Welcome to the HR Coffee Time podcast; a fortnightly podcast full of tips and ideas to help you have a successful and fulfilling HR career (without working yourself into the ground).
It can feel hard to put yourself and your own career first when you're so busy looking after everyone around you. It can leave you at risk of burning out, finding that you're not where you want to be in your career, or feeling unsure about what you want from your career anymore.
This podcast is here to help. Join career coach and founder of Bright Sky HR, Fay Wallis as she and her expert guests share advice on how to get what you want from your career.
If you enjoy the podcast, learn more at: https://brightskyhr.co.uk/ or connect with Fay on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faywallis/
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187 | What’s Next for Your Career? 4 Options to Help You Decide
Episode 187
Friday, October 9, 2026 • Duration 13:15
Career progression does not always have to mean securing a promotion or climbing further up the career ladder. You may want to deepen your expertise, move into a different area of HR or explore a completely new path.
In this solo episode, Fay talks you through four possible career directions: growing in your current role, stepping up, moving sideways or stepping out. She also shares practical questions to help you decide which direction feels right for the next stage of your career.
What You’ll Learn
Why meaningful career growth does not always require a promotion or a new job title
How growing in your current role could help you develop your expertise, confidence or strategic impact
Questions to consider if you would like to step up into a more senior position
How a sideways move could broaden your experience and support your longer-term career goals
Practical ways to explore stepping out of your current career path before making a major change
How to identify the work, strengths and experiences you would like more of in your career
Why choosing a general direction can help you make more deliberate decisions, even if you do not have every detail worked out yet
Chapters
[0:00] Introduction: The Four Career Directions
[01:15] Option 1: Grow in Your Current Role
[03:28] Option 2: Step Up into a More Senior Role
[05:21] Option 3: Move Sideways
[07:03] Option 4: Step Out - Leaving Your Current Path & Exploring New Options
[08:48] How to Choose Which Career Direction Is Right for You
[10:19] Using The Essential HR Planner to Turn Your Decision Into a Plan
[11:37] Closing: What Do You Want Next from Your Career?
Exclusive offer from HR Coffee Time’s sponsor, C-me
HR Coffee Time listeners can book C-me’s 90-minute High Performing Team Workshop, with five High Performance profiles and a Team Wheel, for £499 (saving more than £2,500). Ideal for a Christmas team day or end-of-year get-together. Places are limited, so find out more and apply at https://colour-profiling.com/hrcoffee
186 | How Integrating Practical HR Training into Manager Development Helped Managers Succeed (with Amy Critchley)
Episode 186
Tuesday, September 29, 2026 • Duration 35:59
Managers are expected to handle everything from one-to-ones and development conversations to absence, performance issues and disciplinaries. Yet many step into management without having been properly taught how to deal with these responsibilities. For HR and People professionals, finding a way to build managers’ knowledge and confidence without overwhelming them can be a real challenge.
In this special bonus episode of HR Coffee Time, Fay Wallis is joined by Amy Critchley, Head of People at Indigo Networks. Amy explains how she created a management development programme from scratch after joining an organisation that had not previously had a dedicated HR or People team.
Amy shares practical ideas for combining essential HR knowledge with wider management development, making potentially dry subjects more engaging and helping learning stick. She also explains how the programme strengthened relationships between managers and changed the way they worked with the People team.
What You’ll Learn
How to decide which topics to prioritise when creating a management development programme
Why combining practical HR knowledge with wider management skills can make training more effective
Ideas for making subjects such as absence, investigations, disciplinaries and employment law more engaging
How to accommodate different learning preferences without relying on lengthy presentations or uncomfortable role play
Ways to support learning beyond the workshop through e-learning, workbooks, drop-in clinics and People Partnering sessions
How real-life scenarios, discussion and peer learning can build managers’ confidence
Signs that manager training is working, including stronger peer relationships and a more positive relationship with the People team
Chapters
[00:00] Introduction: Why managers matter
[01:14] The challenge of developing managers
[02:02] The Workforce Success Stories Summit
Exclusive offer from HR Coffee Time’s sponsor, C-me
185 | Cancer at Work: How to Support Employees Through Diagnosis, Treatment and Beyond (with Tara Ferguson)
Episode 185
Friday, September 25, 2026 • Duration 32:30
Cancer affects far more people in the workplace than many of us realise. As HR professionals, there may be times when you're supporting an employee with a cancer diagnosis, someone undergoing treatment, a colleague living with the long-term effects of cancer, or an employee who is caring for a loved one affected by it.
