Name: Delivering HR Differently: Why Change Fails — and How HR Can Make It Stick
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T16:16:11.679Z
Duration: 57 min 16 s
Description: Delivering HR Differently: Why Change Fails — and How HR Can Make It Stick

Transcript for "Delivering HR Differently: Why Change Fails — and How HR Can Make It Stick": Hi, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar. We'll just give it a few minutes to, let everybody finish joining. But while we wait, feel free to drop into the chat where you're joining from. If you're willing to share maybe one thing that's changing the fastest in your organization right now. My name is Bruce Warcraft. I'm the director of solutions engineering at Betterworks, and I'll be hosting today's session for everyone. For those less familiar with Better Works, we partner with HR leaders and turn performance activities from measurable into, sorry, into measurable business outcomes, helping organizations to align priorities, enable managers, and sustain momentum through continuous performance practices. Today's conversation centers around a simple tension. The pace of work has changed, but HR delivery often hasn't. Organizations are moving faster than ever. Priorities shift, expectations evolve, technology accelerates, yet many HR delivery models are still built around annual cycles, heavy governance, and programs designed for everyone, or as I refer to it, one size fits none. So today, we're exploring what it really means to deliver HR differently. To start off, just a little bit of light housekeeping before we begin. We wanna make sure that this session is really interactive, so please make use of the chat throughout and ask any questions that you can think of. We'll try and reflect on them and and bring them into the discussions as they happen as much as we can. We'll also run a couple of live polls during the events today. They'll just pop up for you. You'll be asked to respond to a question, and we'll give you the results as we go through. You'll also find, at the top right of your screen, access to some resources in the document section of your screen. It's just if you click in there, you should see those resources. But, importantly, this session is being recorded, and we will share the information with you afterwards. So you'll have access to that shortly after the session. Our intention today is to keep this conversational. Lucy will bring her knowledge to bear to anchor things, and then I'm going to give you a couple of short product related use cases just to bring some of those practical examples into the discussion that takes place. What these specific things are, I'm not actually sure about because it will depend on where the discussion takes us today. We're keep it nice and fluid. But first of all, let's get down to business. I'm very delighted to welcome Lucy Adams. Lucy is the CEO of Disruptive HR and the former HR director at the BBC. One sec. She's worked with some of the world's most recognized brands and is the best selling author of HR Disrupted and the HR Change Toolkit. She's known for challenging conventional HR thinking and helping leaders rethink how HR shows up in modern organizations. So as we bring Lucy in, we're gonna just launch the first poll. Hello, Lucy. Nice to see Bruce. It's lovely to see you and also to see so many people joining from all over the place. I've just noticed somebody from Transylvania. That's. pretty impressive, isn't it? That's very impressive. That's probably one of the most exotic ones I've seen for a while. A big welcome to everybody. And as Bruce says, you know, it'd be great to have as many questions and thoughts from you as as possible. Let's make it as interactive as we can. So we're we're seeing the the poll poll results as they come through. And and whilst they're coming in, Lucy, I'd actually just like to turn to you and ask you the same question. When you're looking at the organizations that you work with, would you say there's a common theme to where they often stall when they're trying to make changes in the HR areas? Yeah. I mean I would say all three of them in my experience, you know. I have been responsible for launching and failing consistently with change management programs. Right? So it doesn't surprise me that the results as they're coming through really support that. And I think that, you know, it's that kind of you have all sorts of good intentions, don't you? You have these fantastic ideas, leaders get really excited. You do the frequently asked questions scripts and the and you have the big launch. And then actually the day job just gets in the way. and there's a whole host of reasons why we, you know, we can get into that. But I think that my sense would be that there's usually a lot of energy in the initial stages of change Sure. and then that kind of, you know, reality hits, day job interferes, perhaps the change wasn't perhaps as quite as you envisaged and that sort of, you know, that fatigue sets in and gradually it sort of dissipates. I think that would that would definitely be my experience. Yeah. Yeah. I've definitely seen that myself. I think one of the challenges I've often noticed with these kind of big transformations that people try and do is that HR does have a tendency to live in its own little bubble sometimes. And often, they'll try and seek feedback from people in the HR environment about how the HR changes is impacting the company rather than reaching out to the wider business. And and that often is where I've seen some of these challenges happen where people just kind of they they all congratulate themselves on work well done within the HR teams, but, actually, business isn't getting what it needs. People aren't anchoring that change into actual business requirements. But also I think to be a little protective of my own profession here, Bruce. I think quite often when we're putting together a change case or a business case to leaders, leaders are saying, engaging with it on an intellectual level and they're going absolutely, we want this. We want save time. We want to improve productivity. We want to increase performance. We want to do whatever it is, know, raise the levels of innovation. But they're not engaging with it on the sense of what does this mean I need to do differently. So. they love what it looks like on paper. And then, I mean I've had this where you know, you've had leaders say to me, oh absolutely, we must be doing this. And then a few weeks down the line you're saying so that means you need to change how you behave and how you act. And it's like woah, hadn't anticipated that. So I think there's the business case, there's the changes it looks like on paper and then there's the reality. And I think those days of a change program