181 | HR in the AI Era – The 5 Foundations Every HR Leader Needs (with Charlotte Goulding)

Deciding how, why, and when to use AI across your organisation is

something that HR professionals can play a really important role in because AI

affects jobs, skills, teams, managers, and the way that work gets done.

So this means that getting AI adoption right for the organisation that you work

in, it isn't just about choosing the right technology or consulting with the tech

team, it's about making sure the right people foundations are in place too.

And today's guest, Charlotte Golding, believes this is a really big opportunity

for the HR profession, and her message is a really simple one, but a powerful

one, which is don't wait to be invited into the conversation about AI.

Instead, Charlotte shows us how HR can help lead and shape that conversation.

She shares her brilliant Five People Foundations Framework, which is

designed to help organisations to grow, to change, to adapt, and to succeed

without losing what makes them special.

We talk about a huge range of things, including why traditional

job descriptions might no longer work as well as they once did.

We talk about why managers will become even more important as AI changes work.

And we also discuss how performance, recognition, and HR

operations might need to evolve.

Another thing that we explore is how HR can help organisations make thoughtful

decisions about AI while keeping people, trust, and culture at the heart of them.

So important.

Before we dive in, though, if we haven't met before, I'll quickly say hello.

I'm Fay Wallis, a career and executive coach for HR and people professionals,

and this is HR Coffee Time, the podcast designed to help you have a

successful and fulfilling HR career.

Welcome to the show, Charlotte.

It's so wonderful to have you here.

Thank you for joining me today.

Thank you for inviting me, Fay.

I'm absolutely delighted to be here.

Uh, I'm, I'm really pleased you've invited me to be on your show.

Thank you.

Oh, you're so welcome.

I, I'm really, really excited to share all of your fabulous knowledge with

the listeners and anyone watching today, so I'm really grateful.

And let's see if I can get this the right way round without tripping over my words.

So I know that when we were chatting before, you said to me that you think

it's really important we don't just focus on, let me get this right, AI for HR. We

also need to be focusing on HR for AI.

So I'm gonna start off by asking you that.

What do you mean by that?

Yes, and completely the right way around.

Um-

It's like a tongue twister you've given me- It really

is … for the episode, Charlotte.

Um, I think I have been completely struck by the

scale of opportunity that stands in front of our profession, um, at

the moment, and, and see that as twofold, like you just described.

So first of all, we've got a lot of conversation at the minute

about how AI can help HR And support us to be more efficient.

We know that we have huge amounts of transactional, operational reactive work,

and there's, there's definitely scope there for us to b- become more efficient.

But I think crucially, the other side of that is how can we as a profession

support our organisations as they work through their AI adoption?

And at the core of AI adoption at the moment really is an

enormous transformation unlike any of us have seen before.

And HR, we are the profession that understands both the human

side and the organisational side, and the design side of that.

And so I see this huge once in a career opportunity that we have to

redesign work, make sure that humans at the heart of it can focus on what

is irreplaceably human about, about us and, and our roles in organisations.

And I think my, my kind of ask and the, the, the message to all

HR professionals is just don't wait to be invited into that room.

It's understandably in some ways focusing a lot on the tooling at the moment, and

so it's easy for us to think, "Well, this is, you know, it's technology

adoption, so our CTO can lead on this."

But that's a real miss, and, and just don't wait to get those invites.

Try and get yourself into the rooms where those decisions are being

made and, and don't question your relevance to those conversations.

It can be easy to do that, but we understand transformations.

We've done it, you know, through our careers, and here is the biggest

opportunity for us to contribute.

It's really exciting, isn't it?

I hope that everyone listening or watching is thinking, "Oh, yes, th-

what a brilliant opportunity," because I feel like in the pandemic, everyone

who worked in HR, or hopefully a lot of people who worked in HR, were really

recognised for the value that they were able to bring to their organisations.

But recently, really depressingly, HR's g- been getting a real bashing.

Yeah.

Especially in the press.

There's been a lot of negativity about the profession.

I've personally found it Half upsetting, half infuriating, I think, because I

just feel, oh my goodness, so frustrating that people don't realise how hardworking

and brilliant HR professionals are.

But with the advent of AI, I feel like it's a real opportunity for us

to be, again, showcasing actually how valuable our skillset is and how

helpful we can be to organisations.

And when you showed me your framework for helping HR professionals figure

out, okay, we want to embrace this opportunity, we want to really step

up and show everyone that we can be helpful at this point, I just thought,

this is fantastic because it's all very well hearing the message of this is a

great opportunity if you work in HR, but actually I can also see it could feel a

bit daunting and a bit scary, and really?