Knowing that support matters is one thing. Feeling confident about what to say, what practical help to offer, and how to create the right support across your organisation is another.
In this episode, Fay is joined by Tara Ferguson, Founder of Onward With You. Drawing on more than 20 years in senior HR roles and her own experience of being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023, Tara shares practical advice to help HR teams and managers better support people affected by cancer at work. Together, they explore the role good line management can play, the reality of living with cancer beyond active treatment, and the steps organisations can take to build greater cancer confidence.
What You’ll Learn
Why cancer should increasingly be considered a long-term condition rather than a short-term illness
The scale of cancer's impact on today's workforce, including employees with caring responsibilities
What Tara's line manager did that made such a positive difference during her diagnosis and treatment
Why work can sometimes play an important role in someone's recovery and wellbeing during treatment
What HR professionals need to understand about legal protections and reasonable adjustments
How to approach the first conversation when someone shares a cancer diagnosis with you
Practical steps organisations can take to improve awareness, support and manager capability
Chapters
[0:00] Introduction: Cancer at Work
[01:15] Meet Tara Ferguson
[02:50] Tara's Story: From HR to Cancer Diagnosis
[03:48] The Changing Face of Cancer in the Workplace
Exclusive offer from HR Coffee Time’s sponsor, C-me
184 | Two Great Decision-Making Techniques for When You’re Stuck Between Two Options
Episode 184
Friday, September 11, 2026 • Duration 16:38
Have you ever found yourself going round and round in circles trying to choose between two options?
Perhaps you’re deciding whether to recruit externally or promote someone internally, introduce a new policy or stick with what you already have, invest in a new HR system or make the current one work, or even stay in your current role or apply for something new.
Sometimes the problem isn’t that you haven’t thought hard enough about the two options. It’s that you’ve become so focused on them that you haven’t spotted another possibility.
In this solo episode of HR Coffee Time, Fay shares a real decision she recently struggled with while planning the 2027 edition of The Essential HR Planner, and how an unexpected suggestion helped her realise she had fallen into a common decision-making trap called narrow framing.
Drawing on ideas from Chip and Dan Heath’s brilliant book Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions, Fay explores two practical ways to widen your thinking and get unstuck when a decision feels like an either/or choice.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn
What narrow framing is and how it can limit your decision-making
Why the options in front of you may not be the only options available
How to use theVanishing Options Testto uncover different possibilities
Why asking someone else for their perspective can help you see what you’re missing
The questions to ask other people so you don’t accidentally keep them trapped inside the same narrow frame
How Fay used these ideas to solve her dilemma about whether to bring back the wire-bound version of The Essential HR Planner
Chapters
[00:00] Introduction: Stuck Between Two Options
[00:28] Common Either/Or Decisions at Work
[01:22] The Book: Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath
[02:43] Fay's Dilemma: The Essential HR Planner
[04:27] Should the Wire-Bound Planner Return?
Books RecommendedThe Essential HR PlannerEnjoyed This Episode? Don’t Miss the Next One!Exclusive offer from HR Coffee Time’s sponsor, C-me
183 | What Is Employee Experience? How HR Can Actually Improve It
Episode 183
Friday, August 28, 2026 • Duration 36:58
What exactly is employee experience? How is it different from workplace culture, employer brand or your employee value proposition? And what can you actually do to improve it?
In this episode of HR Coffee Time, I’m joined by employee experience expert Chris Manning, People and Culture Portfolio Transformation Lead at Primark.
Chris explains what employee experience really means and why it matters for organisations of every size. He shares practical ways to understand and measure the experience your employees are having, whether you work in a small organisation or a huge global business.
We also explore how design thinking can help you move beyond simply listening to employees and start making meaningful improvements. Chris talks us through a practical onboarding example, showing how journey mapping can uncover friction, identify opportunities and help you design a better employee experience.
