HR in the Hotseat: Bold Moves for Today’s Challenges

Welcome to the Vantage HR Influencers Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Vantage Circle, the simple and AI-powered rewards and recognition platform for employee engagement. Welcome to another exciting episode of the Vantage Influencers Podcast, where we'll dive into the bold moves and innovative strategies that are shaping the future of HR today. From navigating crisis to leading cultural transformations, we'll explore how leaders are rethinking the way we work, lead, and connect.

Susmita Sarma: Hi everyone, I'm Susmita, here for the show, and I'm excited to welcome Daniela G., a senior HR director and a global leader in strategic HR, talent acquisition, and organizational development. Daniela's insights into driving HR innovation and creating impactful leadership are sure to inspire. Let's jump in. Welcome to the Vantage Influencers Podcast, Daniela. Excited to have you with us today.

Daniela G.: Thanks for having me. Glad to be here and share my perspective.

Susmita Sarma: Yes, so let's kick things off with your journey, Daniela. Can you share how your experiences in the corporate world influenced your decision to pursue a career in HR, and particularly if there were any pivotal moments that changed your perspective on the field?

Daniela G.: Sure. Well, to answer your question, I think I'm not your typical HR person, I would say. I studied economics with a focus on finance in my native Romania, and then started my career in a finance, admin, and HR role. But then I had the tremendous opportunity to further my career while working abroad, and that made me want to obtain an MBA. So I traveled and worked in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, the US, you name it.

When the time came to do my MBA, and I got accepted at several prestigious business schools around the world, I had a choice to make, and that was a great turning point in my career. I decided not only to study at a French engineering business school, but also to try my hand at other corporate functions, like marketing and business development, so that I could get a better view of what the company needed from an HR perspective. That gave me a holistic view of the business and inspired me to approach the HR function differently, equipped with more knowledge of how to bring value.

But if I were to pinpoint the pivotal moment, I think a lucky byproduct of having to move around the world with my family was that I also changed industries every time I moved. That added more arrows to my quiver, so to speak. Since I've always loved learning and continuous people development, it was natural that I would go back to HR once I'd learned everything there was to learn from my MBA and the other roles I'd held.

But when I moved to the UAE fifteen years ago, I had the opportunity to join two very prestigious business schools in a career development, employability, and talent role. I didn't hesitate, because it opened up so many new learning avenues for me and added another perspective to HR. That's what brought me to where I am today.

Susmita Sarma: Great, thank you for sharing your personal experience so openly. Today we'll be talking about HR in the hotseat, the bold moves leaders make to navigate today's challenges. But the first thing I want to discuss is the future of HR. If you could completely redesign the role of HR from the ground up, what would be the most radical change you would propose?

Daniela G.: This is a very loaded question, because I think everyone in HR has ideas about how they would turn this function around. First of all, I would want to work with the board and leadership teams to redefine certain value-adding people practices, like performance management. I think many people would agree that performance management should sit with the board and top management, with the help of the HR function, but I wouldn't necessarily consider it an HR function itself, because it's such a high-stakes area that needs to be closely monitored and improved by the people who actually have the biggest stake in it.

That would be one of the things I'd change. I've also found in my career that one of the most difficult, and most misunderstood and misused, tasks we have in HR happens when the function is weak and doesn't hold that seat at the table we keep talking about, without access to strategic input and participation. How is that same function supposed to help implement one of the most critical processes, defining what performance truly looks like, how to achieve it, and how to link it to people's capabilities and development, all while thinking about how people actually perceive it?

I would also want to refocus the function only on value-adding services to the business, almost like consulting services, which in a way is what HR business partners already do, but I'd want us to focus only on those functions: helping the business understand its workforce needs and supporting operational leaders in people management. I think that's the single most important factor in whether employees decide to stay or go, and as HR, I'm not sure we always do a great job training managers to be better people leaders.