being so nicely mapped out and we had a beginning, a middle and an end and we had it all on a nice graph or a Gantt chart and we would have, you know, behavioral change happening miraculously as a result of all our inputs. I just don't need change like that. I just don't think it's linear. I don't think it's easy. It's filled with human emotion and ego and sensitivities and fear and anxiety and all of that stuff. And that's really hard then to program for. So I think that for all sorts of reasons, which I'm sure we'll get into, I think there are things that we can do in HR to make sure that it's not just a nice neat business case that. the board or the exec team nod and say, yeah, we want all of that. But they truly understand what this means for them personally and that they have the confidence and the inclination to actually make some personal changes. Yeah. And I have to echo. I mean, yes, I'm I'm coming from a very different direction from you in in many ways with the way that I'm tech advocate. But I think that technology, it's used correctly, is a great support for these kind of transformations. Where it's where it fails is normally where the tech is trying to do something different from what the transformation is trying to achieve. So when. you get the two working in synergy very well, that. that's when you get the great results. So the. you're you're absolutely right. The importance of putting focus on the egos, the the actual the mindset of the people that are carrying out those changes. is absolutely critical to success. Yeah. And any change is hard, right? So you know, any change involves some kind of loss. Even if we don't like the status quo, we might be having to give up a habit that we've just become accustomed to. Performance management's classic. Everyone says they hate the old way of doing it and then you try and make changes and everyone's like, yeah, but I understood it. It was familiar to me. So we, you know, we know that even if you just try and change the hand with which you brush your teeth, it's difficult. It's new neural pathways. It's. it's challenging. Change is really hard and I think sometimes we we oversimplify it because we've got our eye on the prize of these great business benefits and it looks great on paper and the steps we're gonna go through. But actually, that sense of really tapping into what it means to each individual, understanding how to which buttons to press for certain people, which triggers to avoid. It's a very change is a very human, messy, emotional thing. And I I think that we we'd be kind of crazy to to be too neat and and precise about it. Absolutely. No. You're completely right. Well well, let me hand over to you for a second for you to talk through, some of your thoughts, on, on the the the changes that should be being made. Yeah. I mean I'm going to, I suppose, start by just really talking through the kind of the problems with change and why is it so difficult. Because I think if we understand that, then we can understand what to do differently about it. So I'm just literally just going to put this as a kind of, as a holding slide whilst I talk about it. But I think that, you know, if we kind of understand what it is that we do in relation to change that makes it harder for people, we can avoid those mistakes in the future. I think first up, we have an over focus on managing risk in HR rather than thinking about growth, productivity, innovation, creating the conditions where people can thrive. And I think if we play into that kind of managing risk focus, then we slow things down rather than take a risk, use agile ways of working. I think we have a desire to be perfect in HR, you know, it comes from a good place and I'm frustrated with us when you've been dealing with us because we want to get it right. Yep. Our training is that we are accurate, that we are precise, we worry about getting it wrong And I think we, you know, I've been guilty of this and it'd be interesting to hear whether the people on on the call have experienced this as well, is that sense of, you know, we have the frequently asked questions all drafted. We have every stakeholder kind of consulted with. We try and strive for for perfection, but the risk is is that by the time we've done that, actually, the world's moved on. Yeah. So I think, you know, we have in our training as well a whole raft of, I call them like our red flags. And it's a part of our psyche in HR which is things like you have to be consistent to be fair. Alright? So you only achieve fairness if you treat everybody the same. You talked about, you know, one size definitely not fitting all. I think that's a problem for us is this kind of uniformity, this sense that we need to roll everything out consistently. I think that we have typically a service mindset and a service mindset is about scalable, monetable processes that are slick and cost effective rather than perhaps addressing the human challenge that we're actually trying to deal with and I kind of alluded to that earlier. And then just I suppose to reiterate that change is really hard. Change is not, it's not simple, it's not clear cut, it's messy. And therefore we need a raft of different solutions. You know, we need to change how HR shows up. We need to change the approach that we're taking to the way that we deliver, the way that we influence, the way that we implement solutions. And and I think we are now building different ways of doing that. That's really exciting. Well, from from what I what I hear, talking to HR professionals, the the shift towards personalization or even hyper personalization is something that is being more and more embraced in the HR world. We're seeing people suddenly understand that for you know, we we focus on performance. To to get a good performance activity in place, you have to talk in the exact language that the individual understands, and you have to make sure that whatever process you put in place feels like it's been designed specifically for that unique individual. And the more you can do that, the more impact it has. But that obviously has ramifications for the HR team to design something that's so flexible and so fluid to fit in with all the needs of the business. Yeah. I mean I think this whole kind of personalization agenda that obviously AI and technology supports but is is absolutely critical for us to have the impact. You know, I've worked with leaders who all felt they were special and different. They weren't actually that special and different to one another but it, unless they have a sense that we recognise how special and different they are to one another, unless they feel that they've got some element of choice in it, even a small amount of choice between option a and option b, that will have a big impact