How can I be helping here?

So again, for anyone listening or watching right now, if you're thinking,

how do I go about embracing this opportunity, this episode of the

podcast is here to help, and I hope you're going to be as thrilled to hear

about Charlotte's framework as I was.

So having given your, your framework a, a bit of hype there and shared

my excitement about it, I suppose we should probably start diving into

it now and, and ask you, how was it that you came up with your framework?

Yeah.

Good question, Fay.

And, and I completely agree with everything that you've just said as

well around this, you know, just embrace the opportunity and be brave, I think.

And so I came up with this framework actually about a year ago now, so before

we started to talk a lot about AI, but it has come from a fundamental belief

underneath it all is that a business and its people can both be successful, and

it's not about making a choice in that.

And actually, my experience shows that where you invest in your people's

success, your business will actually increase and improve its own success.

Those two things work together.

So the framework and the foundations I talk about come through that

practical experience and years of work, seeing what worked, what

didn't, and also trying to distil that down into something really simple.

I, I enjoy reading, I really enjoy seeing what other people are doing, what other

people are thinking, but my instinct just always comes back to what's gonna work and

what can I do with something, um, today?

And I think as a profession, you know, I've been working in HR for over 20

years, we can have a habit of making things a little bit complicated.

We can, you know, layer strategy on strategy, and I know that in some of

my in-house roles found that quite hard to navigate to go, "What should I

actually be focusing on today?" Because there are all these different things.

The other part that really influenced it was that, I think, a frustration as

well that as a profession we are often looked at to come in and fix or build

culture, and that really simplistic view of what that looks like and,

and the reality being that culture isn't a project that HR can, can lead.

It's the decisions that you make, the ways you work, the conversations

that you have in your business.

And what we can do as a profession is provide the operating system

that guides and shapes the behavior that influences your, your culture.

So I wanted to build something that I could use with organisations, um, and

came up with these five things that I think are always critical, always

practical, and always something that you can implement And then AI has, you

know, rapidly dominated our conversations over the last, you know, six months.

If you think about the conversations we were even having in January,

it feels so different to where we are six months later.

But helpfully, the framework has completely s- you know, stood up

against that change and, if anything, feels even more critical right now.

And I think the topics that I know we've been discussing in the HR profession for

years now are things that are absolutely critical that we, that we focus in on now.

So, you know, how do we think about skills over roles?

How do we finally transform the appraisal process?

And what do we do to support our managers?

They kinda feel like they're non-negotiables for us to really face into

now, otherwise I fear that, you know, in a year's time, we might not like the, the

future of work that we find ourselves in.

So these are the things now that we have to focus on and consider, I think.

What is it about AI adoption that is changing the focus or sharpening the

focus on these f- five foundations?

But they're all still critical.

I love the fact that you came up with this five foundations

framework before the whole AI thing had exploded in the way that it has

done, because I think that's really reassuring for anyone listening right now.

But it's not something that's been quickly sort of cobbled together to try and

help everyone with figuring out how they can be supporting their organisations

effectively when it comes to AI.

In fact, it really is this solid foundation that you can put in place to

guide you As a chief people officer or HR director or, or head of HR or any of

those things, it's going to be useful.

So, again, if you're listening or watching and you're thinking, "Oh, I

don't know if I am going to be brave and put myself forward about the AI stuff,"

actually, what Charlotte's going to share is going to help you full stop.

It doesn't matter whether you decide to embrace the whole

AI side of things or not.

But, but again, having got us all excited about this, Charlotte, I'm

gonna have to ask you to share what are these five foundations then?

Do you want to tell us what they are?

Sure.

So the five, five foundations are identity, clarity, enablement,

recognition, and operations.

And I know that we'll dive into each of these in a bit more detail, but

at a high level, they work together really to form what I would describe

as your people operating system.

And identity defines what is important to you and your

organisation and becomes that anchor.

Clarity helps make sure that every single person in your organisation

understands that and can see how that relates to them and their role.

Enablement then helps us build the capability to get everybody

where we need them to be.

Recognition reinforces it when it happens, and importantly,

operations makes the whole thing systematic and, and work seamlessly.

Okay, let's start diving into each of those in detail then.

Can you take us through the first one, identity?

Yes.

So, as a HR profession, we are typically always in the room when we're talking

about determining our company's values.

And, and then we also do the work to make sure that these are

woven into our people processes.

So, have we got questions for hiring?

Do we, you know, ask some questions in our appraisal processes about how

people perform against the values?

