The Human Revolutionaries Show - HR, Leadership, Well-Being and Culture stories in the news – Details, episodes & analysis

Welcome back to the HR show! 

In this final episode of this short season exploring the link between health and leadership and I spoke to Jo Rzymowska, MBE.

Jo is an Inspirational Leader & Speaker, an Executive Advisor and a NED for Hays Travel. A travel industry expert she has worked with Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Universal Studios, Thomas Cook and Royal Caribbean Cruises, culminating as Celebrity Cruises’ Vice President and Managing Director, EMEA.

In this interview we discuss holistic health and wellbeing - how being true to ourselves impacts our health. 

We discuss - 

- Her early days growing up as "an outsider" 

- How we (our generation) colluded with the prevailing culture - wanting to get on, perpetuating behaviour we now realise was unacceptable

- Whether there is a place for DEI policies and development today

- How she came out and began being truly herself at work

- How to navigate being inclusive and the fear of saying ‘the wrong thing’.

- What it was like getting recognised with an MBE

- What makes someone a brilliant ally

- How to be more true to yourself

If you are interested in diversity, leadership styles or want her to speak at your event, moderate your event or advise your business, you can find her on LinkedIn 

Her book will be out in Spring 2026 - follow her so you can grab that when it is published!

If you want to discuss having me speak at your upcoming event please contact my manager, Diana Stoney diana@behindthemic.co.uk  

To find out more about my work with leaders and helping organisations through change, visit https://www.thatpeoplething.com/

And I'm on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/blairepalmer/

I hope you enjoyed the show. Please feel free to share it with anyone you think might find it valuable!

In this season of the show, diving into the importance of health and wellbeing as an integral part of leadership. 

Work is killing us. Sure, fewer people die on construction sites or factories but it is killing us nonetheless...just much more slowly. 

Kathy Sharkey and I have worked together since her days as an HRD - first when she was a delegate on one of our programmes and later as a colleague running leadership programmes together.  

She is now working as a consultant and spending more time at leisure. And it’s since she slowed down professionally that she’s discovered what work was doing to her health. 

In this conversation we discuss -

• How poor health when you’re a leader is normalised. 
• The challenge of joining in with ‘team fitness’ activities when you don’t want your colleagues to see you look sweaty or wearing a swim suit.
• The concept of forced jollity!
• The Worth It metric
• Why she decided to step back from her high level career as right hand person to the CEO
• Rethinking how your later career might have to look different to the way it looks now
• How orgs need to think about the health of their workforce
• How a health scare woke her up to her physical health and the results she’s seeing since she made some big changes

You can connect with Kathy on LinkedIn

You can connect with me on LinkedIn too

My website is https://www.thatpeoplething.com/

And to book me to speak at your event, contact my manager - Diana Stoney - diana@behindthemic.co.uk

One of the first things this week's guest, Ginny Baillie, says is how hard it is for leaders to do nothing.

It's comforting to be busy, to attend every meeting, to be the expert, to be the decision-maker, the one with the strong opinion...but is that really what we need of leaders?

Ginny Baillie was one of Europe's first Master Certified Coaches and a veteran in the leadership development field. And she knows one thing - the way people talk to each other and the way they meet are rocket fuel for organisations.

The emphasis on task completion and bottom line growth as the primary focus are a deep distraction away from what would be possible and are not keeping up with the times. She says "We need more from these connections".

In our discussion she declares a meetings emergency, saying we have to draw a line and ask everybody how to make it better. No one is saying I'm happy with the number of meetings I have and they are all really useful. If she was in HR that would be her mission.

You can find out more about Ginny's Drum session on her website and connect with her on LinkedIn. I highly recommend talking to her about the state of emergency your meetings are in and see what she advises.

And you can connect with me of course on LinkedIn. 

Do remember to tell people about the show, play it to your team and get a conversation going! and please leave a review and star rating as it helps people find us and see if it's any good!

