, we work with HR professionals and also directly with leaders as well, all over the world, every sector, just helping them with a bit of inspiration, a bit of challenge, but primarily practical ways in which they can do things differently.
[0:03:37] David Green: Well, thank you, Lucy, and a very early happy 10th anniversary from me and the team at Insight222!
[0:03:42] Lucy Adams: Thank you, thank you very much.
[0:03:45] David Green: It's interesting, the work we do at Insight222, which is primarily around helping organisations connect their people analytics work to business priorities, many in big organisations, we're seeing that HR is on the journey from being very much a support function, I think, all the way back to being a personnel function, I guess, probably back when you started in HR as well. And it slowly but surely, and maybe accelerated by things like digital transformation, maybe by the pandemic, it's becoming a strategic business partner, maybe not in all companies, but certainly in more companies every year. So, I'm curious really, Lucy, as someone who guides HR professionals and leaders in transitioning from those traditional practices to more modern, hopefully business-aligned approaches, what do you see as the biggest challenges Chief People Officers, HR teams, face to successfully navigate this shift?
[0:04:42] Lucy Adams: Yeah, I mean first of all, I think you're absolutely right, things are changing. I mean, certainly when we started out ten years ago, even having the words 'disruptive' and 'HR' in one sentence was kind of seen, "Really?" Whereas now, I think there is a real, not even growing, there is an acceptance that HR has had to change, has had to modernise and do things differently. Of course, as you say, pace is slower in different areas. It's not necessarily particularly sectoral or size. I think it comes down to the leaders of the organisation, the capabilities and desire of the HR team. But I think there are a number of factors that make it actually really hard for HR to do this, to make those changes, and there are tons of them, but I'll pick out I think the top ones for me.
First of all, resistance from leaders, that comes up time and time again. The leaders might not like the way that they have to do it in the old way, they might not like having to do traditional performance management or old-fashioned engagement surveys, but they kind of know what's expected of them. So, anything which involves them having to do things in different ways, use new skills, perhaps not rely on HR so much, then there can be some resistance there. So, I think most HR people would acknowledge that they at least face some resistance from their leaders.
I think it's also about how HR has perceived our role. I think we've felt ourselves in quite a parental role historically. You mentioned the days of the personnel officer which was, "We're going to look after our people", and we were seen as the person to go to if you had an issue. And it meant really that we were almost sort of proxy managers. We were doing the stuff that managers perhaps ought to have been doing with their people, looking after people, taking care of people. But also, I think, a parental role around the critical parent, where we're seen as the compliance officer, we're seen as somebody that needs to protect the organisation against the rogue employees. And even though that's actually only a tiny percentage of the people that work for us, most people come to work to do a decent job and can be trusted, we tend to design around the lowest common denominator. And I think that role of nursemaid and compliance officer has held us back.
I think we've also been driven by this need to ensure consistency, and we've got to treat people the same because we want to avoid any accusations of discrimination. If we're consistent, then it's easier to monitor, it's easier to scale, it's more cost-effective, it's more streamlined. But I think that as well has held us back from really thinking about a differentiated customised experience, where of course digital and AI can come into its own. And then, I think there's also the fact that it's really hard when you're doing an operational role and you're dealing with hundreds of transactions and you've got people coming to you with queries and you quite often find yourself in the minutiae. I can remember, as an HR director, having back-to-back meetings on very operational, transactional issues. And then, you'd get back to your desk at like, I don't know, 6.00, 6.30, and you'd think, "Right, now I need to have some big thoughts. Actually, I'll just go home and have a bottle of wine or a bar of chocolate, or something".
Then, the final thing I'd call out which I think makes it hard, and I think maybe this is the biggest one of all, is our own confidence. So many people I meet, even at the most senior level of HR, still feel they perhaps lack the influence, they're not sure they're having the impact, they worry about their relationships with the wider leadership group, and I think that lack of confidence, it can be a stumbling block.