But I find that often this is very individual focused.

And when we consider the hard decisions that our organisations have to make and

when we're making decisions that are not necessarily people related, you know, the

ones around what, what sales are we trying to achieve, do our values always show up?

And in my experience, they don't always.

And I, and what I find, that divergence between what you say and then what you do

has a huge impact on trust and engagement.

And as we are in this AI-accelerated world, I think that gap can start

to become visible even faster.

And the other element of this from an AI perspective is it is

accelerating individual productivity at just a staggering rate.

But what comes along with that is the risk of us breaking team cohesion.

And so that, that kind of balance between individual and team, we need to think

about how do we keep that balance.

When your identity as an organisation isn't solid and perhaps it is the thing

that just sits on the wall rather than actually being something that's discussed

in your boardrooms, in your leadership team meetings, that team cohesion can

fracture even faster because people don't really know the rules of, of, of

what's important for the organisation.

How do they make sure that the decisions that they're making, often individually

now working with AI, are aligned with what you care about as an organisation?

And I think we have to start to consider what is really behind

your organisation's decisions.

And it, you know, the question I would encourage everybody to reflect on

is think about a really significant decision that your organisation has made

over the last, you know, three months.

And then do you think everybody would be aligned on the values or, or kind of

drivers behind what led to that decision?

And if not, what did?

What really was the thing that drove that decision, and is that

something different to what you tell people every day is important?

And the other really important, I think, aspect is as you're adopting

AI- Are you clear as a business what you're not prepared to compromise on as

you go through that adoption process?

Um, and have you written that down, like how that is aligned to

your values and ways of working?

Because often at the moment, as I said before, the, the conversation's

focused a lot on tooling, and again, that could miss a lot of what we

care about as an organisation and that those ways of working for us.

So it sounds like then it's really important that as organisations,

they're clear on what values it is that they're expressing openly to everyone

and saying they want everyone to live by, and I'm guessing the behavior's

very much intertwined with that.

So some people listening or watching will already have very clear

values within their organisations.

Uh, some might not have any at all, and for others it may just

be that they're a bit tokenistic.

They're written down, but actually they're, they're not really being lived.

So I guess first of all, there's that whole piece around making sure

you have got that captured correctly and everyone's really on board

with it and really clear about it.

But then building on that, you're then telling us that actually, so

now we also need to be thinking about this within the context of AI

adoption within our organisation.

Just to drill down into that bit a bit more, are you able to share an example

of what that might actually look like?

I know you said actually write something down.

So is there an example you could share maybe that you've done with

a, with a client when you've gone in to support them with this on

what that might actually look like?

An obvious starting place might be your

hiring process, for example.

So there's a lot of conversation.

A lot of, you know, um, ATS providers are looking at how they build AI

into their workflows, but what comes with that is obviously some

understandable skepticism about what is that doing to our hiring process.

And I think a really important starting point then is before you, you know,

embark on thinking about how you build AI into your hiring process, what are

the principles that matter to you?

Where does, you know, the human in the loop really matter?

And being really clear on how you expect that to, to show

up throughout your process.

And then importantly, helping your candidates understand that too.

Mm-hmm.

So where do you expect your candidates to use AI, for example, and where would

you expect them not to be using AI?

Because it is there, it is accessible, and we need to help people understand

how we expect that to be used within our own organisations if they're

within it or looking to join it.

So I would start there, and I think- With everything we do, AI or, or otherwise,

when we're making the decisions about how we want that to look, how we want that to

feel for people when they're going through that process, is it reflecting those

values that you do have somewhere else?

Because like you say, Fay, the risk is that those values sit somewhere

else and they just become a bit performative perhaps, or they're,

they're there for small moments rather than shaping the decisions

we make about how we want to work.

So yes, I'd suggest, I'd suggest hiring's a good place to start because it's

also a really important p- place to start given that it is that shop window

into your, into your organisation.

Oh, I'm so pleased to ask you that question, 'cause I thought

you were going to say something completely different, Charlotte.

In, in my , in my mind I thought you were going to say something like, yes,

you have this overarching statement that says throughout the organisation when it

comes to AI adoption- We want, you know, we want everyone to do X, Y, Z. I hadn't,

um, expected you to laser down into a particular aspect, but I think that that

helps make it less daunting for people, and you can see how practical it is.

So just really making sure that any decisions that you're

making are being taken through that lens of values, I suppose.

And I really like your points about communicating to people outside

of the organisation as well.

It's not actually just an internal thing.

And I think that the point you make there is important

throughout all of this because it's about how we operationalise everything

that we care about as an organisation.

