HR Unfiltered - brought to you by SOPEOPLE – Details, episodes & analysis

Restructures have become the default response to pressure, a kind of panic button! Markets wobble, cash tightens, leaders feel the heat... so the org chart gets redrawn. It looks decisive. It feels controllable. It rarely fixes the real problem.

In this episode, Sue and Dean unpack why restructures so often fail to deliver. We explore why leaders start with boxes instead of outcomes. Why change is treated as an event, not a process. And why over-engineered roles quietly break people and performance. We name what happens when the human system is ignored (fear, loss, cynicism and disengagement.) We challenge the idea that structure equals strategy, and we explain why clarity beats complexity every time.

This episode is for anyone who’s lived through a restructure and thought, “this isn’t working," and wants a better or different way. 

And for leaders who want results, not just moving deck chairs and causing pain.

In this episode of HR Unfiltered, Dean and Sue sit down with Ian Redmond from Explore Training to talk about something HR rarely names clearly enough: What it takes to manage clients well, especially when the work is complex, emotional, and commercially exposed.

This isn’t about “stakeholder management” as a training slide title. It’s about psychology, boundaries, trust, contracting, and courage, and what happens when HR, L&D, and consultants get those wrong (or right). Ian brings decades of experience working with demanding clients, senior leaders, and messy organisational realities and we unpack the human skills behind effective client relationships that sustain long-term impact. What we discuss:

• Client management is relational work;
• Contracting: the bit everyone rushes (and pays for later);
• Boundaries does not equate to being difficult;
• Trust, challenge, and authentic, adult relationships;
• Commercial realism (without losing your authenticity).

We're HR Unfiltered, a podcast hosted by SOPEOPLE founders, Dean Corbett and Sue O'Callaghan. We are new at this and a little out of our comfort zone, so bear with us - we're confident in one thing: It will get better and have more bite with each episode that we put time into creating. We're a scrappy people consultancy start up and we're bringing you an unfiltered view of key topics the HR/People space. Please stay with us as we build out episodes that we hope you come to enjoy.  

Tom Emery joins Sue and Dean for a conversation about his book People People: Reach Your Full Potential as a Chief HR Officer, a narrative-led, painfully relatable story of “Joanna”, a CHRO under pressure, and the coaching framework that helps her regain agency, clarity, and impact.

Together they explore why “seat at the table” is outdated, and why the bigger question is what HR leaders do once they’re in the room. Tom shares his own “wake up” moment from exec meetings, why HR must stop separating People/HR from “the business”, and how commercial curiosity and enterprise leadership change the game.

They also unpack the realities of organisational change: Why humans can’t be “refrozen” on demand, why leaders often try to persuade people too quickly, and why the best HR leaders focus on what they can control... Their time, their boundaries, and the quality of key stakeholder relationships.

Practical takeaways include a simple “Monday 9am” reset:

• clarify your purpose
• map your stakeholders, and
• start one honest conversation that shifts a stuck relationship without blame, drama, or theatricals.

Tom also shares what he sees coaching HR leaders most often: An external locus of control (“everyone else is the problem”) and the shift toward agency that creates real influence.

Tom invites feedback, challenge and input to his next book project - get in touch with Tom at www.hex-development.com. And as always, get in touch with Dean and Sue at www.sopeople.co.uk or https://www.linkedin.com/in/deancorbettpxandcoaching/ or https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-o-callaghan-fcipd-22abaa6/ 

And don't forget to read the post-episode article on SOPEOPLE's LinkedIn page.

In this episode of HR Unfiltered, we take a long-overdue swing at one of HR’s most sacred cows: best practice. It sounds sensible. It feels safe. And in today’s complex, exhausted, fast-changing world, it’s quietly doing more harm than good.

We walk through where best practice came from, why HR clings to it, and why copying what worked elsewhere is increasingly failing organisations now, especially under the pressures of AI, burnout, public-sector strain, and fragile trust.

We draw a clear line between what’s safe to copy and what absolutely isn’t, challenge the confusion between compliance and best practice, and argue that risk and governance are strategic choices, and not excuses to stop thinking.

Most importantly, we remind practitioners that there is a perfectly viable alternative - best fit - and we bring contemporary guidance on how to do this in a way that's fit for today. In our view, it's a design-led, commercially grounded way of doing HR that starts with the real problem, the real context, and the real constraints, not someone else’s framework.

You’ll hear:

• Why best practice protects HR personally but limits organisational impact

• When copying is fine, and when it’s actively dangerous

• The questions HR should ask before importing any “proven” solution

• The five components of best-fit people design in the contemporary world

• Why HR doesn’t get another decade of failed rollouts

If you’re tired of rolling out elegant frameworks that don’t survive contact with reality, this one’s for you.

