HR Strategy & Best Practices

Hi All,You don’t need to feel alone or like you’re winging it when supporting someone on parental leave. Organisations often have great intentions but little guidance and without the right structure and clarity, things can start to unravel fast: Parents feel disconnected, managers feel unsure, and you're at risk of losing your best talent.... To support HR/People Leadership teams, I am running a practical, insight-packed FREE session to help:  ✨ Get a clear understanding of the challenges faced by parents during leave and return✨ Gain insight into the business risks of poor transition support✨ Take away practical strategies to help create smoother return-to-work experiences✨ Understand recent legislative changes and what they actually mean in practice Because when you get this right, everyone wins: parents feel valued, leaders feel confident, and organisations keep their best people. Please do join if you can!  💥 Link to register here  https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/okbNqpp7

New AI regulations are coming, and they’re set to change how organisations manage people, platforms, and data. With the EU AI Act now in motion, the time to prepare is now. On 27th November I’ll be running a free webinar to provide an overview of the legislation. This concise, high-impact session will cut through the noise and explain the steps your organisation can take to stay compliant and be operationally ready.        Date: 27th November 2025       Time: 12:00 – 12:45 (GMT)       Where: Live online – register here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/understanding-the-eu-ai-act-key-insights-for-businesses-tickets-1772694550119?aff=oddtdtcreator (link provided once you register)  In just 45 minutes, you’ll learn how to:Understand and navigate the new risk categories and compliance requirements under the EU AI Act. Build governance frameworks that protect your organisation. Equip your teams to manage AI responsibly at scale.This se

Dear community,At the company I work for, employees are eligible for a Learning & Development budget of €1,000 per year. This budget can be used for anything related to professional development, and we’ve set up an approval process through HR. We use Monday.com to keep track of requests.Currently, the administration (HR + Finance) is still managed in a spreadsheet.Does anyone here have a similar process and a more efficient workflow or process setup that works well for them?Thanks in advance for your input!Best,Britt

Build stronger people practices with your dedicated HR mentor Hi Personio-Community, I’m Elisabeth from the Personio Foundation.At the Personio Foundation, we help forward‑thinking nonprofits build resilient HR processes so their teams can thrive and their impact can grow. People practices shouldn’t be a luxury. Through People Partner for Good (PP4G), nonprofits get matched with experienced HR experts for practical, hands-on mentorship. If you want to strengthen hiring, onboarding, performance, culture, or leadership - this program is for you. What you’ll getA 1:1 mentorship with an experienced HR professional who understands nonprofit context You can set the focus you need: talent acquisition, onboarding, performance, policies, leadership enablement, or culture Practical resources from the Personio Foundation: templates, checklists, and guidance you can apply immediately A learning partner who keeps you accountable and helps you make steady progress Who it’s forNonprofits of all sizes

Organisations in 2025 have something that we previously didn’t often see, or rather we didn’t acknowledge. Although historically, companies have always had employees ranging within various age groups, what we observe today that sets them apart are labels that categorise each group of employees. Let’s face it, our workplace is like our own little ecosystem and very much like we did in high school or university, here too we end up having our “cliques” where we automatically gravitate towards people that we have things in common with. Much like the foundation of any friendship, this is how we also make friends in the workplace. In light of this, referring to various generations based on their age groups like the younger generation as “genz” or senior colleagues as “boomer” has become common practice and this often affects the way in which we interact with them. Of course from a diversity perspective acknowledging that various age groups exist is important but this sometimes turns out to b

A friend recently asked me why companies still require people to make a telephone call to ‘call in in sick’. This got me thinking, most of the absence notification procedures I see in my capacity as an HR consultant still state that if a colleague is sick that the process they should follow is to make a telephone call personally to their line manager, and in most cases there is a minimum time allowance also mentioned for example 2 hours before they are due to start work.The policy of telephoning in sick has it’s origins back when HR, or should I say Personnel operated in a more rules enforcement capacity and we were mainly responsible for hiring and firing and often got the reputation of the work police, which in my personal opinion had some warrant (excuse the pun).At that time the telephone was the most efficient way to communicate quickly, so it made sense to ask for notification that way, but we’ve come a long way since then.Can you think of the last time you called someone to tell