And the tendency can be to sit and fine-tune something that looks great

and, and, you know, says something quite grand, but then it- there's something

that disconnects between then how you actually operationalise it, and that's

the most important bit to get right because otherwise people's experience of

everything feels completely disconnected.

And that's where I think, you know, that what we say, what we do feels

like it gets further and further apart.

Oh my gosh.

I feel like I could now just talk to you about this one topic, this very

first foundation that we're , that we're covering for the whole episode.

I'm having to keep all of the questions inside that are, are leaping out at the

moment so that I can make sure we do manage to cover the whole framework.

So although I know lots of people might be thinking, "Ooh, Fay. Oh, Charlotte,

another question about this," I'm gonna be really disciplined and move

us along to the second foundation.

So can you remind us what was the second foundation and, yeah, talk us through it.

Yeah.

So the second foundation is clarity, and the, I

guess, the sequencing of this is that identity focuses on what's important

to you as an organisation, and clarity then makes that easily translatable

to every single person within your organisation, and they're aligned, and

they have a clear and straightforward view on what good looks like for them

in their role on a day-to-day basis and a, you know, week-to-week basis.

I think this is a really interesting space in terms of where we are right

now, and we have previously relied very heavily on job descriptions of varying

lengths, which are written before someone even joins the organisation

about what the role is going to be.

And then, I don't know, they might get aired once a year in your appraisal

or when you're looking for something, but are the opposite of dynamic.

And then if you consider where we are right now and how fast things are shifting

for people and what our expectations are, that job description feels like

it's losing its relevance in, in how we operate, and we need to provide

s- people with something more dynamic that reflects how things are changing.

And, you know, things aren't predictable.

What's important to us in one month might not be important in the next month.

So we've got to think about, as a f- as a profession, how do we set

up people in our organisations for success rather than leading to that

sense of confusion rather than clarity?

And my last few years working in-house was in consultancy environments, and

there's an interesting parallel because those sorts of environments have needed

something more dynamic for a while in that people will join, but they will do

very different roles working for clients.

And so we've had to solve for that problem for a few years now.

And what has worked well in those environments, and what I think we need

to now do across the board, is start with the skills and capabilities that we need

to deliver our strategy rather than the tasks that a person may do day to day.

And then we can build that shared understanding, shared

vocabulary about what's important to us across the organisation.

And I've had great success in terms of building that sense of shared

capabilities framework across functions.

So the reality is there are technical skills that you might need depending

on what you do, but those, those behaviors and attributes tend to be quite

common in terms of what you need from people within your specific business.

And importantly, what are those skills and attributes that you need

aligned to the strategy that you're trying to deliver as an organisation?

And so practically, I would suggest that everybody starts with, in that place, so

looking at your strategy as a business.

What do you need the humans in your team to be brilliant

at to deliver that strategy?

And what is AI going to handle in there?

And you can start to pick out the different skills.

And what we can see already is that critical thinking, judgment skills

are ones that are becoming ever more important as we work with AI.

So how do we question and critique what AI brings back to us?

And, and, and I think a really interesting challenge and, for organisations is,

how do you skill up people for judgment?

Because what tended to happen is that it was time and post that built that

judgment, and you did the work, and then you learn how to question the work.

But where AI is picking up that execution work now, how do we

skill people up in, in judgment?

It's gonna need different approaches and different learning interventions.

But the starting point is being really clear with everybody what we need to see,

what does great look like, so that you can start to help people understand that.

And then the other shift, I think, away from job descriptions is that we need

to get better at describing what we need from people in terms of the problems

that they're gonna solve, rather than the tasks that they may undertake.

Because again, we can probably do a better job at defining what that

problem is we think we need to solve that will be slightly steadier than

tasks that could shift really regularly.

So as most people listening or watching will work within HR, that

might be an easy function for me to ask you in the context of, because I

absolutely hear what you're saying, and I totally agree, and at the same time

it feels A bit, a bit scary, I suppose.

Yeah.

And I don't have to do any of this stuff in, in my current role, where

I don't actually work in HR anymore.

So to help bring it to life a little bit, let's imagine that I am an HR

director and I have an HR function.

So I have people working within it, perhaps a small team.

What would I actually be doing then?

Instead of giving everyone job descriptions, what would it look like?

Could you give us some examples of what some of these things might

be for the people in my team?

Things I've produced in, in, um, previous roles

have been a really simple framework that sets out the five or six attributes

or skills that are required across every role in the organisation.

And we talked about critical thinking.

That might be that.

It might be something like leadership.