So I know it's a long shot, but I'd also try to help rebrand HR as a profit center rather than the traditional cost center it's seen as. I think that's the only way to truly transform the function into a value-added one.

Susmita Sarma: Three great points, and a brilliant answer to my question, Daniela. Talking about your experience, have you ever faced a crisis that forced you to rethink your approach to HR and led to some unexpected innovations?

Daniela G.: We've probably had lots of crisis situations in my career. Whether or not we found innovative answers is something to ask our CEOs, but let's say, not necessarily a crisis, but for example, I had to solve a persistent bad-recruitment problem in one of my roles with a very low budget, which is a big problem. I managed to find, after searching quite a lot, an AI-powered tool that was well priced because it was new, and it solved two major issues: it reduced my team's interviewing time through video interviewing, which we already knew about, but it also came at a decent price and provided a strong candidate psychometric profile. That saved us a lot of time and money.

Another example was during COVID. I think many people asked this question will say the same thing, that the COVID crisis forced us to rethink things, not just in HR but in general. I also covered IT, procurement, and facilities management at the time, so we had to think about all of those aspects. I ran a survey among our teams to find creative ways to measure engagement and keep up morale, and to find solutions for employees navigating those difficult times. Through that survey, I noticed that many people were complaining of back pain from sitting on chairs at home that weren't suited for work, so I decided to send every employee their office chair and additional equipment for their home. That improved their quality of life and their work. I worked remotely for over a year myself, so this is something many people had to think about. I believe the more we advance in using AI-based tools, the more innovative we'll be able to be in our responses to the business, though there are plenty of considerations to keep in mind as we adapt to these technological changes.

Susmita Sarma: Exactly, and when we talk about crisis, we can't skip COVID. So many things came up during that time. And my next question for you, Daniela, is have you ever faced an ethical dilemma in your career?

Daniela G.: To say I haven't would be a wild exaggeration, of course, we all face this kind of dilemma, especially in HR. I think at every point in the HR function there's a moment where you face that kind of problem, and as human beings with values and principles, it can sometimes be extremely hard to balance staying true to yourself with what they call doing your job. In my case, I'd say one of the most difficult challenges I've faced was around making decisions such as restructuring and downsizing, where balancing business needs with empathy and consideration for affected employees' lives, well-being, and personal situations made it extremely tough to keep my decision-making unbiased and objective, when in reality it's anything but.

Another tough challenge I faced was in recruitment, when there's pressure to hire a referral, whether from senior management, a client, or a network contact. I have to say I was very fortunate, because I always managed to do my job to the best of my ability without compromising my values, even though sometimes it was quite tough. I always try to choose the companies I work with carefully, making sure ethics and compliance are high on their agenda, because that way I know my values are aligned with their corporate practices from the start. Whenever I'm faced with a moment where I have to decide between doing my job or giving up my principles, I always choose my values.

Susmita Sarma: Certain situations are always tough, but I'm sure you'd agree they're extremely necessary for growth. Moving forward, Daniela, what do you think is the biggest misconception about company culture?

Daniela G.: Culture could mean so many things, and it's one of those terms that's often misdefined and misunderstood. Sometimes leadership throws culture to HR without making it a priority on their own agenda with the board and management team, which sets the project up to fail.

I think culture is definitely much more than the perks and smiling employee faces on camera bragging about how great it is to work for a company. That's more marketing and PR than anything else. If I were looking for a role, I'd look at what a company does around employer branding, but I'm more interested in what current and former employees say about what it's actually like to work there, on platforms like Glassdoor. That's not going to be the be-all and end-all of measuring a company's culture, but it's a good indicator of where the gaps might be, and whether it's the right culture for you.