Our lab was testing constrained LLM architectures when we realized something surprising: by redefining how the AI “thinks,” we could structurally prevent bias — not just detect it.So we googled and realized it could be useful to HR, and we had Claude AI make some fake JD’s and resumes that it said was loaded with biases and….it worked.Instead of filtering or training the AI, we have managed to erase demographic and proxy bias (names, schools, ZIP codes) at the cognitive level. It’s pretty cool. Testing shows near-100% blocking of known bias vectors, with full audit trails.We tried to make a demo video comparing the base model with one with this...firewall...we are calling it. It’s here, if you’re interested.But...now what? We’re not an HR company. We weren’t even really focusing on this. But it strips away all prestige/race/class/gender biases and evaluates strictly on merit, and that seems pretty importantIs this valuable to practitioners? Should we be talking to compliance teams, pro

It’s summer and many of us will be dipping our toes in the joys of holiday adventures with friends and family. With the regeneration of rest and the loving attention of those who matter to us, we can rediscover parts of ourselves that communicate our values and beliefs, more easily accessing loving kindness and the joy of being alive, even the tricky bits.I’m choosing to give inequality, human suffering  and stress a wide birth this month, in favour of a topic that attracts little attention in management development training. Kindness and its relevance to management skill. Many would lump it in with all the other so-called SOFT SKILLS. A term that triggers fury in me when used to refer to interpersonal skills and communication. It seems to hold negative valence, along with nurturing, empathy and care. Is it coincidental that such characteristics are often unconsciously perceived as feminine? Let’s not go there right now, because I’d like to talk about your innate capacity for kindness

Why wouldn’t we feel scared, anxious and distracted when we open up our screen each day, given the world we’re living in? By expecting your people to side-line core common truths in favour of weekly targets will have its consequences. Namely, deteriorating mental health, translating in diminishing ability to work collaboratively and with an availability to creative joint endeavour. Not to mention the fuelling of inevitable misunderstandings and conflict in the team. We like to believe we are separate from others, and that work operates independently from the bigger truths.For once, I’d like to reflect on how our external truths (Gaza, Ukraine, Trump, welfare reform, NHS crises) impact on how we work, how we relate to each other and our mental health. We try our best to draw a line between the messy mush we can feel inside as we start a new working day, because we are paid to perform, to meet targets and to excel in our roles. Or to appear to excel at least. At the same time, there’s be

Every working parent is already thinking about September - even before the summer holidays have even begun.That back-to-school prep starts way before term begins….They’re thinking about: Uniforms to buy (again) Shoes that don’t fit (again) School forms Wraparound care Drop offs & Pick Ups Emotional transitions The mental load is relentless. And for parents, it’s not just a few admin tasks -  it’s a full-on project management operation, layered on top of work.And yes, it will seep into work - how can it not? As a self-employed working parent I can flex, adjust, and plan around what’s coming. Most employees don’t have that luxury.  They’re working within systems that weren’t built for this kind of invisible load, let alone designed to support it. What does this mean for employers? Working parents are already carrying a heavy cognitive load that’s invisible, relentless, and largely unspoken. And while most don’t expect their employer to fix the juggle, the support you offer in moments

Dear Community,We’re currently exploring the possibility of offering employees the flexibility to swap a few public (bank) holidays throughout the year. Some public holidays are religious in nature, and some employees may prefer to take a day off for occasions such as Eid al-Fitr or Keti Koti instead of, for example, Pentecost.  We already foresee a bit of an administrative hassle for this, so we are wondering if there are companies that have this benefit and can tell me how you approach this? Thanks in advance for your advice! 