It might be around commercial acumen.

But relevant to where you're going as a business, what are those skills that you

absolutely need across your entire team?

And working with your leadership team to really distill that

down as a starting point.

And then what I've built in those frameworks in the past has been levels

within that of, of, you know, what does that look like at an entry level?

What does it look like as you, as you progress through the organisation?

And defining that for people so that they can see, right, okay, this is the sort

of experience that I need to be showing at my level, and then thinking about

the sorts of, you know, work that you might do that, that demonstrates that.

What that's likely going to lead to are functional descriptions of, of what does

great look like within HR as an example.

Let's, let's think about that.

And that could be the sorts of technical skills that you would expect

to see across your team But then importantly, w- what are the other

things that they need to do day to day?

How do they operate?

So it's more around that how than the what, I suppose, because

the what is so changeable.

But what that needs, that, that kind of skills framework needs to have something

coupled with it that gives you that, "This week, this month, these are the

things I need to focus on." And I know through some of your previous shows, Fay,

you focused on, like, the OKR framework.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and that sort of thing can work really well at

going, "Right, okay, on a quarterly basis, what do we care about as a team?

What are the rocks that we are trying to shift, and what are the indicators

for us that we are, that we're doing that?" Which then helps give you

that guide of, "Well, if I'm not…

If the work I'm doing today doesn't really affect any of those, those

goals, should I be doing it?" And having that conversation.

Mm-hmm.

But that quarterly cadence feels much more sensible for where we

are at the moment, rather than that long job, job description.

Well, it's great to know that you are listening

to other episodes, Charlotte.

Thank you for bringing them up now, because, yes, if you're listening or

watching right now and thinking, "What are these OKRs of which Charlotte

speaks?" They stand for objectives and key results, and I think it's an

incredibly helpful framework for us to be using within the HR profession.

And I have got, I've got my phone here, which has got the list of

all of my episodes on it, 'cause I can never remember what any of the

episode titles or numbers are anymore now that there are so many of them.

So if when you've finished watching this one, you fancy hopping back

to listen to some others that explain OKRs in more detail, the

first time I talked about it was

for episode 164, and the title of that is Becoming More Strategic As

An HR Team, Three Ways OKRs Can Help.

And then I talked about them again with a guest, Dean Corbett, and that was

for episode 166, which was The Biggest HR Strategy Mistake And How To Fix It.

So brief interruption of the main part of the episode just to mention

those ones as well, and I hope that if you do decide to listen to or watch

those ones, that you really enjoy it.

But coming back to you, Charlotte, it's really helpful.

Thank you for talking that through in so much detail.

I could already picture in my mind, right, okay, yes, I'm beginning to see

how I could be mapping this all out if I was heading up an HR function.

I can see how it would all be really helpful.

But again, although I could ask you so many more questions about that, I better

move us along to the third foundation.

So can you remind us what is your third foundation, and what should we

all be doing- Yes … um, if we want to embrace this third foundation?

So the third one is enablement.

And- One of the very first HR directors that I worked for talked about times

where initiatives that we launch perhaps could hit the mark but miss the point,

and that phrase has always really stuck with me, where we put so much effort in,

so much thought, but it ends up not having the impact that we might have hoped.

And I can still recall some very painful moments in my, um,

career where I've got this wrong.

Great intentions all the way through But I had got lost in the

HR perspective on something perhaps.

And in my experience, the success of any initiatives that I have launched

has always rested on how well we take the manager community on the journey.

I think that managers are probably our most critical and most overlooked

foundation, and they are core to how we enable the clarity and

our identity across our teams.

As a HR profession, our community of managers that we work with are our

most powerful ally and lever in, in how we can shape and guide culture.

But it is so often a community that doesn't necessarily get

the attention it deserves.

And I am gonna refer to one of your other episodes, Fay, and it was

one of your most recent ones, uh, talking to Aoife about culture.

And I was staggered about how many people move into manager

positions and have had no support in, in developing that skill set.

And even where organisations do provide some of that, uh, support to

managers, they probably haven't updated what's provided in quite a while.

And AI is really shifting the expectations for managers.

It is creating this, I think, potential cognitive load crisis for all of us,

and I think managers are facing that probably really acutely at the moment.

They need to support their teams through uncertainty change, help

provide, you know, clarity to them on what to focus on, what we've

just, you know, been talking about.

But they also need to answer all the questions that the teams might have

about what does this AI adoption mean for me, whilst also going

through that as an individual too.

And I, I think that this always starts with defining what does

great people management look like within your organisation.

Because if you've worked in more than one workplace, you've probably seen

more than one style of management.