on their desire to buy into it, to give us a time of day to actually kind of think about what this might mean for them. Sure. No. That fully that makes a lot of sense. Well, maybe I could dive in very quickly with a with an example, something that that really, for me, just a simple thing to show, around how, a product like ours helps with that personalization aspect. It's a really easy concept, but I think it's a will will will make bring this to life if I can remember where my screen share button is. That will be the one. And we'll bring that up very briefly. So just gonna dive into BetterWorks for a second to show you something that that we find helps with that personalization side, and that's when we think of the the normal conversations that are taking place between managers and employees. If I, as a as a manager here, Michelle, go and look at the the the the conversations that are taking place, yes, you're gonna have structured things that that HR have sort of dictated or said need to happen. Your end of year, your midyear check ins that people are used to carrying out, hopefully, in a lighter weight process. But one of the struggles we often find is that the employees, your high performers, are people that that want more than this. They're actually actively looking for more conversations with their manager, or there's activities that happen, and the manager thinks, I need to discuss this in detail with my employee. So we've introduced a concept of of anytime conversations, allowing managers and employees to actually just choose. This is the right time to have a conversation, click, and choose from a set of templates. So HR still have control about what are the kinds of discussion points that the the manager and the employee should be tracking and recording, but the employees and the managers can discuss the right things at the right time for them. This is a simple thing. When when they click on any of these, like, if there's something like a a career conversation, it will outline what it is that's gonna be discussed, what are the things that need to be thought about before we actually carry out this discussion with our team member. You can even embed in videos and guidance and then make sure that, like, coaching that they need happens directly within the the process itself. And then the question set is gonna appear. That's where your HR team be really smart and tailor this to be appropriate, even making different questions appear to different groups when they when they click on the same type of question here. So that kind of personnel the personal kind of way of working is a simple way of of driving it through our our platform. And then we also find that in in a tool like ours, a lot of it a lot of the the responsibility, a lot of the the flexibility is making sure that people, when they're setting goals and objectives, have an understanding of how those fit into the wider frame of the organization. So being able to look at not only their own, but also their departmental or top company, or even clicking on one of their objectives and seeing how it's been linked through to other priorities within the business and understanding both in in a way I'm I'm carrying out here, but also in a in a visual view how their activities form part of the important structure that's that's taking place within the business. So allowing HR to sort of set the ground rules of what the strategy of the business is in discussion with the with the executive team, but then allowing employees to actually control and say how they feel they're going to move the needle in those important things that have been outlined within here. So I just wanted to give that as quick example. I will drop back to you now and let you take over. We we are going to actually just run into a quick poll to say that if anybody wants any further information on the things that I'm showing, just respond in the poll, and we'll be able to follow-up with you on those. And let me stop sharing my screen. Right, I tell you what Bruce, shall I kind of go through some thoughts on how we can work in different ways, how we can make change stick and just share some examples of what we're seeing from some really, you know, progressive organizations, traditional organizations where the HR teams are doing something different. And I'm gonna pick up and and try and address some of the issues that I described earlier. And the first one I talked about was this kind of service mindset that we've had in HR for so long. And you know, as I was growing up in HR, it was all about providing great service. And of course, there's nothing wrong with providing great service. It's you know, very admirable. But a service mindset takes you in one direction. As I mentioned, scalable, monitorable, universal, cost effective, efficient process. Whereas actually a product mindset is the where we're seeing HR starting to go with really great effect. And it's much more than just a change of language. Right? A product mindset is always starting with the end user, in our case employees, managers, and leaders, working out who they are, what they want, what their pain points are, and then working back from that. So it doesn't mean that we need to be incredibly close to the people that we're working with. It means that we need to understand, as you described, understanding our leaders and managers. What are their business priorities? What are their customer changes? What's their what are the operational pressures that they're going through? But also understanding them personally. What's their attitude to the people that they manage? Do they see people as a kind of a cost or as a benefit? Know, where do they stand on it? What's their experience of being in HR, being of working with HR in the past? So this product mindset which is about, you know, insight driven solutions that can be delivered in more agile ways. And for HR, a product can be anything. It can be an email, it can be a training program, it can be a tech solution, it can be a change of process. But starting with this product mindset which is who is it we're designing for, what are the different options that we might want to provide, and then working back from that rather than this is the process we want to introduce and we're gonna roll it out. And I think that kind of product mindset can be really, really helpful for us in HR. So from here on in, you're now all product designers rather than service providers and and just kinda see see where that takes you. I can help with that, definitely. Some other changes that we're seeing linked to that kind of a need to be have more of a product mindset is instead of us thinking about the new process that we want to roll out, is how do we want people to feel as a result? And I think this is