[0:08:57] David Green: It sounds, listening to you Lucy, and I think we see this as well, it's a kind of fear of change on both sides, whether it's from HR's main stakeholders, the CEO and the leadership team and maybe business leaders and general managers in the business, and also from HR maybe. And it's also, I guess, you don't know what you don't know. So, if business leaders aren't used to HR being involved in strategy, rather than maybe being one of the implementers of strategy, then I guess it can be sometimes hard to make that jump perhaps on both sides. And yeah, we definitely see the confidence thing in HR, particularly around things like technology, around data, around analytics, because historically that's not been expected of HR professionals. But it's a journey and obviously there are great examples out there, I think, of HR leaders and HR professionals who have taken the bull by the horns, as it were, to upskill themselves and to make more impact within the business, and I think we saw that during the pandemic. I guess we need to get away from this, "HR and the business". We are businesspeople in HR as well, it just happens we work in the HR function.
Obviously, you mentioned the digital transformation that you were in at the BBC, and maybe media was one of the first industries to really have to go through that perhaps, and pretty much every organisation now around the world is at some stage in going through a digital transformation, and obviously AI, particularly since ChatGPT was launched a couple of years ago. From your perspective, what's the biggest challenges that organisations face in integrating some of these new technologies successfully?
[0:12:22] Lucy Adams: I mean, there are loads, aren't there? But from my particular experience and perspective, I think one of the biggest challenges we face, when there is a big technical transformation, is that the vast majority of the energy and the focus is on the tech. And we all get excited. I can remember my know my CIO at the BBC, if we were launching a new tech-led transformation, it was all the kit, it was what it could do, it was the processes, it was a very complicated Gantt chart. And somewhere in there are human emotions and human changes, and any technological change of course involves tons of human changes. It could be that they need to learn a new skill or it could be that they just need to learn a new habit. Anyone will tell you, if you try brushing your teeth with a different hand, it's really hard to learn a new habit.
It could be that there's fear associated with it because it means part of their role is disappearing. They might have to work with different people because it's actually about collaboration. So many multiple changes, and I think that there's very often less focus on the human implications, and I've been guilty of this. We'd be focused on all of the tech project and there would be some training built in, maybe a bit of incentive, probably some comms, with a sense that somehow behavioural change would miraculously occur three months after this particular project ended. But of course, human beings aren't like that. And so, the tech projects that I've been involved in, wasn't that the tech didn't work and why it wasn't as successful as it could have been, it wasn't necessarily about the tech, it was because the human beings either couldn't or wouldn't, or were unable to embrace it in the way that we wanted them to.
I think if you look at something like the big sort of push for self-service for managers, just put all of these processes and data and tech in managers' hands, and they'll have the ability to manage their own teams because that's what they want to do, right? And yet actually, what we've done with self-service, is we've very often taken broken processes that don't add a huge amount of value and kind of hardwired it into a tech system. The tech works fine, but the managers aren't using it and we're kind of racking our brains as to why. And it's because the manager might have been okay doing that particular process when HR was doing it for them. And now suddenly, it's their responsibility. They might not see it as their role, they perhaps lack the skills to do it properly, they find the process unhelpful, it doesn't actually deliver the value. And there would be me focused on the target operating model, the costs, the project, as opposed to asking myself the question, "Why would they want to use it?" and really thinking about how we in HR can help people be open to the idea of change, building their capabilities, building their confidence, and why would they want to?
Of course, for every individual, there'll be different reasons why they might want to and why they might not want to, but we don't invest the time. And back to the confidence piece about HR, I'm increasingly of the view that because of our lack of confidence, we've tried to almost emulate finance or tech and try and behave like them. We talk about human capital and return on investment and assets. Whereas actually, human beings, that's our superpower, right? That's our USP, our ability to understand how human beings think, feel, behave, might be motivated to change a habit, to get involved with something, what might cause them to resist. And actually, that's not a science per se, it's messy. But I do think that the more we can major on that and invest the time and energy in that, the more successful the tech projects will be and the easier the ride will be for our people.
[0:17:09] David Green: Yeah, it's almost like the main role of HR, from listening to you, Lucy, is to elevate the human part of transformation or technology implementation, because as you said, you can have the best tech in the world but if you don't do an effective change management process, then you're not going to get the return on your investment that you expect, and you're going to potentially have an impact around engagement and productivity and performance as well.