And different things work for different environments.

And so there's… We have to make sure that we don't fall into that

trap of assuming that as soon as you become a manager, that people

know exactly what that means.

And I think as we define what management looks like, this is where the work

that we've done under identity really flows through in helping

shape what do we expect to see.

And I would define that literally against our, our values that we have in place.

And then also build a simple rhythm of, of management expectations that,

that you expect to see that makes sure that you provide space for your people.

And I talked about management development, and I think we really

need to quickly adapt our, our support for managers, deliver management

training today that give them support on the topics that are probably being,

feeling quite noisy for them today.

So We've talked about critical thinking.

How do we skill up our managers to coach people for critical thinking?

It's a whole new skill, so how do we provide them with that, that

knowledge and, and capability?

How do we help them feel confident to create psychologically safe

environments for their team so that they can constructively challenge

or question decisions that our organisations are making around AI?

It can feel quite difficult, I think, at the moment to, to, to raise a question

of concern and go against the, you know, this tidal wave of, of enthusiasm.

But we should… We want people to be critically thinking.

We need to provide those environments for them to do it.

And then importantly, how, how to build great collaboration to make

sure that the human-to-human work doesn't get lost along the way.

So I really would encourage everybody listening to sit down and it, it just, you

know, spend a bit of time today thinking, "Does everybody know what great management

looks like across this organisation?

And do we feel that it's aligned to our values and what

we care about as a business?"

Yeah.

The episode that you mentioned where Aoife was talking about culture, and she

shared a statistic that said just how many managers and leaders have received no

training about being a manager or leader.

That is episode 173, and is called How to Build a Better Workplace

Culture So People Thrive at Work.

And it's really shocking when you hear that statistic.

I'm not gonna repeat it now 'cause I am awful at remembering numbers, so I'll

probably get it completely wrong and make it even worse than it probably is.

But it did leave me thinking, gosh, why is it still the case?

Because from everything you've just shared, I think we'll all be…

I certainly was nodding along, I think, uh, visibly in front

of you and also on the inside, like, yes, it's just so obvious.

Managers are such a critical piece of the puzzle.

But despite us all knowing that is the case, what do you think's

going on that means that so many organisations aren't actually

proactively developing their managers?

What's the mismatch here between everyone knowing we need to have good

managers, but actually then not putting the supports in place and the training

and development in place for them?

It's a great question, and I think it's probably multifaceted.

So I think there is time, is, you know, and I think a, a thread that runs through

all of, of, of these foundations for me is how do we create the structures that

free us up as a, a profession as well to focus in on work that really matters?

So by building the right, the right operating system, we can, we can

provide ourselves with more time because we, we know that we are

a really time-poor profession.

We're always really stretched, and I think that does always feature.

I think it's also really easy to just assume that a great person that you have

within your business moving into a manager role is gonna be great, and we've probably

all done it at, at one point or another and thought, "Oh, they'll be brilliant."

Um, and that person inwardly might be thinking, "Mm, I really would quite like

some, some guidance." So, so the wrong assumptions, I think, also drive it.

And then also I've, you know, across my career, perhaps at points worked myself

and then also with teams where don't necessarily feel equipped to build those

skills in our teams, and we know we struggle for investment to always bring

somebody else in to support us with it.

And so where it rests on us as a team, is it something that

we're confident ourselves doing?

And, and perhaps we with, with, like we've talked about, complexity of it, we

make it into something really big that we need to deliver, rather than, I think,

you know- How could we strip it way back?

And I think if you did just a couple of things with your, your community of people

managers, it would make a huge difference.

One of those, you know, work out what a great one-to-one looks like,

and then skill people up to be able to run a really great one-to-one.

And then also, you know, s- start to help people feel more confident

about having difficult conversations.

And these are the things that we do day in, day out, so we do know this.

We, we're able to turn that into materials to support our people.

And I think, you know, people themselves don't have huge amounts of time, so

if we can make those quite short, snappy workshops that we bring people

in together, and then also record some of our training, have it on demand,

create playbooks, do small things.

And I think that's a, that's a really key message with all of this, in that

it can feel massively overwhelming when you think, "Oh my goodness, I need

to do all of this stuff." But picking off one thing that perhaps you do

differently can make a big difference.

I think that's a very reassuring key message about not

worrying about doing something that's absolutely perfect and ticks off

every single box, but just starting small is still doing something.

I know that in my HR career, I could definitely get sidetracked by thinking,

"Oh, it's gotta be perfect and really well thought out and researched," and then

that means that I wouldn't necessarily get it done, or it would just take forever

to get something off of the ground.