weirdly, given that we are the people profession, when I think back to my time as an HR director, asking how do we want people to feel as a result is something that I can't I don't know if I ever asked it. It was always what's the best practice process and how do, you know, then how do we go about implementing that? And I've just given a couple of examples. So you've got Money Supermarket there and they looked at, they said, right, you know, we don't just want to design redesign our onboarding. How do we want people to feel? And they came up with we want them to feel warm and welcomed and actually confident as well was the third one. And if you start with that, with those feelings that you want to create, then you're gonna design a very different onboarding program to the one that we normally put people through, which is we're going to share a load of information with you. We're gonna get you to fill out all the paperwork. We're gonna have an emphasis on you fitting in a conformity. Whereas the warm and welcoming meant that they were able to think about how do we find out about what's unique and different about every individual that's joining us? How do we make them feel really confident to contribute early on in the process? And that meant things like a personalization, it meant about sort of not getting them to fill out all the paperwork on the first day, but getting that done in advance so they were able to contribute. So having a focus on the human challenge, how do we want people to feel meant they could be much more creative in the way that they produce this new product. Similarly at DNV, they said, you know, instead of thinking about what's the new performance management system that we want, they said how do we want people to feel? And they came up with Lift It Up, which is one of my favorites. Lift It Up in terms of ambition, motivation, lifted up in terms of performance and skills, clarity. And then they looked at their current performance management system and there was nothing uplifting about it. Right? So using this human challenge, not what's the system we want to introduce, but how do we want people to feel was was incredibly enabled them to be incredibly creative. Are you happy for me to carry on with the kind of ways in which we can deliver differently? Yeah. Because I think, you know, I talked about that kind of service mindset, that sort of risk management, but there's also something which is we why do we do things annually? You know, we've taken the rhythm of the business reporting cycle where we share our results every year and we've applied it to human beings. So we have annual everything. We have the annual talent review, the annual performance review, we have the annual engagement survey, the annual bonus scheme. But of course life isn't like that. Human beings aren't like that. They don't conform to an annual cycle and so why do we? So a couple of examples here of this kind of little and often. So instead of the dreaded annual engagement survey, honestly, I've just, you know, the annual engagement survey would come round and my team and I would be trying to get everyone to fill in their surveys. Yep. One year my team at the BBC had now fill out your survey and people used to throw things at them. You know, then it would go off for, you know, to a very expensive consultancy and then it would come back and then I'd tell all the managers they had to cascade the results and do their action plans and crazy, isn't it? Crazy that we're still doing this. So Cisco always on listening, this kind of, you know, small, very short couple of questions, finger on the pulse with effective responses so that people feel heard, able to respond so much more quickly rather than this big heavy annual survey. And at Global Bears, they have kind of recognized that once a year, end of year, net of tax bonus payment is not going to surprise and delight anybody. So they have pots of money for business for business leaders to make these spot rewards. They're not actually just kind of, you know, they're not huge amounts of money. They're small recognitions in the moment, much more impactful. So you you about sorry. Sorry. Apologies, Lucy. yeah. With with with those examples there, you're talking very much about reflecting the fact that that human beings live in much more chaotic lives, really, rather than these structured annual processes, which, again, Completely. we you see reflected all the time in in. what we when when we're talking to clients, particularly around things like goal setting, whilst people. still need to have that way of working and going, oh, we should do annual goals. You're saying, well, you're setting a goal and saying it's gonna take a year to do, but but surely that one there is gonna take five minutes, and that one there is gonna take. six months. Why are you setting them all the same way? Exactly. Exactly. And the idea that we're gonna set a goal in January and it's gonna still be relevant by June, let alone December, you know, so it's just and we know because managers will say to us, have you got a copy of my annual objectives that I set for my team because I can't, you know, I can't find them anywhere. And it's like, so they're really not driving your business, are they? Absolutely. You talked a lot about the personalization and I couldn't agree more. I think that this ability and, of course, technology, you know, like yours, so helpful here because it enables us to personalize in a way that we just wouldn't have had the capacity, the bandwidth to cope with. This idea that one size fits all is a good thing. We have to kind of shake that if we're going to get buy in, have impact and relevance for our people, for our managers. So Shopify personalized onboarding, you know, it's very much around your personal interests. It's about the role that you've got. It's tailored to who you are as well as the way that you learn and digest information. Adobe, you know, they've got rid of all of the big paraphernalia and they just say, know, tell me how you would like to get feedback from me. Yeah. Could it be, you know, do you want it in writing? Do you want it face to face? Do you want you know, you tell me you own and drive it as the employee. It's your performance. It's your career. No one's going to care about it as much as you should. So really helpful putting it in the hands of employees. And I loved what you showed earlier, Bruce, because, you know, I've had teams of people like every manager where you've got some people who need very little interaction, others need a lot. So why are we specifying set periods of of feedback? It should absolutely be dependent on the context, the individual, what what is this that they need and we need to be able to to cope with that. So I think this kind of