Hello HR leaders!How are you? No, really - how are you? 🤗Next Thursday, we’ll spend two hours together with the hope of truly connecting and creating a space where you can share your experiences, feel inspired, and simply… just be.As HR leaders, we’re so often focused on supporting others that we sometimes forget: we’re human too. Carrying the stress and responsibility of our organisations comes at a cost - emotionally, mentally, even physically. So, how do we take care of ourselves as well?The reality is that today, change is the only constant. We live in an unpredictable world - economically, politically, socially - which can shift the direction of our organisations and priorities overnight. How do we build resilience in ourselves and our teams to navigate this collective uncertainty? Whether it’s missing goals, managing layoffs, or handling the thousand small things that come our way daily, the pressure is real.I believe it starts by creating a sense of psychological safety. People

As a writer, I’ve always held a certain bias against generative AI tools and often refused to use them for my work whether it be within academic writing, content writing or creative writing. Then a few friends, colleagues and even family members of mine pointed out that AI can be used for more than just paraphrasing, copy-pasting and most importantly, as a substitute for our jobs! This got me thinking more on the subject and after doing some research I was pleasantly surprised by the impact that AI has had with its myriad of functions. Turns out instead of using it as a shortcut, “commanding” it to provide us with information and finish work, it can be used as a useful tool to engage in smart work. In fact, I’ve heard many people call AI their omnipresent colleague. Don’t get me wrong, I am not here to promote AI. Quite the opposite actually. As I have recently discovered, to the best of my knowledge AI is in fact not out to get our jobs but can be used as a “friend” rather than a comp

Who we are and how we work are one and the same. At least, this is true when equity and authenticity are explicit in the values  and practices of the workplace. And when I say values, I’m alluding to something more than mission statements, written policies and statutory staff training modules. The truth I’m more familiar with has been the need to mask who I am in order to comply with the social norms of the workplace thereby putting a lot of energy into avoiding encountering ignorance and discrimination at best, bullying and abuse at worst. At the same time, I have benefitted from several privileges within the same social constructs. Opportunities have come to me as a white able-bodied man educated for free during a brief political climate of social justice, new equality legislation and social policy. I continue to feel very grateful to my forebears who put their heads above the parapet to speak up for what is good and right, risking loss of personal safety, job security and the suppor

So, in a recent workshop I ran on parental support in the workplace, I asked three questions:Do you have a parental leave policy?    ……..Every hand went up. Do you have a strategy to support returners?……..A couple of hands stayed raised. Do you track what happens after leave — retention, progression, employee experience?…..Not a single hand left.It’s a pattern I see again and again because people assume a policy equals support. BUT, unless you’re measuring well it’s working, it’s just good intentions …isn’t it?Data is what turns those good intentions into real, meaningful change. I believe that without it, we can’t see what’s working, what’s performative, or where the challenges are….Last week I went to a Personio event on “From Numbers to Narratives” (not an ad -  it was genuinely excellent), and one line stuck with me:“Instinct is just another data point. Don’t let it lead the whole story.”Too many organisations rely on ‘vibes’. If no one’s loudly complaining, they assume the support

Hi Community, Currently we have an employee that might change to a Team Lead role. This person has a permanent contract and we are wondering if we can offer this employee something like an addendum or new contract to make sure we have a bit of a probation/trial period.How do you usually do this in your company?

At a recent workplace wellbeing event, I had some brilliant conversations with HR leaders about parental support. I was encouraged to see just how many people wanted to better support their working parents and returners. But....I wasn’t surprised to hear how many felt unsure about the how.From all the companies i spoke to I saw that the intention was there but the action plan wasn’t. So I thought I’d help with a few learnings and insights from my work, but I’d be keen to hear if you agree/disagree:A common misconception I see is that treating returners “just like everyone else” will help them feel included. It sounds supportive but in fact it misses the mark: We don’t want them to 'slot back in like nothings' changed ' - because it has. Parenthood shifts your priorities, perspectives, and your sense of self - but it also sharpens key skills: resilience, emotional intelligence, time management, strategic thinking (I could go on… and I often do!).In fact, it makes you even more skilled a