TL;DR: Best practice is fine for the boring stuff. Best fit is essential for the work that actually matters.

What if HR stopped acting like a support function, and started operating like a product team? In this episode of HR Unfiltered, Dean and Sue are joined by Seb Hochmuth, a product and technology leader with 15 years’ experience scaling startups, to break down exactly how product thinking can transform modern HR. Dean and Sue try to adopt the 'consciously incompetent' mindset to get the most out of Seb's brain to share with our wonderful fellow professionals. 

Ultimately, this is not another episode about mindset or buzzwords. It’s a practical, step-by-step conversation about execution.

Together, we explore:

• How HR accumulates process debt in the same way tech teams accumulate tech debt, and how product teams actually fix it;

• How HR can use discovery, user journeys and problem statements to stop solving the wrong problems;

• What an MVP looks like for HR processes like onboarding, performance management and hiring;

• How to prioritise ruthlessly when leadership noise, opinion and bias get in the way;

• Why behaviour change beats frameworks, and how product teams diagnose it;

• Which metrics HR should track if it wants credibility with CEOs and CFOs;

• How to test, learn and iterate without betting the whole organisation on a 12-month transformation programme.

If you’re tired of HR advice that sounds good but doesn’t ship, this episode gives you the tools, methods and language to build people systems that actually work. Dean and Sue have been doing it this way for a while and we're happy to share thoughts and guidance in both our follow-up article, and if you want to get in touch, please do! 

In this episode of HR, Unfiltered, Dean and Sue dismantle one of HR's most hyped - but least understood - concepts: Adult culture. Neither Netflix or HR commentators invented it; the idea has been around for nearly a century. So, why are organisations still running Parent-Child workplaces while preaching autonomy, empowerment and trust? 

Across almost 60 minutes of honest conversation, we explore: 

- How modern organisations unconsciously design child-like systems that undermine accountability; 

- How HR's templates, scripts, euphemisms and frameworks quietly reinforce dependency; 

- Why leaders slip into Critical Parent or Nurturing Parent, any why employees respond in Adapted/Compliant Child; 

- What adult-to-adult really looks like, with practical, laughably recognisable roleplays; 

- Why regulated industries might often get adult culture more right than others; 

-  How to handle mistakes, performance issues and organisational change without reverting to parent-child dynamics; 

- And the truth that a fully Adult culture is impossible and undesirable - the goal is an organisation where Adult is the centre of gravity, not the *only* ego state. 

This episode blends psychology, leadership practice and HR reality without jargon, without corporate theatrics, and without the empty promises of human-centric slides. 

If you've ever wondered why your culture isn't as 'adult' as your values say it is, this one is for you. 

In this episode of HR Unfiltered, Sue and Dean dive head-first into one of the most weaponised, misunderstood, and fear-inducing phrases in the people profession: “Commercial HR.”

What is it? Why does everyone claim to be it? Why does it terrify so many HR teams? And why is the definition still so unbelievably vague?

We rip the jargon apart and rebuild it into something crystal clear: Commercial HR is HR that creates measurable value (revenue, profit, cost reduction, smarter investment cases, public value, better outcomes, risk mitigation, etc.) Everything else is admin.

This episode covers:

✔️ Why HR fell for the “kids’ table” narrative

✔️ The difference between strategic-sounding and actually commercial

✔️ Practical examples from multiple sectors

✔️ How to talk to a CFO (and be taken seriously)

✔️ Why “non-commercial HR” isn’t kinder, and is arguably lower impact

✔️ The SOPEOPLE Commercial HR Cheat Sheet (3 questions that might change everything)

✔️ What to do if your CEO or business partner is on the wrong track

✔️ How HR accidentally trains itself out of influence

✔️ Why “the fluffy stuff” (psych safety, leadership, culture) is the commercial stuff

✔️ Why every HR role (yes, every single one) has commercial value

Whether you’re an HRBP, HRD, CPO, L&D lead, OD partner, recruiter, ER pro, or running a people function in chaos…

This episode will challenge, provoke, and reassure you; we aim to give you the language you need to step (back) into influence.

This isn’t HR-bashing, it's HR-empowering and HR grown-up; welcome to a new baseline.

Dean and Sue tackle the dreaded topic of performance management. They argue that traditional annual reviews and ratings are outdated, biased, and demotivating (and efforts to revitalise have been like putting "lipstick on a pig.")

Sue and Dean explore organisational culture, using the metaphor "culture shows up in the car park." They discuss how symbols like executive parking or informal chats in the smoking shelter reveal a company's true values, often more than official statements. Arguing that culture "eats strategy for breakfast," they contrast toxic examples with healthy ones. They conclude that building a great culture isn't accidental; it requires deliberate alignment, committed leadership, and a strong employee voice to define "what it's really like to work here."