Welcome to HR Disrupted, the podcast where Lucy Adams and guests reimagine traditional HR practices for a more agile, people-centric future. Each episode dives into innovative approaches for leaders and HR professionals, offering practical advice on leadership, employee engagement, and organisational culture. As CEO of Disruptive HR, the go-to agency for innovative people practices for the last ten years, Lucy brings fresh perspectives and solutions to the ever-changing challenges of modern…
In this episode of HR Disrupted, Lucy Adams is joined by Andy Doyle, Chief People and Agent Officer at Kantar. While much of the conversation around AI focuses on hype or fear, Andy shares a grounded, practical perspective on how Kantar has embedded AI agents into the heart of its HR operations. Lucy and Andy dig into why Kantar chose to take this path and how their ambitions evolved along the…
n this episode, Lucy Adams is joined by Eva Murciano to explore one of the biggest challenges facing organisations today: how to keep careers moving in environments where people stay for a long time. Drawing on Eva’s experience at the European Central Bank, they unpack the tension between having a highly committed, purpose-driven workforce and the unintended consequences of low turnover;…
In this episode, Lucy Adams and Karen Moran take stock of the people and work trends that are likely to shape 2026. Drawing on what they’re seeing across organisations right now, they focus on the changes that genuinely matter for HR and leaders, from shifting employee expectations to the growing pressure on organisations to operate with greater trust and transparency. They explore how ideas about…
HR doesn’t struggle with not having enough data - we’ve got tons of it. Engagement scores, churn and absenteeism rates, performance ratings, DEI metrics - the works. But can we honestly say we’re brilliant at using that data to drive our people strategies? The answer is probably, “not yet.” So, this episode explores how we can get better at turning data into real insight and how that insight can…
Lucy and Karen get honest about one of HR’s toughest challenges: helping leaders and managers actually change how they behave. Drawing on their own “humiliations” as former HR Directors, they unpack why influencing senior leaders can feel so hard – from fear of getting it wrong, to loss of status, to simple overload – and introduce four familiar resistance types: the Defiant, the Intellectual, the…
One of the biggest challenges facing HR is the perennial challenge of leadership capability. Despite years of investment in programmes, frameworks, and workshops, many organisations still struggle to see real behavioural change. The world around us is moving faster, the expectations on leaders are higher, and yet our development approaches can still feel generic, theoretical, and removed from the…
As we know - AI isn’t something that’s coming in the future — it’s already here, and it’s already reshaping how we hire, develop and engage our people. The pace of change can feel daunting at times, but the big challenge for us in HR is how we shift from dabbling with new tools to really using AI as a strategic enabler. In this episode, Lucy explores the key opportunities and risks — from ethics…
In HR we have always tended to prefer standardisation. The instinct to make everything and to treat everyone in the same way comes from a mixture of practicality, compliance, and tradition. Standardisation makes processes easier to administer at scale, creates the appearance of fairness, and reduces the risks of inconsistency. For HR teams under pressure to manage large workforces efficiently,…
In this episode, Lucy digs into one of the big questions right now: if most organisations have landed on hybrid, why does it still feel so clunky? Ranya Nehmeh, senior HR strategist, lecturer and co-author of In Praise of the Office: The Limits to Hybrid and Remote Work - joins to unpack why many hybrid set-ups deliver the “messy middle”: full calendars, half-empty offices and confused norms. She…
Whilst we’re seeing tons of innovation in some of the key employee processes, reward and recognition can often be put in the ‘too difficult’ box. Recognition efforts often lack differentiation and are just vanilla or one-size-fits-all, and flexible benefits packages, meant to deliver choice, can too often feel overwhelming or unclear to employees. This week’s guest Rachel Richards, Reward and…