Colette Fitzpatrick hosted the event, as always doing a great job of seamlessly bringing the speakers of the day together. Mary Connaughton, Director CIPD Ireland kicked off the day identifying that trust underpinned much of the latest CIPD Ireland HR Practices research. Top organisational priority over the next two years will focus on talent. In essence we have full employment, with over 84% of businesses struggling to attract the skills they need, Mary rightly pointing out the need for more innovation when it comes to recruitment! Well-being also a key topic coming from the research, with Mary reminding us that it’s about culture. Well-being is not simply about having support once something goes wrong, it’s about building resilience in your employees and a healthy working culture.

Our first speakers of the day, Malcolm Sheil, CEO & President of Kerry EMEA and Kate Brosnan, Kerry’s VP of HR Europe, spoke about the importance of inspiring their talent to drive performance. Malcolm spoke of the remarkable journey the organisation has taken, from just 40 employees to 25,000, as a world leader in the industry.  Malcolm attributed this growth to the passion their employees have for their work. As a global leader, it is important to Malcolm that all employees feel globally connected, whilst empowering them to think and win locally too. It resonated with me that Malcolm mentioned that education and awareness is key to having a more diverse and inclusive workforce; train staff, don’t assume they get it.

Kate spoke to us about the focus that must be maintained to deliver on the promises made to their people and prospective people, as a purpose-led organisation. She discussed their ways of working, creating an organisation that is fit for purpose, agile so that people understand their own organisation. Kate said we need to think about our talent in structured ways. It is not all about the career ladder; what are people’s individual aspirations and how can we make sure that employees get the best experiences to progress their career. Kate said there needs to be alignment between promise and delivery and that communication ultimately underpins that. A key message from Kate is to be consistent, repeat those key areas of focus. I liked this takeaway, as the importance of key consistent messages, I think, can be overlooked.

Next, we heard from Pedro Lopez, Head of Novartis Global Service Centre Dublin and Prague with Niamh McNamara, Head of HR, Global Services Centre Dublin, who spoke to us about the journey Novartis has taken, which has been one of collaborative leadership. Pedro spoke to us about their job as leaders, to connect everyone to the mission of the company. That the focus is not always to grow headcount, but to grow the value of the team around you. Pedro stated that ‘If you don’t inspire you will expire’ in your role as a leader. Niamh shared with us the journey they’re taking to shift the culture from a ‘red’ culture to a ‘blue’ one, that is, a culture which is collaborative, curious and unbossed. They have hired big talent pools, not to tell them what to do, but to let them tell the company what to do. Niamh emphasised that with all this trust, we need trust in the employees’ integrity to allow them to flourish in an unbossed culture. A key point that stood out for me from Niamh was around coaching and manager training. “No use sending the managers on training if they don’t have the tools to come back in and act on it.” At Novartis they have created a coaching village to break down siloes, and have everyone around the same tables, so that training is more accessible! Pedro said to the room, that the day you stop being consistent, is the day trust dies. He reminded us all that when ‘you want to empower people; you need to expose yourself’.

After some networking, our next speaker Tara Levins, MD at Accenture Ireland, spoke about how new technologies are influencing the future of work. Tara spoke of the 4^th industrial revolution and about new technologies that are fast becoming mainstream. At Accenture they have used AI as part of their graduate recruitment programme, which worked out really well! She made us think about how collaborative intelligence can be of great benefit to organisations. What was good to hear from their research at Accenture, is that it has become evident all over the world, that human skills are now more important than ever. However, Tara notes that there is a big disconnect when it comes to adapting new technologies between employers and employees. Employers deem only a quarter of their workforce as ready for AI adoption whilst 67% of employees are eager and ready. She says that ‘trust is key to getting this right for organisations and people’. Open and honest communication is needed, harnessing energy and always watching pace. Pace is key, Tara notes, how quickly are you making changes and are you bring your people on your journey.