[0:17:42] Lucy Adams: Yeah. And I also think that when we do our change management plans, we kind of always work on the basis that they're linear, and of course change isn't like that, is it? We can feel positive about something one day and less positive the next. And that's what makes human beings and HR such a fascinating area, but it also makes it more challenging because people don't behave like machines.
[0:18:07] David Green: No, we don't. We're difficult sometimes, humans, aren't we?
[0:18:11] Lucy Adams: Yeah, we are. We are wonderful, beautiful, frustrating, annoying things.
[0:18:16] David Green: Yes, you've met my children then! So, how can HR address these emotional and behavioural challenges that come with transformation?
[0:18:30] Lucy Adams: Well, I think there's a few ways that we're seeing. I mean, the case studies, particularly for AI, are fairly thin on the ground because it's so new. But I think there are some great examples of the way in which HR teams are working with technology and not doing the traditional tech transformation programmes. I think the first one, if we look at most change programmes and tech change programmes, transformations programmes fail to deliver their objectives primarily because it's this kind of top-down cascade, this assumption that it will move naturally through the layers in the organisation, rather than when we feel a change is being done to us, we know we're more likely to resist it. It's a very human reaction, isn't it? If we feel like we've got ownership of it, if we're driving it, if we're co-creating, then we've got a better chance of success. So, I think where we look at AI, where HR teams are managing to get the technology, the AI more embedded more quickly with less pain, they've tended to do it through a more organic route of sort of bottom-up approach.
So, Bristol Myers Squibb they set up these self-organised communities called the AI Collectives, which I really like, and I just like the language, and these collectives, they're volunteers, they're meeting kind of every four to six weeks, they're exchanging insights and ideas about how they can advance these AI projects in the company. You've got Verizon and again, instead of doing it through a sort of centralised top-down structure, they gave the tools, the budget, provided expertise to local teams, and now they had to live with the results. So, it was very much in their interest to make sure that they chose the right things, things that would actually work for them, their customers, their teams. And they found that it was just, is it slower, is it less neat? Yeah, but actually what you've got are enthusiasts, the early adopters, the people who are wanting to drive it and who have an investment in making it work for them. So, I think the more that we can make these projects bottom-up led, organic, evolving, going where the energy is, I think we'll find that a lot easier. And overcoming one of the key challenges is that we tend to resist change that is done to us.
I think the other piece is creating an environment where people can try it, experiment with it, have a play with it. We know, although it's interesting, I don't think there's enough research into people's feelings about AI and what it might mean for them. There's lots of information out there about what AI can do and where it's being used, but actually the emotional aspect of AI I think is less well understood. I know that Gallup's done some work on it, Workday's done some work on that, but it's less well understood. But one of the things that does come through in the research that is there is that people either feel that they know more than they do, or they are completely lacking in confidence and full of fear about what it might do for them. So, actually there's an area I think where we can provide, and HR can play a role in this, which is you've got the ability to experiment, you've got the ability to play, to try something out.
Now, Spotify do this really well. This is in relation to all sorts of things, not just digital HR projects, but they use a Swedish concept of a fika, which is a coffee break, but they call them 'fail fikas'. And these are just really informal gatherings where people come together regularly to talk about what hasn't worked. It's an environment, we use the psychobabble, 'psychological safety', but I think that sense of, "I can have a play, I'm not going to break it, I can try some stuff out and if it didn't work, that's okay, because actually what's more important is what have we learned, what would we do differently next time?" So, I think that sense of creating an environment where people feel it's not being done to them, but they can create and drive, but that it's okay to fail.