For me, culture is more about how leadership behaves, what the decision-making process looks like in a crisis, and what the numbers show in terms of sick leave and employee happiness. Those are better indicators of a company's true culture. I once heard a definition of company culture, and I'll paraphrase since I don't recall it exactly, but essentially: the worst behavior a company tolerates is how you define its culture. I think that says it all, because in the end, it's what employees live day to day, how they're treated when tough decisions come up. Otherwise, it's just empty words. As HR professionals, I think we have a clear duty to have a strong, sometimes loud, voice with the leadership team, to be the ethics and compliance custodians. In my case, I'm lucky to be exactly that, guiding leadership toward making the company a place employees are happy to work, proud to represent, and where they feel it's an inclusive, psychologically safe space to grow.

Susmita Sarma: Yes, and another aspect of culture is the employer-employee relationship. There's been continuous advancement in technology, AI, and automation. Do you think this is in any way replacing personal connection in the workplace?

Daniela G.: Of course not. It's always like that with technological advances, first there's a fear factor, and people assume everything will change. I'm actually extremely excited about these advancements in technology, specifically the potential of AI, which we already use in many ways to reduce time spent on repetitive admin tasks and other work that isn't the best use of our time in HR. That gives me hope that we'll have more opportunity to focus on the actual humanity of our roles, spending more time actually understanding our workforce, listening to them, and figuring out how to make the best use of every person's potential in the company, hopefully through the ethical use of AI tools, and to guarantee inclusive recruitment.

I don't believe AI will replace a lot of HR functions. We already use plenty of AI tools, in recruitment and in task automation for admin and personnel administration, and we can successfully use them as enablers rather than replacements. But there are a few things I'm acutely aware of, like the need to equip our teams with knowledge of AI tools and their potential ethical and even legal pitfalls, and as HR leaders, balancing the need for AI use with those implications should be very high on our agenda.

Beyond AI and technology, I think there's a need to create a safe space for open dialogue in the workplace, so employees feel empowered to voice dissenting opinions and challenge the status quo without fear of repercussions. I think this has always been a huge issue, but it became even more prevalent after the COVID crisis, because it's not just about voicing a dissenting opinion or challenging the status quo, it's also about being able to express what you feel freely. A lot of people talk about psychological safety, and I think it always starts at the top. I encourage our staff to voice their opinions freely, it's much healthier than gossip and whispered hallway conversations, which can do real damage to satisfaction and engagement.

Showing that there are never repercussions when people share different opinions and disagreements, and organizing specific platforms for employees to contribute their thoughts and ideas, is definitely something we encourage in our company. Personally, I organize HR lunch-and-learn and briefing sessions to listen and find out what people are saying, and to reassure them that we've never made a disciplinary or termination decision against an employee simply because they disagreed with us. I think that's the best way to build trust. I'd also say avoiding engagement surveys that are followed by no action, or worse, complete disregard for what came up, which happens in many companies, there's no better way to disengage a workforce than that.

"Get in line or get out" might have worked in the past, but the new generations entering the workplace will teach us that it's no longer an option, and that approach also erodes trust and respect, which are the foundation of any workplace.

Susmita Sarma: And finally, reflecting on your career, how do you hope your legacy will be remembered in the HR field, and what steps are you currently taking to ensure you leave a lasting impact?

Daniela G.: My daughter is a psychologist, and she chose a career in HR, which makes me very proud. When you talk about legacy, I'm also hoping she'll be proud of what I'm doing and what I share with her about how I feel about this profession. I hope I'll keep growing and learning, and applying everything I've learned so far to increase the value the HR function adds as a whole, to be known as a valued partner to the business, but also a great promoter of employee satisfaction, as much as I possibly could.

That balance is never easy to maintain, it's the essence of any HR director's work, but often what we want to achieve and what we can achieve are two very different things. If I manage to strike that balance and be known for it, I think that would be a very good legacy to have.

Susmita Sarma: The way you approach leadership and innovation is inspiring, and it's evident you're making a significant impact in the field already. I really appreciate the time and expertise you've shared with us today, Daniela. I look forward to seeing how your journey continues to influence and inspire others in the HR community. Thank you so much once again for being part of the Vantage Influencers Podcast.

Daniela G.: Thank you for giving me the opportunity.