HR Unfiltered - brought to you by SOPEOPLE

Erica Farmer, author of AI for People Professionals and host of AI for the Average Joe, joins Deano for this episode to state the obvious and less obvious... AI has landed in HR - but most organisations are still stuck somewhere between dabbling, panicking and pretending they have a strategy because someone switched on Copilot.

In this episode, Deano and Erica chat to cut through the noise and talk about what AI adoption in HR actually requires: Confidence, clarity, permission, psychological safety and a proper people-first approach.

Erica explains why AI is not “just another system implementation”, why HR needs to stop waiting for IT to own the human side of transformation, and why every HR professional now needs to see themselves as a change architect.

Why AI is different from traditional workplace technology

The biggest mistake HR is making with AI adoption

Why policies and toolkits are not enough

The importance of creating an AI manifesto

How to move from experimentation to meaningful adoption

Erica’s concept of the “AI dividend”

Why people need personal buy-in before organisational buy-in

The role of psychological safety in AI enablement

Why HR and IT must collaborate — but HR cannot outsource the people bit

Why prompt lists are not enough

How AI can support wellbeing, inclusion and productivity

What to do when adoption stalls

The first thing nervous or curious users should try

AI adoption is not a tech rollout. It is a people change. If employees do not understand why AI is being introduced, how it affects them, what they are allowed to do with it, and where the guardrails are, they will either avoid it or use it at a very surface level. The organisations seeing progress are the ones giving people permission to experiment, linking AI to personal benefit, and creating space for people to redesign work from the ground up.

Connect with Erica Farmer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericafarmer 

Listen to AI for the Average Joe: https://www.youtube.com/@AIForTheAverageJoe 

Buy AI for People Professionals: Available NOW from Kogan Page and Amazon. 

Sue is back. And we've brought in someone who has spent her career in rooms where the numbers matter, the pressure is real, and the conversations people most need to have are the ones nobody's having. Carolyn Hobdey - author, Lean Master, YouTuber and self-described work in progress - talks about the inner t**t we all carry, why most leadership failure is about avoidance rather than aggression, why male leaders are more afraid than they look, and what HR needs to start doing differently. Including, possibly, sorting out its own house first.

Carolyn's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolynhobdey/ 

Carolyn's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmN6-u8U2LA 

In this episode of HR, Unfiltered, Deano is joined by Michelle Hartley for a conversation that goes far beyond “showing up differently.”

Michelle shares her experience of burning out three times in a single year, and the slow, deliberate journey back to herself through what she calls “1% moments.” Together, they explore the psychological cost of performing a False Self at work, and why reclaiming authenticity isn’t indulgent, it’s essential.

The discussion also introduces the Perceived Weirdness Index: The idea that to create real change, HR professionals and changemakers need to be different enough to be noticed, but credible enough to be heard. From LEGO in boardrooms to reframing metrics in commercial language, this episode challenges traditional ideas of professionalism and impact.

It’s a raw, honest and thought-provoking conversation about burnout, presence, and what it really takes to influence organisations.

Links & resources:

Michelle Hartley https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellehartleyfinderofawesome/

Michelle’s business https://peoplesorted.co.uk/

Michelle runs a HRBP programme - you can get on the waiting list here:https://mailchi.mp/d3629fe1a70b/hrbp-programme 

And if you fancy a taste of the days in life of Michelle life, check out this thing she calls a ‘glow up’: https://mailchi.mp/peoplesorted/glow-me-tf-up

Perceived Weirdness Index chapter: https://naomistanford.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/e6740-presencearticlejonno.pdf

Kelly Swingler https://www.kellyswingler.com/

Deano catches up with Anwen Bottois, founder of Purple Sky Consulting and host of the HR Strategy in the Hot Seat podcast. Anwen spent over two decades as an HR leader across manufacturing, not-for-profit, British Gas, and higher education before setting up on her own to focus on what she cares about most: Helping leaders actually love the job of leading.

This is a conversation about what really happens when people step into leadership, and why so much of what we do to prepare them (if anything!) falls short.

In this episode:

Links:

Thirty years of employee engagement surveys, billions spent, and the data is getting worse, not better. In this episode, Dean and Sue take a hard look at why the engagement model isn’t working, and why many organisations are measuring symptoms instead of fixing causes. From “HR archaeology” and the illusion of action plans, to the role of managers in shaping everyday experience, they unpack what’s really driving (or killing) performance. Drawing on:

... we explore what actually creates the conditions for people to thrive. This is a direct, practical, and occasionally uncomfortable conversation for CEOs, founders, and HR leaders who suspect there’s a better way, but haven’t yet found it.