With the Great Resignation post-pandemic, many people are embarking on new roles. 

I've coached a lot of leaders in the weeks before they start a new job, helping them think about what they stand for in their new role, how to 'land' on day one, and how to work out where to start actually doing the job. 

Well, that's exactly what this week's guest has been thinking about and in the show she shares just what questions she's been trying to ask herself before she walks in to the office on day one. 

Kirsty Lynagh is the newly appointed Chief People Officer at Seccl Technology, a company helping to rebuild the infrastructure of investments and advice whilst promoting financial inclusion.

Kirsty’s human centric, yet first principles, approach has been shaped over twenty years during which she has adopted non traditional methods to deliver people strategies that enable inclusive, engaged and performing workplaces.  Kirsty’s had a diverse career across four industries in the UK and Australia and has sought out opportunities where she can make a difference to the people and organisations she works with, and a close eye on their impact in broader society.   

She’s been recognised as a pioneer of forward thinking, human centric people practices that really deliver results and has won multiple awards for workplace, people engagement and leadership.

In this interview we talk about - 

• What she thought about during a 6 month sabbatical
• How she's preparing to embark on a brand new role in her new company
• How she will protect her time and manage her diary
• How she's deciding on her philosophy and vision for the people strategy at Seccl
• Being extrovert at work and introvert at home
• Our privileged 'knowledge work' echo chamber
• The gender pay gap

You can connect with Kirsty on LinkedIn.

And here's my LinkedIn profile.

Please do share the show with anyone you think would find it useful! And please also leave a review and star rating which helps people find this podcast! Thank you. 

I love wide ranging conversations about the future of work and these are always the sorts of conversations I have with today's guest on the show. I normally wish I was recording as I feel so many people would enjoy being part of our chats...and this time I did!

Phil Quinnan is an independent consultant specialising in workforce strategy, planning and organisation design. Having spend 10 years working in the Middle East he recently decided to permanently relocate to his home in Italy. That's him in front of his pool in the episode art!

His experiences come from having worked across multiple industry sectors and several countries. And that's why he's the perfect person to take an overview of our industry, how work is changing and how we, in HR and the People profession need to take an active role in shaping the future.

We talk about values, the kind of socially responsible, purpose driven vision he sees for business and how HR professionals need to stick their head above the parapet in order to bring about his optimistic view of the future.

You can connect with Phil on LinkedIn and pick up on any of the topics with him directly.

And you can also connect with me. I love hearing what my peers are doing and diving deep in to this whole topic so feel free to drop me a PM. 

Hello and welcome to season 2 of The Human Revolutionaries Show!

I've missed you!

This season I've set up a whole bunch of interviews (well, conversations really) with people who inspire me with their thinking about the future of work and the issues facing us as we try to create spaces where people can do their best work.

It's not just Covid that is changing how we think about work. As today's guest points out, it's also George Floyd 's death and the higher profile of Black Lives Matter as a result, following on the heels of the Me Too movement , we've got very low unemployment rates and much higher awareness of issues around discrimination and privilege.

That's why I thought Fudia would be so interesting to talk to. Our internet was a bit dodgy at the start (it gets better!) but it's absolutely worth sticking with it because we talk about recruitment, intersectionality, unconscious bias, the role of the law in changing attitudes and behaviour and some very practical ways you can play a part in making the workplace more fair. I learnt a lot and I hope I asked the questions you're grappling with!

You can find out more about Fudia here - https://www.fudiasmartt.com and on LinkedIn

The book Fudia mentioned is Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication by Vanessa Van Edwards. 

You can connect with me on LinkedIn  and message me if you want to discuss any of the topics talked about on the show. 

Please share this show with colleagues and friends! If we want to revolutionise the workplace we need to get people talking about how things can be better!

Hi and welcome back to the show.

Dating app, Bumble, has joined companies like LinkedIn and Hootsuite shutting down for a few days to give employees a proper break from work.