tailoring, this personalization, really important. Just a couple more of kind of how we can design, create and deliver our products in HR in very different ways. You talked about designing in isolation a bit and you know, to take that a bit further, I think there is so much that we can do to involve people not just to give us feedback on our ideas but to actually create the ideas themselves. So at Virgin, they did this fantastic approach to changing their reward and benefits program because they treated them like adults, they got all the employees together, they said right, this is the budget, off you go. What matters to you? But bearing in mind it's we have to manage the trade offs. You're involved in managing those trade offs. It's not just everybody getting what they want. And they came up with I think some of the most innovative reward practices that I've seen. Amazing. Things like loved ones leave, excuse my language, but they've also got the screw it, let's do it fund which is classic Virgin. Right? So it's very much on brand. But that was a way of saying, yeah, of course we're going to allow you to have some weird and wacky things, not everybody wants it. So that's a pot of money that we'll create for that. At uWork, they involved people in creating a much more flexible approach to work, short term assignments, hybrid working, but they involved people, it wasn't done to them. When we realised that, you know, 70% of change programmes fail, not because they're bad, but because they just feel like they're being done to people and we're kind of programmed to resist that, aren't we? Awesome. Couple more and then I'll shut up. So I think we talked at the start about the losing momentum. Right? So you you kick off a big change program, you have a big fanfare, you call it a brilliant name and you've got marketing and you put all that effort in and then gradually it starts to to dwindle. Well, as human beings, we are hardwired to resist anything that feels like it's gonna take a lot of effort. It's gonna take time. It's gonna take headspace. We know that people are time poor. They are incredibly busy. So coming along with something which stretches out for months, which feels like it's a real time consuming program is we're gonna be getting it off to a bad start even before we get going. Slowly. So we're seeing this sprint and burst planning which is very much the language. You're, you know, you're in the world of tech products, right? So you get this. This is you, this is bread and butter for you. For HR, this is quite unusual but we're now starting to see it. So the very group, you know, they had a sense of what was the direction of travel? What's the experience we want to create, but then we're actually going to work in twelve week bursts maximum. We're only gonna have one or two products on the slate at any one time. They found that they were able to move so much faster rather than having these big twelve month, two year, three year time horizons of strategic plans. And as a team, as an HR team, they were really able to motor and their credibility went up. At Zapier, what they did was they said, right, we're gonna focus on one product. We're gonna focus on recruitment. And they were able to transform that by devoting the resources of the wider team to this one product to make those changes. I think that's just a really exciting way of going about it rather than what I used to do with my team where we'd have 25 projects on the go. The exec team, exec HR team was stretched very thin and it became hard to get things over the line and give our team who were working on these projects the the focus that they needed to to progress. So yeah, so sprint planning. And then the final one from me and then I'll hand back to you is that, you know, we often try and get everybody to adopt our new ideas, our products, whether it be performance management, tech solutions, whatever it is, we try and do a kind of cascade rollout rather than thinking about our the levels of acceptance in terms of persona. So we're gonna have those early adopters. We're gonna have the ones that are always gonna be a bit more curious, a bit more open. Let's go with them and use them as the test case to iron stuff out and also to use them to talk about it to their peers because we know that managers, employees are probably going to be more interested in hearing what another manager thinks of a new solution than necessarily us in HR. So using those early adopters and don't worry too much about the biggest resistors to begin with. Just by saying to them you don't have to worry about this. It kind of takes the noise out of the system, right? And it just means that us in HR, we can devote our talents and our energies to working with the ones who do want to progress and we can get so much more done. So I think that there's loads of and then I've just shared just a few of them. But there are loads of really different ways that we're seeing HR delivering differently. And if people are obviously interested, I'm more than happy to to connect on LinkedIn if they want other stuff. But those are the kind of the ones that I thought might be useful for this session. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing this. I mean, when you were running through them all the way kind of anchoring through my brain was that the very first topic that you mentioned about feeling. And as you brought up each of these different ways of transforming and changing, I kind of emotionally was trying to read how I would connect with those. And each of them each of them were just so well thought out and so well considered that I kind of had an emotional reaction to them. I was like, wow. This is this is really, you know, being tailored for the audience. And that kind of approach, it's it's so refreshing to see it. It's so great to, you know, see companies moving in that kind of direction and and treating people as not not a commodity, but an individual who who needs to get different kinds of of support to the way that they work. If I could just ask you a question around, I guess, my area of interest around technology and around performance technology, the the challenge we often find when we're talking to HR teams is around how do you get people to to actually interact with technology itself? How do you get people to to kinda get excited? And a lot of the things you've talked about here have kind of indicated how you should think about the process and the program. Do you have any any thoughts on on how people can kind of be driven more to technology or driven to in support of, obviously, the programs that. are put in place. I mean, think that first up, I think that any technology that we're using needs to we need to make sure that we're not hardwiring in old fashioned