Workday Podcast: A European Perspective on How HR Leaders Became Change Champions

Audio also available on Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

For HR leaders, the threat of the Great Resignation still hovers on the horizon. “It is our profession to balance hundreds of competing priorities often, and stay abreast of the changes that affect the largest expense in many workforces—its people,” says Ciara Lakhani, chief people officer at technology platform Dashlane.

HR leaders are overwhelmingly confident in their teams’ ability to accelerate transformation across the wider business, but they are also aware of the other factors in HR success: employee experience, a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, and support for hybrid working. “We need to be ready to have better mechanisms for data-based listening,” says Lakhani. “To stay close to what employees want and not have that be driven by assumptions from the C-suite of executives.” 

In this episode of the Workday Podcast, Lakhani joins guest host Megan Wright, senior editor at Longitude, to discuss the multifaceted world of today’s HR function, and draws on her experiences from Europe to talk about how the nature of workforce transformation is shifting. 

Below are a few highlights from the conversation, edited for clarity. You can find our other podcast episodes here. Be sure to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts so you don’t miss an episode.

• “What feels universal is that the experience of living through the pandemic has caused people, each in their own way, to reevaluate how they spend their time, and how they picture spending their time moving forward.” —Ciara Lakhani

• “For HR leaders, attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent has never been so mission critical. In fact, new Workday research shows that HR leaders are the most confident among the C-suite in their team's ability to accelerate transformation across the wider business.” —Megan Wright

• “If companies are open to listening, seeing what they can do, and being flexible to meet both the desires of the person, as well as the needs of the company, that is how we'll ultimately resolve the Great Resignation.” —Ciara Lakhani

Stay tuned here for more findings and the full “Closing the Acceleration Gap: Toward Sustainable Digital Transformation” report; we’ll also share more role-specific findings for the office of the CFO, CIO, and CHRO.