[0:23:10] David Green: Yeah, listening to you there, Lucy, really reminds me of something I heard a long time ago actually. Mark Levy, who redefined HR when he was a head of HR at Airbnb and called it Employee Experience, and he talked about doing things 'with' employees rather than 'to' them, which is exactly what you said there really, and putting the user at the centre. I love that bit about experimentation. I must say a little plug for Katarina Berg who, as you know, is the Chief People Officer at Spotify. For listeners, her book, BOLD, is now out in English, written by her and her team and based on some of the stuff that they share through the Spotify HR blog. But you're right, they are a modern, progressive-thinking HR function. They're really good. Then, as you said, we need more experimentation, I think, we need to get more comfortable with that in HR, whether it's around analytics, looking at classic A/B testing to see how different groups react to different things, because then we understand whether we want to roll it out maybe to more people; and experimentation around tech, experimentation around hybrid working, all those sorts of things that we should be doing more of probably than we are in most HR.
[0:25:33] Lucy Adams: I think you're absolutely right. These kind of agile product design techniques that we have largely seen as applying purely to tech, we can absolutely use them in HR. And instead of this sense that we do a little bit of research, then go away into a room and plan something that's going to take nine months to implement, by the time you're there, you feel like it has to succeed, because you've invested so much time and energy and resource and money into it. Whereas of course, actually the more agile product designers are test and learn, iterate, this much more evolutionary approach, rather than this kind of cascade, everything's got to work by the time we get there. If I was launching something at the BBC, it would have to be perfect by the time it went out there. I'd have to have my scripts for managers and my PowerPoint deck. And actually, we're seeing HR beginning to become much more comfortable with these much more agile approaches.
[0:26:37] David Green: And then, the way you outlined it there by maybe a doing a more bottoms-up approach, maybe starting small, maybe with an initial pilot as you said, test and learn and move forward from there, you then get the advocacy that you want from employees, which again, I'm not a change management expert, but I can only imagine that the more advocacy you get from employees, the more likely you are to be able to do that change management effectively and get the return on investment that you want from maybe putting new technology in?
[0:27:05] Lucy Adams: Completely, because we trust people like us. I don't know if you're familiar, but listeners may be familiar with it, if they're not, it's a great free resource, it's the Edelman Trust Barometer, which is done every year by the PR company, Edelman. And it looks at one issue, who do we trust? And it tracks trust in leadership and trust in government, and so on. But trust in people like us every year goes up and it's the concept behind TripAdvisor reviews, isn't it? I'm more likely to believe a review from somebody I've never met, but I assume is someone like me who's gone to a particular restaurant, than I am the blurb that I read on their website. So actually, particularly if you've got less confident or more resistant people in the organisation, just telling them from the centre, from tech or from HR that this is going to be great is not going to have the same impact as one of their colleagues saying, "I tried this and wow it's amazing, you should try it too". The more advocates that we can create the better.
[0:28:14] David Green: Yeah, and we'll come back to that, I think, from looking at resistors as well in a minute. Firstly though, and we talked a little bit about this, but maybe you might better add a little bit more colour to it, Lucy, obviously we talked about maybe a lot of transformations can feel overwhelming and obviously there are ways that you can break them down a little bit. What strategies have you seen HR teams use to break those initiatives into smaller, more manageable steps?
[0:28:41] Lucy Adams: Yeah, because you make a really good point, which is one of the problems with large-scale change programmes is just that they look exhausting. And yet, we tend to give them a brand name, we sort of exalt in the fact that we've got this fantastic long change programme with loads of actions and priorities. But we're all exhausted, we're all flat out, we're all time-poor. And so, the idea that we present it to our managers, our leaders, our people as, "Wow look at this", most people's reaction will be, "I haven't got time for that, I haven't got the headspace for that". So, there are loads of resources out there that shows again, and I think this is where HR can play a part, that if we want people to engage in change, we're far better presenting it as a set of small, little steps that they could do in five minutes today. So, "Just try this". It builds their confidence, they're not put off by the fact that it's actually going to take a long, long time, so it's the same theory behind micro-learning. Instead of putting people on long training programmes, we see organisations like Telefonica with their learning shots, not a shot of tequila, but a shot of learning, it's a three-minute video. So, it's exactly the same concept.