And if you need to secure investment for your ideas, Chris shares practical advice on building the business case and getting the buy-in and budget you need.
Whether employee experience is already part of your role, or it’s an area you’d like to learn more about, this episode is packed with practical ideas to help you get started.
What You'll Learn
What employee experience actually means
How employee experience differs from workplace culture, employer brand and EVP
Why employee experience matters in smaller organisations as well as large global businesses
Practical ways to measure employee experience
How to gather useful feedback across the employee lifecycle
Why post-onboarding and offboarding can provide valuable insights
How employee data can help create more personalised employee experiences
How design thinking can help you improve employee experience
The five stages of design thinking: empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test
How to use journey mapping to improve an experience such as onboarding
How to build a compelling business case for employee experience improvements
How to combine qualitative and quantitative evidence to secure buy-in and budget
ChaptersUSEFUL LINKSEnjoyed This Episode? Don’t Miss the Next One!Exclusive offer from HR Coffee Time’s sponsor, C-me
182 | HR Team Building: An Activity Every New HR Leader Should Try
Episode 182
Friday, August 14, 2026 • Duration 14:07
🎁 Download your free Personal User Manual template:
Taking over the leadership of an HR team can come with a long list of things you want to improve, but one of the most valuable things you can do first is help your team build trust, understand each other and work well together.
In this episode of HR Coffee Time, Fay shares one of her favourite team-building activities: creating and sharing Personal User Manuals.
Personal User Manuals give everyone an opportunity to explain how they work best, the strengths they bring, what helps them thrive and what their colleagues should know about them.
They can make some of the information that is usually invisible within a team much more visible, helping people understand each other’s preferences, avoid misunderstandings and make better use of the strengths and experience already within the team.
Fay talks you through how to run the activity, from deciding what to include in your Personal User Manuals to facilitating the sharing session and turning what you learn into practical changes in how you work together.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
Why investing in relationships can create a stronger foundation when you take over an HR team
How Personal User Manuals can help your team understand each other’s strengths, preferences and ways of working
How the activity can help you start building greater psychological safety
Ideas for useful categories to include in your Personal User Manuals
Why it’s helpful to ask your team what they think everyone should include
How to create the right environment for people to share what they’ve written
Why you, as the leader, should share your Personal User Manual first
Questions you can use to encourage positive reflections after each person has shared
How to turn what you learn into practical improvements to the way your team works
ChaptersUseful LinksEnjoyed This Episode? Don't Miss the Next One!Exclusive offer from HR Coffee Time’s sponsor, C-me
181 | HR in the AI Era – The 5 Foundations Every HR Leader Needs (with Charlotte Goulding)
Episode 181
Friday, July 31, 2026 • Duration 48:37
HR professionals have a huge opportunity to shape how, why and when AI is used across their organisations.
Because AI is not only changing technology. It is changing jobs, skills, teams, management and the way work gets done. And HR is uniquely placed to make sure those changes work for both the organisation and its people.
In this episode of HR Coffee Time, Fay is joined by People Consultant Charlotte Goulding to explore how HR professionals can help shape successful AI adoption across their organisations.
Charlotte explains why HR should not wait to be invited into conversations about AI and shares how her Five People Foundations Framework can help organisations put the right people foundations in place as work changes.
Together, Fay and Charlotte explore what each of these foundations means in practice, including why traditional job descriptions may no longer be enough, why managers will become even more important and how performance, recognition and HR operations may need to evolve.
Charlotte also explains how HR can help organisations make thoughtful decisions about AI while keeping people, trust and culture at the heart of them.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
Why HR shouldn't wait to be invited into conversations about AI
The difference between “AI for HR” and “HR for AI”
How the Five People Foundations work together
Why skills and capabilities could become more useful than job descriptions
How managers can support people through AI-related change
How performance, recognition and HR operations may need to adapt
Chapters
[0:00] Introduction: Why HR must lead AI adoption
[2:01] Welcome, Charlotte Goulding
[2:24] HR for AI, not just AI for HR
[4:41] From pandemic hero to recent criticism
[6:31] How the Five Foundations framework came about
Useful LinksBooks Recommended in This EpisodeHelpful Episodes to Listen to NextEnjoyed This Episode? Don't Miss the Next One!Exclusive offer from HR Coffee Time’s sponsor, C-me
180 | (Day 5) The Strategic HR Sprint – Making Strategic Work a Priority
Episode 180
Friday, July 17, 2026 • Duration 08:37
Does it feel hard to make time for strategic work when you’re already so busy?