On today's show Natasha and Blaire talk about -

* whether it's a good idea that other companies should follow
* pandemic burnout
* how to assess productivity versus busy-work
* whether burnout is inevitable when a company is growing fast
* whether our expectations of founders should be different to our expectations of workers
* what causes burnout
* and some more sustainable ideas for getting productivity without breaking people!

Here's more on the story

Please follow us on LinkedIn -

Here's Blaire's profile

Here's Natasha's profile

Please remember to share this show with colleagues, friends and random strangers! 

And please give us a star rating, leave a review and subscribe! 

See you next time!

Hello and welcome back!

Please do subscribe, leave a review and share this podcast with your colleagues. That means more people know about it and can get involved in the conversation!

This week we are talking about presenteeism. Maybe we were optimistic to think that the pandemic would mark an end to old style presenteeism and that hybrid working would mark the start of a focus on productivity and outputs instead.

It seems that isn't the case.

We talk about research that presenteeism is alive and well, even people feeling obliged to go in to the office during lockdowns so that their face gets seen. And we discuss WHO research that quantifies the health impact of long hours globally. It's huge by the way.

Here's more on the stories we discuss -

Presenteeism
Long Hours
Munitions workers in WW1

We also discuss a 21 day challenge we are doing with Deepak Chopra - we will let you know in future episodes how we get on!

Stay in touch by connecting with us on LinkedIn -

Blaire on LinkedIn
Natasha on LinkedIn

Hi and welcome back to the show!

This week we talk about a breaking news story relating to cool, punky beer company BrewDog.

A letter from ex-BrewDog staff alleges a culture of fear, a cult of personality and a toxic attitude towards junior staff at the company. The founders have said they are sorry and that they would listen, learn and act but not everyone believes the apology or that there is a genuine commitment to address the allegations.

We discuss the risks of presenting yourself as having a special culture as part of your brand identity, the issues that have been raised and what impact this might have on the business and what we would do if we were invited to help the company as they take action.

Here's more on the story.

We would love to hear from you if you have personal experience of the business or if you are part of the comapny and think we might be able to help. And if you've worked in places that sound like this, what did you do to turn things around?

Our LinkedIn contact details are:

Blaire on LinkedIn
Natasha on LinkedIn

On a lighter note we also talk about the acceptable use (or otherwise) of the words 'Staycation', 'Holibobs' and 'FamFam' which are getting a lot of usage as we approach summer and how companies might adapt to the trend for shorter more frequent vacations versus the traditional 2 or 3 week 'big holiday' we've been used to in the past. 

Please remember to subscribe, leave and review and share the show with anyone you think would enjoy it. And please do get in touch if you want to talk about any of the issues we've raised in this episode.  

Hello and welcome back to the show!

This week we've got two meaty topics - new research from the USA which suggests 1 in 4 people want to leave their job post-pandemic, and research which confirms that women are taking the brunt of the 'household management' during this time to the detriment of their mental health.

We start by talking about mental load, particularly as single parents, and our own experiences during the pandemic. We cover what specifically is difficult and what might be needed to get parents who have been carrying significantly more than normal during this period back to full mental good health.

And then, in Work in the News, we talk about why people may be thinking of quitting their jobs, their industry and maybe even their whole lifestyle, what we in HR can do to re-think some of the fundamentals of 'career', advancement and professional development and even the idea of an amnesty where give ourselves and others in the organisation permission to admit they aren't fully on board so we can get to the heart of what the issue is...and try and find solutions.

We'd love to know your thoughts on these topics especially if you have particular experience or disagree with our assessment!

Please follow us on LinkedIn.

Blaire on LinkedIn

Natasha on LinkedIn

And don't forget to subscribe, share and comment! This helps us grow our audience so others can get involved in these conversations. 

Here's more about the 'mental load for household management' story

Here's more on the story that 1 in 4 want to quit their job