So, I think breaking it down is part presentational. Instead of thinking we have to impress with a big transformation campaign, what we can do is actually almost change by stealth. So, suddenly they've done three or four things differently, they've practised it, it's become more of a habit, but we haven't badged it as a large-scale transformation programme. And then, I think the second part, so the first part of breaking it down is presentational, and the second one is about capability-building. I suppose it's called scaffolding. It's an educational technique that we can borrow. And it's the concept, you know if you're teaching your kid to ride a bike and you wouldn't just whip the training wheels, the stabiliser wheels off and just push them off on their bike and wave goodbye. They'd fall off, they'd possibly break their arm, they'd lose their confidence to ever get back on a bike again. So, I think sometimes this is about saying, we want them to get here in terms of capability, but what are the steps that we need to take? Where do we continually need to provide guard rails and support and gradually move things away until they're standing on their own?
So, I think again, HR can break this down rather than seeing it as, "You do this on a Monday, you do this, something different, on Friday", but actually break it down in terms of capability so their confidence grows and the support gets withdrawn gradually.
[0:31:41] David Green: And I guess if you can psychologically leave people always wanting a bit more, then they're probably more likely to want to do the next steps as you go along the process.
[0:31:50] Lucy Adams: Absolutely, absolutely. And lots of HR teams are now using the concept of nudges, so using a bit of nudge theory, instead of putting people on a training programme about how to use the latest tech that we've introduced, where they'll forget 80% of what they've learned in a month, not because they're stupid, but because they're human and that's what the human brain does. Actually, using these little prompts or nudges at a point where they would be just about to get involved in that activity, "Why not try it this way? Or are you aware that you could use this?" those little prompts and nudges and building those into the change programme can be useful in terms of this incremental approach of skill building too.
[0:32:34] David Green: Yeah, very good. You talked a little bit about advocacy, resistance and the different types of people that we get when we're going through a change, because not everyone reacts the same way, as you say. So, how can HR leaders tailor their approaches to meet the needs of these different groups and whether they actually really bang on, want to do this, "We're advocates of this", to those that are resisting change?
[0:33:06] Lucy Adams: Well, you've made a really important point in just asking that question, because very often what we don't do is to break and segment our approach to embracing change, based on motivation to be involved. It tends to be done by department or job grade, because that makes sense for us from the centre in an organisational context. But of course, within those job grades or those departments, you will have a multiple of different fears, motivations, preferences, likes, attitudes. So, we're increasingly seeing and indeed advocate for the use of employee persona. So, again, if listeners aren't familiar with this, this is a marketing technique. So, if you're producing a product for different consumers, your marketing team will have customer persona. It's a way of trying to understand and simplify a whole range, a mass of different needs, wants, preferences, and in the case of marketing, buying patterns, but to break it down into types or persona.
This can be brilliant for HR, because actually at least we know our people, whereas marketing very often don't have access to their customers, so by identifying types of people, not on the base of job grade, not on the base of department, but in terms of attitude towards technology or AI. So, you might have the individuals who are curious, open, not threatened, tech-savvy would be one persona. Another persona might be neutral, really only interested if it helps them to improve business results. And then, perhaps the third persona would be the people who are quite anti the idea of it, maybe feeling potentially threatened by AI, not interested in changing. And leaders in HR can help to identify who these people might be. We have to be careful about making assumptions, but we can use pulse surveys, we can use the myriad of survey tools that are available to us now to get a sense of who people are, particularly the first group. So, you're asking people, "Are you interested in being involved?" you've immediately got your early adopters.
But we do need a strategy for each persona and I think we have to be careful of making assumptions that the ones who are going to be curious, open, tech-savvy are necessarily always the Gen Z. There will be plenty of people in other age demographics who are really open and curious. So, not making assumptions, but really kind of asking for those early adopters, and then using them as influencers to help focus on the second group, the ones who could be bought in if they know it's going to impact business results in a particular and positive way. And then the third group, you kind of almost need a strategy which is FOMO-based. So, the worst thing we can do with the most resistant is to invest more energy in them, more time, trying desperately to focus on getting the biggest resistors to get engaged. The best tactic that we've found is to actually say, "Don't worry, you don't have to do this", or even, "This isn't for you", that sense of, I think HR particularly, I know I've been guilty of this, we will try so hard to get the biggest resistors on board first, but actually what we're ending up doing is delaying, compromising, diluting, or even giving up. Whereas go with the early adopters, get them to bring in the more neutral ones and then bit by bit, the late adopters, the biggest resistors will begin to come over. Not all of them, and we then have a choice to make about what do we do with that hardcore group who aren't going to use it.