Welcome to Day 5 of The Strategic HR Sprint, a free five-day learning experience designed to help you strengthen your strategic thinking and build your confidence about being strategic.
In this final episode, Fay explores how to create and protect time for strategic work, even when your diary is full and urgent tasks keep competing for your attention.
You’ll use the Day 5 worksheet to design your ideal strategic week by considering when you think most clearly, where you can focus and what you could delegate, automate, shorten or stop to create more space.
You’ll also think about the boundaries and accountability that could help you protect your strategic time and follow through on the work you’ve started during the sprint.
By the end of the episode, you’ll have a realistic plan for making strategic work a regular priority.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
How to choose and protect time for strategic work
Why your energy levels and working environment matter
Practical ways to create more space in your working week
How boundaries and accountability can help you follow through
How to use AI as a thinking partner and accountability coach
Chapters
[00:00] Welcome to Day 5 of The Strategic HR Sprint
[00:48] Why strategic work gets pushed aside
[01:39] Making deliberate space for strategic work
[02:18] Designing your ideal strategic week
[02:40] Working with your energy levels
[03:11] Choosing the right environment
Exclusive offer from HR Coffee Time’s sponsor, C-me
179 | (Day 4) The Strategic HR Sprint – Deepening Your Strategic Thinking
Episode 179
Thursday, July 16, 2026 • Duration 11:45
When you spot a problem at work, how quickly does your mind start coming up with solutions?
Welcome to Day 4 of The Strategic HR Sprint, a free five-day experience to help you build your confidence and skills in being strategic in your HR role.
One of the most important parts of being strategic is taking the time to understand what is really driving a challenge before deciding how to respond.
It is easy to assume that the answer is training, a new policy, more people or better pay. But if you have not explored what is really causing the challenge, you could invest time and energy in an idea that only treats the symptoms.
Getting to the root cause helps you make better decisions about where HR can have the greatest impact and identify actions that are more likely to create lasting improvements.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to stay curious for longer and use a simple technique called the Five Whys to explore the challenge you identified during Day 3.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
Why understanding the root cause is an important part of being strategic
How to use the Five Whys technique
How to avoid treating a symptom instead of the underlying cause
Why involving people who are close to the challenge can lead to better insights
How to ask “why” without sounding critical or pushy
Your Day 4 Activity
Today’s worksheet will help you explore the challenge you chose during Day 3 and identify what may be causing it.
You’ll work through the Five Whys, think about where HR could have the biggest influence and note down your first ideas for how the challenge could be addressed.
You might also find it helpful to talk the challenge through with someone who sees or experiences it day to day, as they may notice things that are easy to miss from your perspective.
ChaptersEnjoyed This Episode? Don’t Miss the Next One!Exclusive offer from HR Coffee Time’s sponsor, C-me
178 | (Day 3) The Strategic HR Sprint – Finding Your Strategic Focus
Episode 178
Wednesday, July 15, 2026 • Duration 07:33
When there are dozens of things you could be working on, how do you decide what deserves your attention most?
Welcome to Day 3 of The Strategic HR Sprint, a free five-day learning experience designed to help you strengthen your strategic thinking in just 10–15 minutes each day.
In today’s episode, you’ll identify one important challenge to focus on for the rest of the sprint.
Drawing on an insight from Richard Rumelt’s book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, Fay explains why good strategy isn’t a long list of everything an organisation could do. It requires focus: understanding the challenges being faced and directing time and energy towards the ones that matter most.
You’ll explore different ways to identify a worthwhile challenge, whether that means looking at your organisation’s strategy, reflecting on what you discovered about the external environment during Day 2, reviewing HR data or noticing the frustrations that repeatedly arise in conversations with managers and employees.
