Episode 245: How to Redefine Culture and Performance as Your Company Scales (with Toby Hough)
What if the star performers you celebrated yesterday are the very people holding your organisation back today?
That’s what Toby Hough, HR Director for Europe at HiBob, unpacks, with host David Green, in this episode of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast - a must-listen for anyone rethinking how to build performance cultures that last.
Join them, as they explore:
Why definitions of high performance need to evolve as businesses grow
Why traditional change management is no longer fit for purpose - and what should replace it
How to build mental health and employee wellbeing into the foundation of performance
What career paths and leadership may look like when people are managing both humans and AI systems
Whether you’re scaling a business, supporting leaders through change, or preparing for the impact of AI on performance and careers, this episode is worth a listen.
This episode is sponsored by HiBob.
HiBob is the all-in-one HCM platform built for HR leaders who need connected data, flexible workflows, and a user experience people actually want to use.
Learn more by visiting hibob.com/davidgreen2025.
[0:00:11] David Green: When I speak with HR leaders through the work we do at Insight222, I find that one of their hardest challenges is keeping culture and performance aligned as their organisations grow. What may have worked in the early growth phase doesn't always work as the business matures. Layer on top of that the integration of AI into workflows, the pressure of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, and a new generation of employees, and suddenly the definition of high performance can look very different. My guest today, Toby Hough, Vice President HR for Europe at HiBob, has been thinking deeply about this. And today, we're going to unpack how performance as we know it is being redefined, and what business and HR leaders can do to sustain culture, support wellbeing, and prepare for the future of work. So, without further ado, let's get into the conversation.
Toby, welcome to the show, great to talk with you. Let's start with you. For listeners who haven't met you yet, please can you give them a brief snapshot of who Toby is and the journey that led you to where you are today?
[0:01:29] Toby Hough: Yes, delighted to. And, David, thanks so much for having me on your podcast, which I've been a listener to in the past and delighted to be here. So, I had an unconventional route into HR. I didn't start my career there, I started in tech consulting for one of the Big Four in the UK, and that led me to work in a variety of digital transformation and consolidation projects, a stint two years working in the technology programme delivery for London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and then that time made me realise that my best work was really when I felt truly part of a team, not necessarily the consulting world. So, I took an opportunity to move in the tech side, implement technology implementation to a Silicon Valley, I guess then it was still a startup. It had just taken funding, having been bootstrapped for over ten years. And it was whilst I was there that I made the move into their People and Culture team. It wasn't an easy decision. I loved the client-facing work that I was doing. But a number of signs had been pointing to the HR world for me. And this opportunity was fabulous, a chance to continue to grow my career, but move into an HR leadership position.
So, my first role in HR was Head of People and Culture for Europe for that company, which was then UK, Germany, France, and I haven't looked back since. So, that has led me to ultimately to where I am today at HiBob, where I've been for almost exactly four years. I look after the Europe region at HiBob. That's five official sites and another 12 where we have Bobbers through different mechanisms, so I'm familiar with the internationalisation challenges. But our main sites are UK, Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, Croatia, and it's about 450 Bobbers in total.
[0:03:29] David Green: And growing all the time, if you've been at HiBob for four years. I know from speaking to you in the past, but also some of your colleagues on the podcast as well, HiBob's been going through pretty rapid growth over that time. I presume you didn't have 400 people four years ago when you started?
[0:03:44] Toby Hough: No, we had 55 in the UK and five in the Netherlands. And globally, the company was 270. Now, globally, the company is about 1,400, and that Europe region is around 450. And that was one of the things that really attracted me to the role. The promise was this growth journey, and it's really delivered. We've grown through a combination of organically, but just in the Europe region alone, there have been two acquisitions in that time as well that have brought with it ultimately new product lines to our customers, but also more complexity in terms of the geographical spread of the team.
[0:04:25] David Green: And it's interesting, you said you started in technology consulting. You're now leading people in Europe in a technology company, an HR technology company. So, it's kind of a nice combination of, I guess, your two passions.