We had this at the BBC where journalists were having to embrace social media, having to do far more for themselves rather than relying on technicians. And of course, there was always going to be a group of people who didn't want to get involved in that, and I think then, having to have conversations with them, which is that, "These are the risks you're running in terms of your future employability". But in the end, they're grown-ups and it's their choice.
[0:37:54] David Green: And I guess another, if you can, a good idea is to identify your key influencers and get them involved early, because they can be your best advocates. I mean, there's enough research out there that says, I don't know, sometimes the top 3% of influencers can reach a big part of the organisation, so you need to get those on board.
[0:38:16] Lucy Adams: Yeah, I can't remember the stat, but I think it's something like five times faster, five times more take up. I mean, it's why influencers are making a fortune, right, because consumer products know the impact they can have.
[0:38:32] David Green: But I mean, again, within the organisation as well. I mean, again, I don't know how much you've seen of it, but network analysis, either through passive data, but also just by asking people who they go to to get things done, you can identify people that actually are quite pivotal. They're not always in the most senior roles and always the most well-known.
[0:38:51] Lucy Adams: No, very often they're not actually. I think it's interesting, isn't it? I know Mphasis and easyJet have used network analysis to identify key influences, and it's not always the people you think they are. And again, we tend to go with this idea that we have to have a champion at the top, and that exec is going to do all the influencing. But as you rightly say, it's those people in real pivotal roles or just the natural networkers, the ones who get a real kick out of sharing and engaging with others.
[0:39:25] David Green: So, we've kind of moved from different groups. Now, there's another important group, who's business leaders, of course, and we are often expected to champion change. What support do those leaders need from HR to ensure they can guide their teams through transformation?
[0:39:45] Lucy Adams: Yeah, I mean, I think this is a tough one because whereas managers that I've worked with will, with a bit of coaxing and cajoling, acknowledge their vulnerabilities and perhaps will come clean that they're a bit scared about what this technology might mean for what they have to do and the new skills they have to embrace, it can be either harder or they're less inclined as the senior leaders to admit that vulnerability, to show that humility. Again, I think if you can find a senior leader who is prepared to say, "Hands up, I don't know enough about this, I'm unsure about it and this is what I'm doing to equip myself", then I think use them for all their worth. I think that in terms of looking at our senior leadership team, we know that the longer they've been enrolled, the more senior they are, the less curious they are. So, again, I think HR can do some pump-priming with this about what are other organisations doing, how are leaders in other competitors maybe embracing this. That always used to go down really well with my leaders. They wouldn't respond until I told them that the competitor was ahead of them in this, and they would immediately be on board. So, I think thinking about those, is it a bit of manipulation? Maybe, but let's use what we've got.
I think then, we need to help the leader be authentic with it. There's nothing worse than seeing a leader going out there and parroting a script, which they clearly don't believe. So, I think work out why would this work for them and help them to develop their own story. We can coach them with that, we can help them overcome the resistance to some of the challenges that they might be facing with that, that's our role. Back to our role as the superpower of dealing with human beings. We should know our execs, we should know which buttons to press, which ones to avoid and how to get them to a place where they at least feel comfortable talking about it, even if what they're saying is, "I don't know enough".
[0:42:07] David Green: Yeah, I mean being able to manage stakeholders effectively is such an important skill, arguably in any business function I think, particularly in HR. And I guess, if you want to get a senior exec on board, exactly what you said, either make them have a little bit of fear maybe that they're behind their competitors, or if you can translate the reason why you want them to do something into a benefit for the business, you know, "We've worked with finance, we think that we're going to increase revenue by X% if we do this, or we're going to reduce costs by this if we do this, or we're going to be far more efficient than our customer. Satisfaction scores, we think we will go up by this". Those are the sorts of things I guess that that can get them on board.
