8 essential HR lessons from HUG London 2024

Why did you get into HR? It's something we began our day discussing. It's likely something that ultimately, a lot of us aren't actually able to focus on due to the common HR problems of busy work, inflexible tools and hidden data.

Fortunately, it is something that we, the Intelligent HR Platform, are focused on solving for our 13,000+ customers. We'll do this with three brand new features:

• Smart Automations analyse how you work, detecting areas to automate and suggest workflows and best practices relevant to your organisation.

• Dynamic Adaptability takes customisation to the next level with highly advanced access permissions and ability to add people workflows as you need them.

• Proactive Insights go beyond standard HR reporting by monitoring trends in your people data and notifying you so you have time to address issues.

Want to learn more about these exciting new innovations? Take a look at our keynote recap here. Or prefer to watch our CEO reveal these releases in real time? Check out our video on LinkedIn.

During a fascinating panel that featured Elizabeth Cowper, Founder & CEO of Ludo, Erica Sosna, CEO of Career Matters, and Holly Smith, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Partner of Personio, the chat turned to trust and its impact. Our latest Workforce Pulse found that 81% of employees in organisations with high trust report high productivity and 75% report high motivation.

"Where trust falls down time and time again is that we hear information and we don’t do anything about it it or say we will and we don’t, which is almost worse", shared Elizabeth. So, how do you rebuild it? "One of the most powerful ways of getting this right is to designate a slot in our town halls every single month and say 'we heard this, we're doing this, give us your feedback'". Then, each month, share progress on these plans, she explains.

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Want to know the secret to high productivity? Your employees' environmental fit – or where and how you work, says Erica. She suggests to ask two very simple but powerful questions: Where do you do your best work and what kind of environment enables you to do this? This might be about boundaries or how to best communicate with them. It may even be about whether they need deep work spaces or collaborative spaces in your office.

Knowing this information about your employees can in turn help you build policies that enable your HR team to leverage productivity and performance, organisation-wide, rather than just estimating what they may need. This level of flexibility gives employees the trust we know enables high productivity and high motivation. "It's about finding what your people need for satisfaction, space and balance", shares Erica.

Speaking of motivation, Erica has some vital insights from her impressive career in executive career coaching to share on that: To look at 'what exactly does this person value?'. This tends to come in four distinct forms: "Either they may value doing a good job or getting good results or hitting KPIs, they may value innovation and creativity or they may value nurturing relationships, for example, working with clients", she explains.

The impact of this on making employees feel valued cannot be underestimated, she says: "If you can understand what that person aspires to, it can help to create feedback that lands better with them." Interestingly, our latest Workforce Pulse found that recognition in the right forms is even more valued by employees than salary.

Want to avoid your best talent moving on? Erica shared a stark reminder: "If you’re not talking to your people about their careers, your competitors are," So now is the best time to start. She advises: "Stay curious: What do they love? Have they been typecast at work? Make it a cultural norm to talk about."

For anyone who may be a flight risk, if you're chatting to them you have the first opportunity to develop how they get there and in a worst case scenario, they may even tell you ahead of time that they're thinking of moving elsewhere which is a huge business gift.

She explains that giving them these frameworks to fine-tune how they think about work will also be a gift that they can take into their careers.

On that note, Michaela Restaino, Senior HR Advisor at Buckles, reminded us that half of employees in Europe will be looking for a new job in the next 12 months. Her advice? "We need to break the taboo and start talking about performance plans."

For this, she uses what she calls 'the popcorn analogy' – the idea that everyone 'pops' in their own time, and it's about giving them the support or tools they need to get there.

She urges HR leaders to use both qualitative and quantitative data when building people's careers, using the powerful example of her mid-year review. On paper, she had been responsible for 40% of HR's achievements. But her manager reminded her, she may be close to burnout: "With data, it's not just about the numbers, it's a person driving those numbers. And what are they telling you about them?"

There are always a few red flags that you are in urgent need of a solid HRIS. Yoon Hwa Kim, People Associate at Notpla, shared hers: "Before we had a proper HR solution, things were chaotic. We had everything in these folders and also sometimes just living in people's heads. If someone was sick, that information was sent to their manager and nobody else had any idea about it."

But the real a-ha moment she suggests? "Colour-coding how much time you spend on the small admin things compared to the more strategic things." For example, once you realise you're doing more and more of managers' jobs, that is "the big red flag", she explains. Similarly, for Danielle Neckles, Head of People at FDMUK, she was "looking at spreadsheets every morning, checking emails for onboarding and offloading this into a spreadsheet".

Having implemented Personio not once, not twice, not three times, but four times, Danielle is by now an expert on implementation. Her advice? "Before you launch a tool, think about what you want to get out of it", she shares. "And don't underestimate the questions people will have – utilise a guide with different links and videos so that you can cover the questions that you know are frequently asked."

Similarly, she urges to focus on what modules you need first and roll them out one by one via lunch and learns, hold managers hands and get the senior leadership team's buy-in. "Stagger it and implement it module by module. And remember that people can take things easier in bite sizes, like video links in Slack posts."

Want to join our next HR event? We'll be celebrating HR professionals who innovate, inspire and create vibrant workplace cultures in start and scale-ups at our People & Culture IMPACT Awards on November 21st.