Next up- our keynote speaker Rachel Botsman. Rachel is an author and trust expert, Trust Fellow, Oxford University, Said Business School. Rachel addressed the room on the changing nature of trust. I have to say Rachel really opened my eyes to the meaning of trust, as I had never sat back and thought about what it really meant to myself, the workplace, relationships and its role in everyday life. Rachel says that ‘trust is highly subjective and contextual’. She asked us to ask ourselves, ok you trust X company, but trust them to do what? With what? One of the issues around trust is that we can talk about it so generally, but she challenged us to think about the context and the situation. Rachel told us that trust has two enemies, bad character and poor information. It’s often not the character piece that we get wrong but our lack of information. So often we think about building and managing trust, but Rachel made us re-think this, trust is given to us, it’s something we continuously earn.

So, she asked us as HR professionals, ‘how do we create cultures that DESERVE our trust?’. Rachel explained to the room how trust works. There are two states involved; the known and unknown state. The unknown could be something like a new boss or payroll system. The link between the two is called risk (the exposure to some kind of uncertainty that matters). She finds that organisations are really good about talking about risk, because it can be somewhat measured. However, risk is not what enables people to act, that remarkable force is in fact trust (the social give between the known and unknown). Rachel defines trust as ‘the confident relationship with the unknown’. I liked Rachel’s statement to the room, that trust is not a value in her eyes, it’s a human belief. She led the room in a fun experiment. Each of us was asked to pass our phone to the person next to us for 60 seconds and let them do what they like! She indicated that this displayed our trust state. Some people not handing it over, others happily taking the phone and sending a message! Rachel said that we are being asked to jump higher and faster than ever before when it comes to taking trust leaps. This is paining people with increased anxiety and uncertainty as they want to get back to a known place. A key take-away for me was to remember ‘people don’t want something entirely new, they want the familiar done differently’. Rachel also struck a chord with me when she brought up transparency and challenged the assumption that if we make things more transparent, trust will increase. So, she asked us to question ourselves, if you need things to be transparent then you’ve given up on trust. It’s almost dangerous in business when we say we can always be transparent, it’s very unlikely we can keep that promise.

On a closing note – good news – there is a science behind being trustworthy. It incorporates competence, reliability, and practiced skills of empathy and integrity.

We had a lovely lunch with a super exhibition hall this year! After lunch we had a great playful thinking session with Dr Shane Bergin and his team from the School of Education at UCD. Each table was given a task that made us think about playful ways to solve problems or find solutions. Our table had bits and bobs to make musical instruments, a great challenge! This segment of the conference reminded us all to think outside the box and don’t be afraid to make models and demos to understand everyday issues.

Our next speakers, Robert Watt, Secretary General, and David Cagney, Chief HR Officer from the Dept of Public Expenditure and Reform spoke about trust and engagement across the civil service. Robert talked about the many changes going on in the civil service, and one of the biggest related to digitalisation. With 38,000 plus people, there are key steps being taken as part of the ‘People Strategy for the Public Service 2017-2020’. Robert said that a key element of the transformation is trust. One way they strive to do this is to share data. Robert spoke of the power of having true authentic stories about how they are doing, so that there is transparency and trust in the process. When it comes to survey results (I like here how Robert phrased negative survey results as ‘challenging results’), show the results and talk about them. To work on building a strategy around people, means to build an innovative culture. David spoke of the importance of the manager role. There is responsibility on managers as people developers. David sees managers as absolutely critical to growing their teams. A good message from David ‘fail quickly, learn fast and move on’. David and team are taking steps to create a unified, cross departmental culture, where there are shared learnings.