Your chosen challenge doesn’t have to affect the entire organisation. If you’re earlier in your HR career, it could be something closer to your own role that you can influence. What matters is choosing an area where you have the opportunity to make a positive difference.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
Why being strategic includes deciding what not to focus on
How to identify the challenges behind your organisation’s strategic priorities
Where to look for ideas if your organisation doesn’t have a clear or up-to-date strategy
How external trends, HR data and recurring workplace frustrations can highlight important challenges
The question that can help you decide which challenge to prioritise
Why there isn’t an optional AI prompt for today’s activity
Chapters
[00:00] Welcome to Day 3 of The Strategic HR Sprint
Resources MentionedEnjoyed This Episode? Don’t Miss the Next One!Exclusive offer from HR Coffee Time’s sponsor, C-me
[02:49] Meet Amy Critchley: building a management development programme
[04:11] How Amy identified the need for manager training
[05:47] Deciding on the training content
[08:28] Combining HR knowledge with management development
[09:50] Designing engaging, brain-friendly training
[13:27] Wraparound support: e-learning and drop-in clinics
[15:28] From drop-in clinics to people partnering
[17:46] Measuring success: executive buy-in and manager engagement
[20:18] Changing the perception of HR
[24:16] Making learning stick: worst-case scenarios and one-to-ones
[29:06] How the programme changed HR's perception in the business
The Trainer’s Toolkit: Bringing Brain-Friendly Learning to Life, by Kimberly Herr and Larry Reynolds
Amy recommends this practical resource for ideas on keeping training real, recognising the different needs of people in the room, creating multisensory learning and managing the state of the group.
HR Coffee Time listeners can book C-me’s 90-minute High Performing Team Workshop, with five High Performance profiles and a Team Wheel, for £499 (saving more than £2,500). Ideal for a Christmas team day or end-of-year get-together. Places are limited, so find out more and apply at https://colour-profiling.com/hrcoffee
[05:12] How Tara Is Now: The Ongoing Impact
[08:07] Cancer in the Workplace: The Statistics
[11:36] What Good Line Manager Support Looks Like
[15:32] The Positive Role of Work During Treatment
HR Coffee Time listeners can book C-me’s 90-minute High Performing Team Workshop, with five High Performance profiles and a Team Wheel, for £499 (saving more than £2,500). Ideal for a Christmas team day or end-of-year get-together. Places are limited, so find out more and apply at https://colour-profiling.com/hrcoffee
[05:14] Asking for Feedback to Get Unstuck
[06:20] Claire's Game-Changing Suggestion
[07:53] Understanding Narrow Framing
[09:53] The Vanishing Options Test
[12:39] Getting Another Perspective
[13:50] How to Ask Better Questions When Asking for Advice
[14:44] Book Recommendations: Decisive, Made to Stick, and Switch
[15:28] Pre-Order the Wire-Bound Planner
[16:11] Closing Thanks and Sign-Off
The book links below are Amazon affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you.
If you’re watching or listening to this episode close to its release date, you should now be able to pre-order the wire-bound 2027 edition of The Essential HR Planner.
HR Coffee Time listeners can book C-me’s 90-minute High Performing Team Workshop, with five High Performance profiles and a Team Wheel, for £499 (saving more than £2,500). Ideal for a Christmas team day or end-of-year get-together. Places are limited, so find out more and apply at https://colour-profiling.com/hrcoffee
[00:00] What is employee experience and why does it matter?
[02:45] Meet Chris Manning
[04:35] What employee experience really means
[06:25] Employee experience vs workplace culture
[07:10] Employee experience, employer brand and EVP
[08:30] Why employee experience matters in smaller organisations too
[10:40] How to measure employee experience
[14:20] Using employee data to understand and personalise experiences
[18:20] Moving from employee listening to employee experience design
[19:40] Using journey mapping to improve onboarding
[23:30] A free onboarding journey-mapping resource
[25:25] What is design thinking?
[26:50] The five stages of design thinking
[29:45] How to get buy-in and budget for employee experience
Sign up for the free weekly HR Coffee Time email to be notified each time a new episode is released – and get free career tips, tools, and resources.