And if you're keen to help, however you can, Sue's friend Katie, please use this GoFundMe link: https://lnkd.in/eRUm5-yQ

As always, you can challenge our thinking and add to the conversation via www.sopeople.co.uk or by emailing [email protected]. 

In this episode, Deano flies solo and is joined by Sean Miller, who brings nearly 30 years in HR (incl. L&D and OD), and is a specialist-in-training in organisational transactional analysis, for a conversation about why organisations get stuck and what HR can actually do about it.

They cover: The "Yes, But" game and why it's not incompetence, it's pattern; Berne's ego states and how language shifts them; the gap between public and private organisational structure; etiquette, techniques and character as a diagnostic tool; and why contracting is the work, not the preamble to it.

Clear, practical, and hopefully thought-provoking about human systems. (The best kind of episode, no?!) 

Sean can be reached on LinkedIn and www.brightn.co.uk!

And please feel free to follow HR, Unfiltered on LinkedIn as well.

Chris Manning joins Dean and Sue, and makes a compelling case that employee experience isn't a platform you buy or a project you launch; it's the sum total of every process, system, approval chain and human interaction your people touch every single day. Armed with real examples from Unilever and Nuffield Health, he unpacks the frameworks that actually move the needle, and explains exactly why 70% of engagement variance sitting with the manager should keep every CPO up at night.

Chris is the MD of Experience HR, and can be found on LinkedIn.

What happens when AI stops being a shiny tool and starts quietly reshaping how work, judgement and even identity function?

In this episode of HR, Unfiltered, Dean and Sue sit down with futurist Matt O’Neill to explore the less comfortable bits of the AI conversation that many organisations are skirting around. Not whether AI can save time, draft emails or automate admin. But what happens when people start handing over too much of their thinking to it.

Matt shares why he believes leaders often overestimate AI in the short term and underestimate it in the long term, why most organisations are still only seeing “pockets of excellence”, and why the real risk is not just process failure but a loss of human agency. The conversation moves from workflow redesign and shadow AI to leadership, learning, hiring, meaning at work and the growing need for what Matt calls digital flourishing.

There is plenty here for HR and business leaders:

This is a thoughtful, provocative and surprisingly human conversation about AI, work and what we must hold on to as everything else changes.

Matt can be reached on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattone/overlay/about-this-profile/?lipi=urn%3Ali%3Apage%3Ad_flagship3_profile_view_base%3BZLFQGXBjRQ6%2FXdeQ4G9eFQ%3D%3D 

SOPEOPLE and HR, Unfiltered can be found at www.sopeople.co.uk

What happens when you invite a VP of Client / Customer Success to hold talk about HR? Turns out, quite a lot, and most of it grabs us in all the right ways.

Rachel Rewerts has spent 15 years in Customer Success, a function that proves its value every quarter, in public, with numbers. In this episode, she draws an uncomfortable and energising parallel between CS and HR business partnering, two functions doing essentially the same job, with very different levels of accountability.

We get into the bartender vs. personal trainer problem, why HR might avoid pushing into the bruise, what leading indicators CS uses that HR really should steal, and who gets away with the most narrative spin. (She said it, not us (but with affection)!)

Blunt, warm, and genuinely useful. We think there's something for everyone who wants to learn more about business partnering.

What happens when a CEO with a psychology degree bans Friday meetings, challenges “bring your whole self to work”, and tells CPOs to get commercially dangerous? Find out in this episode, when Luke McKeever joins us for a blunt, intelligent and occasionally uncomfortable conversation about leadership, AI, and the future credibility of HR/People.

We explore:

Why authenticity at the top is harder than it sounds (and what integrity really looks like when you’re holding confidential change);

The three drivers of human motivation (autonomy, competence and relatedness) and what they mean in practice;

Why psychometric insight shouldn’t stop at hiring;

The “reverse centaur” risk of AI, where humans become the compliance layer to machines;

Why too many CPOs may still be struggling to hold their own at the commercial table;

And what it actually takes to protect human value in an efficiency-obsessed world

This is not a conversation about HR trends, it’s a conversation about power, agency, judgement and courage. If you care about the future of work, and the role HR will (or won’t) play in shaping it, this one matters.

To find out more about the podcast overall, head to www.sopeople.co.uk. And you're keen to find out what Thomas International's innovative products can do for you and your organisation, you can do so at https://www.thomas.co/

Finally, you can get Luke on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-mck-thomas/