In the afternoon, Ciara Beth Ni Griofa addressed the room about different frequencies and their unique advantages. Ciara was a fantastic speaker and captured our attention talking about her group of challenges she faces being autistic. Think, our brains are tuned to different frequencies, what sounds like an orchestra to one, sounds like nails on a chalk board to another. A startling figure, of 85% of people with autism are unemployed in Ireland, and furthermore 70% of them said they were actively looking for work. This stayed with me, as HR professionals we need to sit back and think hard about these figures. Ciara spoke of the things we might take for granted, like recruiters noting that if you can’t make eye contact you won’t be successful at interview. Making eye contact can be uncomfortable for some people with autism and so Ciara decided to start building an app ‘My contact’ that helps people who have difficulty making eye contact. Ciara gave us some great advice when looking at autism in the workplace:

• Be respectful, don’t make assumptions about ability
• Educate yourself!
• Check in with your own bias.

Ciara said in summary, computers haven’t taken our jobs yet, as one thing they don’t have is empathy. She said, ‘be the person that challenges their first thought, makes the person like me fit’. I loved this quote from Ciara, and I hope we all take this away with us going forward.

We were happy to hear insights this year from Peter Cheese, CIPD CEO. Peter gave us good food for thought. We need to create more reasons to be inclusive, even if it will require more work. Be aware of your community, think of your local workforce. Don’t forget to reflect the diversity of your customer base, ‘diversity creates innovation’. Peter spoke of the gender pay gap, making two important points. Demand business to be more transparent, and don’t forget it’s a topic that is becoming increasingly important for investors. Also, remember that you cannot make changes with metrics alone. There is a need to encourage a move to a world where it’s not just about compliance, but principles, ‘comply or explain!’.

Peter spoke about flexible working. The real issue is mindset. We want to educate managers on how to deal with people that are working part time, for example, and to recognise that flexible working has many different forms. Sit back and think a minute, where are we really with this issue, we’re working longer hours than ever! Peter left us to think about our biggest responsibility as HR professionals, employee well-being. It’s our duty of responsibility to remember that factors like working hours can be detrimental to the well-being of our people.

Next up was Dr. Annie Curtis, Royal College of Surgeons Ireland. Annie is a body clock expert and captivated our attention as many of us realised we have some bad habits to break!

Annie runs the body clock lab at RCSI. Our body clock controls practically everything we do. Our circadian rhythm is so important to the synchronisation of our clock that we are nearly a different species at dawn versus dusk. As I am NOT a morning person, it was welcomed news to me that we are all born as morning larks, hummingbirds or night owls! Owls unfortunately are in constant battle with expectations of society. So next time your sleepy colleague looks like they’re struggling at the 10am meeting, maybe they are just born that way! Annie was hard hitting in her evidence regarding disruptions to our body clocks and the correlation to chronic conditions. With modern society, Annie says that in a sense ‘we are all shift workers’. Annie stated that we know that many people suffering mood disorders have significant disruptions in their body clocks.  Four tips she shared with us for maintaining a healthy clock are:

• Become more sleep aware
• Be light aware, try to get out in as much natural morning light as possible
• Food, try to eat within a 12-hour window
• Exercise, try not to exercise within 3 hours before bed

Our final speaker, Lucas van Wees, President European Association of People Management and HR Director University of Amsterdam flew in to have a conversation with us, recognising international HR day. Lucas shared with the room some insights into what’s happening in Europe, and what’s shaping and shaking our world in HR.  As we are all trying to be more climate conscious, Lucas said that we should take note of the fact that each year Europe pays €450bn to countries and States outside of Europe. If the EU was CO2 neutral by 2050, we could save up to 70% of that bill. He also spoke of financial, political and technological developments that are shaping our HR world. Lucas feels that HR and people management is undervalued in what it can bring and so is delighted with the launch of international HR day, May 20, celebrating the work of HR people and departments across many countries, coming together to strengthen the profession.

Barry Holmes, Chair CIPD Ireland National Committee closed the day. As Barry said in his closing comments, we definitely have a better understanding of the definition of trust. The conference provided great insights, made us think about the workplace of the future, what it will look like, and what we want it to look like. He mentioned the need to question our unconscious bias and for leaders to look after themselves as well as their teams.