HR Coffee Time listeners can book C-me’s 90-minute High Performing Team Workshop, with five High Performance profiles and a Team Wheel, for £499 (saving more than £2,500). Ideal for a Christmas team day or end-of-year get-together. Places are limited, so find out more and apply at https://colour-profiling.com/hrcoffee
How to keep the learning alive after the activity
[00:00] Why relationships matter when you take over an HR team
[01:20] What is a Personal User Manual?
[02:50] Why Personal User Manuals can be so useful
[04:55] What to include in your Personal User Manuals
[06:50] Involving your team in choosing the categories
[07:50] How to run the sharing session
[08:50] Why the leader should go first
[09:30] Encouraging positive comments and reflections
[10:40] What have you learned about yourselves as a team?
[11:35] Keeping the learning alive
[12:35] Download the free Personal User Manual template
Sign up for the free weekly HR Coffee Time email to be notified each time a new episode is released - and get free career tips, tools, and resources.
HR Coffee Time listeners can book C-me’s 90-minute High Performing Team Workshop, with five High Performance profiles and a Team Wheel, for £499 (saving more than £2,500). Ideal for a Christmas team day or end-of-year get-together. Places are limited, so find out more and apply at https://colour-profiling.com/hrcoffee
Sign up for the free weekly HR Coffee Time email to be notified each time a new episode is released - and get free career tips, tools, and resources.
HR Coffee Time listeners can book C-me’s 90-minute High Performing Team Workshop, with five High Performance profiles and a Team Wheel, for £499 (saving more than £2,500). Ideal for a Christmas team day or end-of-year get-together. Places are limited, so find out more and apply at https://colour-profiling.com/hrcoffee
[03:31] Creating more space in your diary
[04:03] Protecting your focus and staying accountable
[04:46] The Essential HR Planner
[05:42] Using AI as a thinking partner and accountability coach
HR Coffee Time listeners can book C-me’s 90-minute High Performing Team Workshop, with five High Performance profiles and a Team Wheel, for £499 (saving more than £2,500). Ideal for a Christmas team day or end-of-year get-together. Places are limited, so find out more and apply at https://colour-profiling.com/hrcoffee
Once you have completed the worksheet, you can also use the optional AI prompt to suggest practical HR and People initiatives, including quick wins and longer-term ideas.
Before using the prompt, remember to remove or change anything that could identify your organisation or the people involved.
Access all the sprint resources here:
https://brightskyhr.co.uk/sprint
[00:00] – Welcome to Day 4 of The Strategic HR Sprint
[01:09] – A recap of the sprint so far
[01:42] – Why we jump straight to solutions
[02:41] – Staying curious for longer
[03:03] – How the Five Whys works
[03:37] – Finding the right starting point
[04:45] – The employee turnover example
[06:10] – Your Day 4 worksheet
[07:18] – Involving other people
[07:43] – How to ask “why” without sounding critical
HR Coffee Time listeners can book C-me’s 90-minute High Performing Team Workshop, with five High Performance profiles and a Team Wheel, for £499 (saving more than £2,500). Ideal for a Christmas team day or end-of-year get-together. Places are limited, so find out more and apply at https://colour-profiling.com/hrcoffee
[01:09] Recapping Days 1 and 2
[01:30] What good strategy looks like in practice
[02:52] Identifying one challenge worth focusing on
[03:42] Using your organisation’s strategy
[04:43] What to do if the strategy isn’t helpful
[05:14] Learning from data and recurring frustrations
[05:34] Choosing the challenge with the greatest potential impact
[06:15] Why today’s activity doesn’t include an AI prompt
If you’re taking part in The Strategic HR Sprint, Fay would love to hear how you’re getting on. Leave a comment underneath the YouTube video, share your progress on LinkedIn and tag Fay, or reply to one of your daily sprint emails.
HR Coffee Time listeners can book C-me’s 90-minute High Performing Team Workshop, with five High Performance profiles and a Team Wheel, for £499 (saving more than £2,500). Ideal for a Christmas team day or end-of-year get-together. Places are limited, so find out more and apply at https://colour-profiling.com/hrcoffee
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