[0:42:46] Lucy Adams: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think those business stats are good to a point but as we know, human beings are not going to change their behaviour, even if there's a clear business logic. It's really interesting, you know. I've seen it over the years that senior execs will be nodding along as you present the data about why this makes sense financially, operationally, customer satisfaction, they're all nodding. And then, when it comes to changing their own behaviour, there's still a resistance. So, I think actually this kind of storytelling, appealing to them on a more emotional level like, "You don't want to miss out", appealing to them on a very personal level, I think is necessary in conjunction with those stats.
[0:43:36] David Green: It's role-modelling, isn't it? You're more likely to get the rest of the organisation to buy in if the leaders role model it themselves. One group we haven't really talked about for a transformation here, other than actually helping it happen, is HR. What are some of the resources or initiatives that you've found have been most effective in helping equip HR professionals for these challenges?
[0:44:01] Lucy Adams: Well, I think for HR to be really effective in this space, often the answers are not necessarily within HR. I think where we've seen HR be very successful is where they've looked outside their own discipline, and I would call on kind of two key areas. The first one is around product design and development. So, we talked a little bit earlier about agile product design, thinking about ourselves as product designers, so user-centric pain points, understanding them, designing the product around the end user, rather than a process that we think is established best practice, really understanding the users of our product. And if they're not using it, don't make them go on mandatory training to make them use the product, but actually change the product, so really thinking about ourselves as product designers, using those agile product design techniques that we mentioned, like early adopters, minimum viable product, what's the least amount I can get away with to get some feedback on this, and test and learn, only having one or two products on the slate at any one time. I think HR teams are surrounded by numerous priorities and initiatives, each one's got hundreds of actions, but actually what are the two or three things that they're going to focus on?
So, I think looking at that, how do you use data and insight in really effective ways, blending both quantitative and qualitative data to build a narrative? And that leads me, I suppose, onto the second discipline that we can learn a lot from, which is marketing. We talked about personas, but thinking about branding, thinking about language, thinking about storytelling. So, the tools and resources that I think we can use when we're in a kind of change phase with using technology, are actually much more around product design and development and marketing, rather than perhaps HR, and having a great relationship with your CIO.
[0:46:17] David Green: Yeah, I mean we see that when companies are that successful around employee experience, for example. And also, in people analytics, the area that we're in at Insight222, we see people analytics teams of the leading companies, they have product designers, UX specialists, communications and change experts, to talk to both sides of what you said there around product design and development and marketing, actually in the teams. Because if we are creating products, we should be doing it 'with' employees, not 'to' them, as we've talked about. But we also need to measure and not be afraid to get rid of a product. Just like we would in a commercial environment, if no one's buying it or using it, we either need to change it or we need to get rid of it and replace it.
[0:47:03] Lucy Adams: And yet, very often as an HR professional, my reaction would be, "Oh, well, they don't understand how to use it", or, "We've got to train them to use it", not actually, "They're not using it because it doesn't help them".
[0:47:15] David Green: Yeah, it either doesn't help them or we've not articulated why, we've not made the case well enough for it, rather than, yeah, I think it's a slight nuance and difference. But arguably, it makes the HR role more exciting. If we think about what AI is likely to do to HR, and we see in companies like IBM, the AI takes away some of the repetition and maybe the more mundane tasks. But that then frees us up to do the strategic work maybe, but it also means that we have to be better at doing the strategic work.
[0:47:50] Lucy Adams: Yeah, and I think that's a really important point, isn't it? That statement is both going to be exciting and terrifying, depending on how you see your role in HR, whether you feel that you derive a sense of value from completion of transactional tasks, of taking orders and getting stuff done. And I'm not doing that in a disparaging way. There are brilliant people out there who are working incredibly hard, but their role is not necessarily to challenge and question and coach and facilitate, their role is to get stuff done and they do it very, very well. And if we're saying that your role's not going to disappear, I think increasingly there was a sense, wasn't there, a few years ago that roles would just disappear; but actually, what's more likely to happen is certain parts of your role will disappear, and what will be there will be the elements of using judgment, coaching, the relationship management, creating an environment and conditions where people can do their best work, rather than the compliance and the nursemaid, and that will be very scary for some people.