So a great practical takeaway for us all.

And yeah, I could easily morph this into a whole conversation

about management, but I won't.

I won't, because we have still got two foundations to cover, I think.

So I better move us along to the next foundation, the fourth one.

Can you remind us what was that foundation, and what do you think

we should be doing about it?

So next up is recognition.

So we've defined what great looks like.

We've got, you know, managers in place who are able to support

their teams to, to deliver that.

Recognition is actually how do we make sure that when we see that behavior, we

reward people and recognise people for it.

And so I talk a lot around our approaches to performance in this space, and most

of our performance systems were built to measure output and execution, and AI

is now handling a lot of that volume.

So what, what do we recognise now in that changed world is

a really important question.

It's definitely time, in my opinion, to overhaul the approach to appraisals.

Long been a champion of doing something a bit different.

We know that it just takes up huge amounts of time across

our businesses, and that, like, effort-to-reward ratio feels way off.

I do think as well, I mentioned before around the cognitive burden

that AI can create for people, it's, you know, really exciting.

People can deliver things so much faster than we could before, but

it's also exhausting simultaneously.

That context switching that people are doing now day to day is, is enormous.

And so if we keep our performance and feedback systems talking to people, what?

Once or twice a year, that's really gonna miss those signals of, of

trying to understand what is, you know, what's going on for people.

And I mentioned before, I think one of the most important things you can

do in a business is just work out a really great one-to-one cadence,

and I think that's really important here in, in recognition as well.

So what does that real time approach to recognition look like, and how do

we make sure that people can surface genuine issues, uh, within it?

And then- How do we recognise the behaviors and the great performance that

we want to see in our organisations?

And I think progression and what that looks like is also going to shift, and

we need to, as a, as a HR profession, think about, ugh, how do we maybe start

to let go of the, the kind of leveled hierarchical career frameworks that we

have sat with for our careers so far?

And one of the conversations I've been having with people is around actually

how do we recognise depth of skill progression within levels rather than

it always being about how does, uh, progression mean level progression?

'Cause I think some of that is, is going to shift.

And when we think about the judgment, those skills that we want to see

from people, that, that really recognises that depth again.

There's a real cost, I think, of us continuing to do this in,

in the way that we always have.

We will risk rewarding the wrong things.

We also know the pain of inconsistent recognition and reward within our

profession when that happens across our businesses, and the time that that takes

for us to unpick when that happens.

And also, I think the sustainability, uh, side of AI adoption is, is really

important, and much better, more frequent approaches to, to this will help us

support our teams as they deal with this really changing cognitive impact.

Listening to you talk about the recognition piece- I think it

really helps drive home the fact that this framework, your five foundations

framework, is one that is going to help everybody regardless of the AI piece.

It's something that, you know, you can see it in every single foundation that

you're sharing, but I think it really came through for me vividly just then.

And then last but not least, we're onto the final foundation.

Can you remind us again, what was that final foundation, and what

do you think we should all be doing when it comes to this one?

So final one is operations, and this is the infrastructure

that means everything else that you've spent the time building actually sticks.

And I've seen so many examples where, you know, amazing investment goes into

building, you know, people approaches, but then it's let down by inconsistency

or unpredictability of the operation that actually runs everything.

And there's an obvious gap here where AI can help us for, for efficiency.

But I guess my callout here is to just make sure that we consider the

human and experience lens to our people processes as we think about

how AI for HR can, can support us.

And the risk is that we automate away the, the human experience that we've

worked so hard to build, and that trust that we, you know, have shaped and,

and built within our organisations.

It's not just about can we make this faster, but does it still feel like

it's delivering something valuable and delivered by humans for humans?

But importantly, when operations works well, that friction can disappear.

But where it's not working well, that's where we see our teams ending

up stuck in admin and then missing out on being on, you know, going, going

right back to the start of this episode around getting into the right rooms.

Where our operations aren't working well, that's when we miss those moments because

we're stuck doing the, the wrong work.

And we have fragility that might be within those systems that depend on, you know,

this person needs to be around for this to actually happen 'cause they remember

to do it, and if they're not here, then it all starts to, to break down.

So yeah, my, my, my ask to everybody today, I suppose, on this side, is to just

think about your most critical processes.

And often they are things like our onboarding and off-boarding processes.

And mentally map one of those end to end and look for those moments where actually,

if the one person who knows how to do that's not around, does it not happen?

And they're the bits to focus in on first and think, right, okay, how can I

make sure that this feels much more, um, predictable, is automated when it's right

to do so, but still considers the human that will experience that at the end?