practices. Sure. So it needs to be an enabler of new and better practices. So in terms of performance management, it's enabling people to own and drive their own performance. It's enabling managers to have better conversations with people. And ultimately, it's about enabling better motivation and performance cause we know sure as hell what we've got at the moment with the objectives at the start of the year, reviews mid year and end year, and the rating out of five is not doing it. We know that. We've known that for so long. So what we don't want in my view is technology that hardwires that old fashioned way of thinking into the technology because then we're really struggling. So it needs to be enabling what actually drives performance, Small course corrections, better conversations, employees owning and driving it. So that's my first thing. And then I think in terms of adoption of technology, it's very simple really, but really hard to do well as you will know, Bruce. But is it gonna make my life easier? Yeah. Yeah. Is it just gonna enable me to do whatever it is I need to do? And, you know, I've been guilty as an HR professional of going along to managers and I remember I remember going along with a new performance management process actually when I was at the BBC and I went along to the news division so that the board of of the news division. Not easy customers, it has to be said. Yeah. But I kind of went through it and I thought I'd done this amazing new product, you know. It was on one page and it was kind of ratings were moved from five to three and so I'd sort of simplified it and and they just said to me, why do you keep coming and depressing us? And I was like, oh, that wasn't really my intention. However, what I was trying to sell them was a product that wasn't actually gonna make their lives easier. Managers for the most part, employees for the most part, if it makes their life easier, better, they will work with it. They'll give it a go. So it has to make their life easier. It has to be easy to use. Right? Sure. It has to be, you know, if you're having to put people on a training programme, forget it. It has to be out of the box completely intuitive. I think also social proof I think is really helpful. So do their colleagues, do their peers, do the people they like and respect, can they see them using it? We've seen it, haven't we? Where managers and leaders have stood up and said everybody's got to use x, y or zed and then have no intention of using it themselves. That lack of social proof and in fact quite the opposite is I think a real problem. And then I think just the kind of the, you know, what are the guardrails for it? What's the the sense of how is it how is it to be used? And some clarity around the expectations of it, I think is helpful. But the key ones is that, you know, is it gonna is it easy to use and will it help me do my job better? And if we can honestly say yes, then we've we've got a conversation opener if, you know and I think we'll at least have some people who prepared to give it a go. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And think I'll I'll I feel this might be a good point for me to jump into a a brief little bit of the products to to kind of reinforce this. I think one of the key things that that we think about in Better Works is around that making it easier. And how often you always have a contradiction in the performance process because everybody says we need this to be continuous. We need this to be always thought about. And then people are saying, well, we would need this to be easier. And you can see managers saying, well, those two don't really tie up because if we're constantly doing things, how can that be easier for us? So, obviously, one of the things that we help in in a in a platform is to make sure that when you, you know, carry out processes throughout the year, they're all very light. You don't do a performance review every week. You do a few little questions that are peppered through. But the other thing that that we've really found has has changed the way that people view performance is the whole concept of of performance and the challenge people have where they're forced to go to a performance tool. And and, you know, people will resist this because it's it feels like they're having to do some extra hard work. So what we do within our platform is we think, well, what are the tools that people are already using, and how can we then use those tools to make everything easier for them and still embed that performance activity? So I'm going into this is not my email just in case anybody's worried. This is not very colleague of mine, Michelle, who is working away in her email. When she's working away, on the right hand side, there's just this little bar that sits there. It's this is this is Betterworks. This is part of the Betterworks platform, and it just sits there alongside her. And it it's reminding her of the the goals or objectives that she's responsible for. It's talking about the upcoming one to one she's got with people around her. It's also got a mechanism where she'll see any of those reviews we were talking about. If anything's coming up, they'll pop up here to remind her. But, also, things like feedback directly from within this bar. She doesn't have to go anywhere to give somebody feedback or request feedback from somebody. She can just click here, and it will allow her to then carry out the feedback while she's in Outlook. That's all recorded within Betterworks. And you can imagine, you know, prior to all the traditional tools that are being used, somebody thinks, I wanna give some feedback because I'm seeing some behaviors I think I can coach. And then they realize they have to log in to another system. They have to find the right page. They have to find the right employee, go through the process. And that thoughts, that hard work that that you've talked about, they're gonna not want to do. And they'll go, well, yes. It's important. I'll do it later. As soon as anybody say the word says the words, we'll do it later. We know it's not gonna happen. So this is the way that we really support it. So it's just just to be clear, it's a window directly into Betterworks. It allows you to update progress on your goals to be able to interact with feedback or the one to one processes as they happen directly from within here. And you have the same kind of capabilities within Teams, within Slack, within Gmail. And we've think that's so. important, Bruce. I was just I think it's so important. You've got to go where they already are because. I agree with you, you know, we've we've kind of heard HR teams reframe their performance management approach as continuous conversations. Well, that just sounds exhausting, doesn't it? Yeah. You