So, when you look at the skills that HR people of the future are going to need, will it be employment law? Will it be the ability to hire people? Will it be the kind of monitoring roles that we've played? Or will it actually be coaching, facilitation, challenging? I think it's the latter.
[0:49:28] David Green: Yeah, I mean I suppose we need to try and view it, as HR professionals, we need to review augmentation not automation. Yes, some tasks will be automated but hopefully it can help us, as HR professionals, become more human and really elevate the human element of work.
[0:49:51] Lucy Adams: Yeah, I mean when I when I'm talking to HR professionals and we ask them what's preventing them from being more human-centric and being more innovative and creative in the things that they do, one of the top things that comes up is just transactional volume, bad systems preventing them from having the time and the headspace to do it. If that's taken away through AI, then those people who are excited and capable and confident of doing the human aspect will love it. And there'll be others that maybe don't feel confident, and I think waking up to that and acknowledging it now and doing something about it I think is key.
[0:50:36] David Green: Well, Lucy, we've got to the last couple of questions. So, I can't believe we've already got there, I've really enjoyed the conversation so far. So, before we get to the question of the series, is there one key, or maybe there's more than one, but you can have two or three, if there's a couple of takeaways that you hope our listeners will remember from this conversation, this podcast episode, what would it be?
[0:51:00] Lucy Adams: I'll just go for one, and it's that we can't assume that change will happen because we've got a great project plan and the tech's brilliant, and we need to be investing far more energy in working out why people would want to change and helping them get there.
[0:51:17] David Green: So, we'll get to the question of the series now. Each series of the podcast has five episodes and we have a different question for the guests in that series. How do you, and we've talked a little bit about this today to be fair, how do you align HR and business strategies to ensure employee experience directly contributes to company success?
[0:51:38] Lucy Adams: Well, I'm going to pick up on something that you mentioned earlier. You mentioned Mark Levy of Airbnb, who was pioneering in this approach. And I think one of the things that really excites me about the work that Mark did, and we see it across lots of other more progressive organisations who have really understood about employee experience being aligned to business success, is that employee experience is not just about a nice experience or feeling happy. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's about differentiating based on your brand and your brand promise to your customers. So, Mark Levy at Airbnb, the customer promise, the customer brand was all about, "Belong anywhere, feel at home", and they aligned their employee experience and differentiated it to be absolutely in tune with that. It meant that they did quite creative things and very different things, and it was very much their experience. So, they differentiated it based on an alignment with the customer promise.
Patagonia would be another. They're all about climate activism, the great outdoors, healthy living, etc. And again, they differentiate their employee experience to deliver on that promise too, with three-day weekends or paid time off for exercise. They'll even pay your bail if you get arrested on climate activism. Now that's not for everybody, right? But the whole point is that we've got to think less about vanilla, nice experiences and more about what is the promise to our customers and are we aligning that with our employee experience?
[0:53:16] David Green: I really like that. I suppose we, as companies, we think about how do we attract customers to our brand, and I guess it's the same kind of mentality behind it. If you can attract your employees to your brand, then it's almost linked to their purpose. And if you're doing something that's linked to your purpose, you're more likely to be an engaged, happy, successful performer and maybe put the extra discretionary effort in as well. Lucy, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today. Always learn a lot.
[0:53:50] Lucy Adams: Oh, thank you, David. I've loved it.
[0:53:52] David Green: It's been really, really good. Before we wrap up, how can our listeners find out more about Disruptive HR, connect with you and learn more about your work?
[0:54:01] Lucy Adams: Oh, well obviously, the website, disruptivehr.com, and we have our own podcast as well, HR Disrupted, and people might want to have a listen to that.
[0:54:14] David Green: I'm sure they will now that they've listened to this episode, if they don't already. I'm sure many of our listeners are also listeners of your podcast, Lucy. Lucy, thank you so much, absolute pleasure to speak to you and I'm sure we'll probably bump into each other at a conference in the coming weeks or months.
[0:54:29] Lucy Adams: Thanks so much, David.