Again, I love that you've given us that really practical tip

of choosing one thing because as you were talking, I was nodding along in

person and on the inside, but also thinking, "Oh my gosh, this feels

like it could be such a big thing."

And it's not just something that affects the HR function either.

It's like operations across the entire organisation.

So it's reassuring to have that very practical takeaway, that very

practical tip of, okay, let's, let's map out one thing and, and

see where the blockers might be.

Or of course, perhaps, uh, switch back to the AI for HR part and think, okay, how

can we be utilising AI to optimise this?

And Sadly, that, that means that we're at the end of talking about

your fabulous five foundations.

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us all about them today.

I am going to ask you for a book recommendation, but before I do that,

first of all, I know that there'll be some people listening or watching thinking,

"How could I have Charlotte in my life?

Please, can she come in and help us with this?

I know how valuable it would be," because you do offer HR consultancy and fractional

chief people officer services, don't you?

So for anyone listening or watching who thinks, "This is great, but I wonder if I

could actually get some hands-on support with Charlotte rather than just relying

on the episode today," what is the best way of them finding out more about your

work and getting in touch with you?

Yeah, thanks, Fay.

I think start with the really important thing that we've hopefully

seeded throughout here is you don't need to do all of this at once.

And, and, you know, it's about prioritising.

So what I've done is I've tried to build some tools that help to, to do that, and I

have ones that I d- I use when I'm working with clients, but I've also created

a free-to-access, short, 15-question diagnostic survey which will help give

you a view on where your foundational strength might be at the moment and

where you might want to focus in on.

So I'll make sure I send a link to you, Fay, which can go into the show notes of

where people can access that, that tool.

I then also can operate as a thought partner for people leaders, so my

website is thepeoplethread.co.uk where you can find a bit more out

about me there, or also on LinkedIn.

Please drop me a message.

And for anyone listening or watching right now, a- as Charlotte

said, I'll make sure I put links to everything in the show notes, or if

you're watching the video version, they'll be in the description

underneath the YouTube video as well.

So that means I'm gonna ask you, do you have a book recommendation or a resource

that you could share with us all today?

I do.

I have two, I'm afraid, and I have them both next to me.

So, um, for anybody watching, first up is HR Disrupted by Lucy Adams,

which I read quite a few years ago now, but I still recommend it to

anybody who has not read it yet.

I think the framework in there is still as relevant, if not more, than

it was when, when Lucy wrote it.

And her framework is around treating employees as adults,

human beings, and consumers.

And w- All those things are so important, and it played such a

massive role in my own approach to, to practicing HR that I think it's a

really great read for, for everybody.

And then the other one that I would recommend is by Jessica

Swan, uh, Built For People.

I really enjoy reading everything that Jessica puts together.

She's had some really interesting experience across HR roles and

also COO roles, so brings a really interesting perspective.

But this is all focused around taking a product lens to how we design

employee experience, which again, I think is, is super relevant to

everything that we've discussed today.

Thank you for sharing those great resources, along with sharing

all of your wisdom with us today.

It has been amazing having you join me and join everyone listening

and watching on HR Coffee Time.

Thank you so much, Charlotte, for being here.

Thank you, Fay.

I've really enjoyed chatting to you.

Thank you for inviting me.

Oh, you're very welcome, and I hope we'll get

to catch up again very soon.

I hope you enjoyed meeting Charlotte and learning about her

Five People Foundations framework.

One of the biggest things that I'm taking away from the conversation

with her is that bringing AI into an organisation isn't just about

choosing the right technology or helping people work more efficiently.

It also affects jobs, skills, managers, culture, and the way that work gets done.

And because of that, HR has such an important part to

play in shaping all of it.

I also really liked Charlotte's reminder that you don't have to try to tackle

everything that she talked about at once.

Just choosing one area to focus on and taking one practical step forward

can still make a real difference.

You'll find links to Charlotte's website, her free diagnostic tool, and the books

that she recommended in the show notes or in the description on YouTube underneath

this video if you're watching on YouTube.

And if you enjoyed this episode and would like to listen to another one

about AI that approaches it from a slightly different angle, then you

might want to listen to episode 172.

If you found today's episode helpful, I would be so grateful if you could

share it with a friend or a colleague, or even maybe post about it on LinkedIn

and recommend other people check it out, because these are some of the best

ways of helping HR Coffee Time reach more people who might find it useful.

That brings us to the end of today's episode.

I will look forward to being back again in two weeks' time with the next one for you.

Take care in the meantime.