know, it's like I can't possibly have a continuous conversation. I've got I've got stuck at work to do. Absolutely. But equally, this sense that somehow performance management is other to the day job. Yeah. Whereas, of course, it's not, isn't it? And I think we need to remove the mystique, you know, this idea that it we go somewhere separate to do it. We need to take them into a meeting room to do it. We need to book out lots of time in the diary to do it, that. it's other to our work. And actually that's performance management. Managing people so helping someone's improve their performance, manage their performance is actually what we do as managers and leaders in the flow of work. Yep. So going where they are like Teams, Slack, Outlook, is absolutely vital. Absolutely. Thank you. And and we find it it just builds up a muscle. People don't even realize that they're doing performance. They're not. They're just looking at it or or updating a goal. That's not performance. That's just part of my everyday activity. That kind of way of working is is really how we help to to enhance. And then there's one last item that probably is my favorite. So I I'll always like to end on my my most exciting thing if I just go back into the form. And that is with within objectives, yes, employees can write and create their own objectives as they want. Was halfway through creating an objective around making cups of teas. That's how exciting I can be sometimes. But this is often one of most challenging things for a business, trying to create good objectives or good goals because there's so much information that employees are trying to to bring in to their their heads as they're doing this. They they they should be thinking about the strategy of the business. They should be thinking about their own job requirements. They They should should be be thinking thinking about about the conversation they have with their manager throughout the year, the feedback from their peers around them, the the goals that other people in the team are working on. And asking somebody to think of that themselves, that's quite a challenging list to to put in place. But the whole concept of having a a platform that records the information, records that feedback and conversations and knows the strategy of the business, allows us to generate really hyper personalized suggestions. So it allow you to look at the information that knows about you and come up with ideas of what maybe would be good goals for you to focus on. Now these are suggestions, so you can ignore them. You can write your own. But having rather than a blank piece of paper, having something that actually helps you to understand, we found is really shapes and change. And, also, meant meant people are much more willing to to give feedback because they know it's gonna help shape people's goals going forward and to have conversations with their manager because, again, it's recalled in pulling that through. So, yeah, we find this is a really powerful way of of hyper personalizing without having to do too much more than people are already doing. Brilliant. So, I think we have, if I'm right, one more, poll just, past, to to finish off. If I stop, that should be shared with you now. And this is this is just, I think, another question just asking if anybody wants some information from us around how we can help to fit this much more into your day to day. We we're very willing to to help and and support you. Now just jumping over to the q and a, see if we have any questions that have come through for us. We have a quiet audience today, Lucy. No questions. I'm I'm assuming we just both dazzled them with our discussion. And Oh yeah, it must be that, Bruce. It must be that. I suspect we probably need to just remind people as well that they can ask any question, but I think we've got a couple, haven't we? One of them here is about how do you handle a leadership team that agrees in principle but doesn't change behavior? And they are really tricky, aren't they? And and so I think partly I'm gonna repeat myself and and hopefully also offer some alternative suggestions. I think, you know, that have they agreed to it emotionally rather than intellectually? Have they kind of signed off the business case rather than really reflected on their own personal behavior and what that might look for them. And I think we have to kind of map that out rather than assuming that they're going to get it. Hello? So I think, you know, stories, examples, reinforcing with celebrating and recognizing the ones who are doing it, calling out the ones who are doing it is a fantastic way of driving that kind of peer pressure. I think using peer to peer groups, so kind of getting people together, posing a scenario and asking how they have handled it or would handle it. We're seeing HR's role in facilitating these kind of leadership peer groups. I think it's a really it's not training session. It's posing a a question and asking how they would deal with it. So. ZoomInfo, for example, they run something called the leadership lounge. It's not a training session, it's bringing people together, leaders together where they talk about things like, so how do you handle this poor performance issue? And then they will give their own examples. It helps HR to see where some people have got it and some people haven't. But equally, it's about facilitating and creating again that sense of social proof from their peers. So pump priming those peer to peer sessions with somebody who who you know is doing it and getting them to getting them to talk about how they approach it can be really valuable. I also think that we need to use increasingly small prompts. Now we're seeing this being used to great effect in many HR teams. Some call them nudges, Yeah. prompts, Yep. suggestions, but the idea being is that we break it down into a very small action that somebody could do and try that day. So for example, showing appreciation to one person in their team, asking is there any advice that they would find helpful as a way of getting into some kind of feedback conversation. Small prompts, one little suggestion that a leader can try. Because I think sometimes again, we present it in a in a kind of big fashion, know. This is the these are the new behaviors. These are the new ways of doing things. This is the new tech that we're gonna use rather than just getting them to try one thing out. Leaders as we know, again, not just time poor, but the more senior they are, the longer they've been in role, the less curious they often are, the less willing to admit they don't know something. So again, I would definitely kind of pull out those people who are doing it well and celebrate them because that's a real guarantee that you'll get the others wanting to be seen as good. If you can get the chief exec doing that, then even better. So I think break it down, being really specific about what it might look like and then measuring it if you can. Two. Know, we kind of we hold leaders accountable for so much. We hold them accountable for financial performance, operational performance, risk customer. And yet when it comes to people performance, it's all a bit anonymous behind the scenes and we don't tend to share the results. Well increasingly, we're seeing organizations that are doing that differently. They're holding leaders to account by sharing pulse survey data. And if you're not progressing as a leader, if you're not demonstrating that you've got good results, you don't get to manage more people. Right? You certainly don't progress too much further in people management. So there's not just all about HR with the carrot, it's HR with a bit of stick as well. So I think that can be that can be useful. So there are a range of techniques that we can use but I would absolutely assume that just because they've signed something off in principle doesn't mean to say they're gonna change their behaviors. We need to work with them individually and to to kind of prompt and use triggers that are gonna work for each individual. And I know that we need to wrap up, but I I think I just wanna pull out the other question as well which is that, you know, what do you say to a CEO who believes the current performance process is good enough? Well, what's gonna work for them? Is it waste? Is it the hours that they're wasting? Is it external benchmarks where, you know, it's quite clear that, you know, 80% of people don't believe that traditional performance management improves performance? Is it that your competitors doing something different and seeing good results? We've got a it's not being manipulative, maybe it is a bit, but it is about using human levers. It is about saying what's gonna work for this person? And I think with your with your CEO, I would just say just ask to say, you just want to explore the different options. Then then probably not gonna turn that down. You might just say, let's just pilot it. They, you know, this leader over here is up to doing for doing a pilot. Let's get something going and see if we get better results. I would also sorry. One more thing. I would also. ask your people ask your people whether they feel, not what do they think of the current performance management system, but whether it actually helps them improve their performance. And usually, the results are quite shocking. Amazing. Fully, fully agree with those. I have now found the q and a tab that I was missing a minute ago, so apologies. There are a few more questions, but we will have to answer those offline, I'm afraid. But I really appreciate all your time. That was incredibly thought provoking, really helpful advice and guidance you've given through the session today as you've talked to people there. Looks to me there's there's a a a few kind of key messages that we we wanted to get across to people from from the talk today around how they need to hyper personalize and and make sure that the things are being really appropriate for the audience, how they want to build in feelings into all of the activities that are that are HR leading so that people have that lens when they're designing any of the processes that are put in place, and how it's important to continue to to make the changes that you can make and and make sure that you move forward rather than just settling with a nice status quo as part of that process. And and perhaps most importantly, change doesn't fail at the launch. It fades in the middle when you kind of just let it go and don't continue to iterate and change going forward. Before we close for today, I just wanna ask everybody to have one reflection. If everyone can just ask themselves, what's the one area that you could make change easier, not necessarily louder, but just easier for people in your organization this year. And just consider that through the lens of what Lucy's been talking about today, and, hopefully, that will give you some new insights and ideas. We've just got one final poll to launch, I think, before we end. If if that's gonna happen, we'll we'll pop up in a second. Well, we'd love to really understand from you where you are today and whether you're actively evaluating or planning changes or simply exploring how better could look for you. So your answers will help help us to tailor our next steps and to make them very relevant for you. And if you're just thinking about evolving your approach, we'd and would welcome a a more focused follow-up conversation with us. By by the way, just to make it really clear, we don't do generic demos. That's not something that we do. We always wanna tailor the information that we give to anybody we're talking to to make it very specific for the organization that we're we're talking to. We're very happy to take conversations forward and and carry out working sessions with any anybody on the call to drill into their needs a little bit more. To support all of this, we have 10 complimentary copies of HR Disrupted, the amazing book, available for leaders who schedule a follow-up conversation with us. It's a small thank you and a practical companion to help after today's discussion. You can access both of these in the private strategy sec session at the very top. If you just click on, at the top of the screen, the blue private strategy session area there, it will allow you to click on the link and be able to to book up and and get some copy of the book from there. I reserve a copy of the book. Final thing to say before I thank Lucy is just to to mention April's events that is will be coming up on the April 15. If you've enjoyed this session, then the next session will be going a level deeper. We're gonna be looking at a change from performance activity to business outcomes, a maturity framework for sustainable HR transformation, and we'll walk through how to access maturity across strategy, people, and systems, and define a clear road map forward. It's not a product demo at all. It's a a look at a from an advisory lens, see how organizations can move and act to their activities to really impact. I would love to see you there. But just to end, I I really wanna thank from my heart, Lucy, again, for fantastic insights and all the time and engagement you give me. It's been a a really enjoyable time. Oh, thanks, Bruce. I I've really enjoyed the conversation, and it's been lovely working with you and Better Works as ever. Thank you very much, and we will hopefully see you again and hopefully see all of you in the audience, very soon. If not before the fifteenth, we hopefully will see you on the next, event. Have a great rest of your day.