[0:04:38] Toby Hough: That's right. And actually, well, first of all, because HiBob's product is HR, I'm biased now, but I was a potential buyer before I moved into this company. So, we make what I would say is really a first-class Human Capital Management, HCM, platform that spans everything across the suite really, full-stack HR offering, as well as now pushing more into the office of the CFO through both payroll and FP&A products as well, Financial Planning and Analysis. So, the scope is really broad. And one of the things I love about my role is I probably spend about 5% to 10% of my time meeting customers and prospects, and then another 5% to 10% of my time in these sorts of situations, discussing the trends that we're seeing in the industry in various different forums. And it's such a privilege because, and I say this to my team, it forces us to spend time looking up and out. The HR world is so demanding and getting more so, that you can be so pulled into your world around you, the problems that you're facing, the challenges that you're facing, the strategy to deliver. And I love opportunities where we have to pause, take a breath and think, "Right, what are we seeing? What are we really seeing? What trends are we seeing in our business? How does that correlate to what we're hearing from our customers and prospects?"
So, you're right, that little bridge to the kind of consulting start, it's still a part of me that I tap into today and I really enjoy.
[0:06:15] David Green: Yeah, I suppose essentially as well, you and the other people teams at HiBob in the other regions, you're effectively customer zero, I guess, for the product as well, which again probably you spend 5% or 10% of your time with your product teams. So, I guess you're helping them understand the market, but also understand what works well in the product and what they might want to focus on enhancing, I guess, as well.
[0:06:38] Toby Hough: That's right. So, you know, some of it is really the obvious thing. So, when we launched Bob Hiring, our talent acquisition team worked really, really closely with the product team that were responsible for that. But I also like those smaller moments throughout the year where we will identify an enhancement of an existing module that we're struggling with that we think would make a difference to others. An example that jumps to mind was a programme that I led for Bob, now over two years ago, was the identification and rollout of our company values. It was values at Medallia, this is the Silicon Valley startup that I joined, that got me into HR in the first place. So, it was really rewarding to lead that programme at HiBob. But there was no space within the platform to store your values and no way to link them to other features that exist. And part of our research that we had undertaken internally was, we really don't want these values to live on the wall. Their home shouldn't be a poster. The home needs to be within the product. And we got our product team to buy into that pretty quickly.
And it was really rewarding about eight months down the line when we released that feature within the core functionality of Bob, not in all the additional components of the product, but in the main core HR product, where any client can now add their values in and it links through to other parts of the product. And I was really I was really satisfied when that came to life.
[0:08:13] David Green: That's really good. And obviously, I think we first met at the Heartcore event that you hosted in London earlier this year, so March 2025. And I mean, I certainly could see you had mainly customers there, but you also had other organisations that your colleagues were talking to, and the buzz and the energy was really impressive. And I have to say, you did a magnificent job as MC as well, Toby. So, yeah, it was really good to meet some of HiBob's customers, because typically you're working with organisations that are, correct me if I'm wrong, sort of less than 20,000 employees, isn't that right?
[0:08:51] Toby Hough: That's right. And so, I appreciate that, especially coming from you, David, who I've seen compering many a huge event, including UNLEASH in Paris on two occasions now. But I love our customers and I learn from them. And that's the other thing. I think something that's part of HiBob's DNA set from our leadership is respect towards what the rest of the industry is doing. There's enough space for all of us. Each of the different HR tech providers will take a different approach to what they think that the industry needs, and there's space for that. I feel the same about our customers. The nature of our customers and the nature of Bob particularly, it's a very engaging, almost kind of B2C user interface. And that's one of the of us. One of our taglines is one that really resonates with me, which is, "Empower your people, power your business". And I absolutely love that. And that's, I think, the common ground that we find with our customers, where we share that in common with them. And as a result, we learn from them as well.
[0:10:01] David Green: I actually wrote that down. That was such a good line.
[0:10:04] Toby Hough: I wish I could claim that as my own, but that was our wonderful marketing team. But I absolutely love it.
[0:10:09] David Green: No, it's really good. And actually, one of the things I saw when I was at Heartcore and spoke to some of the organisations that are using HiBob, a number of those companies are scaling. What are some of the patterns that you've noticed about how organisations change as they move from those early fast-growth stages into something much more mature?
[0:10:29] Toby Hough: Yeah, this is a phase that I love and feel now that I can be excited about it. It was daunting in the early days. There are a few different things that jump out the memory, and it's real now for us at HiBob. The first one is, you can't avoid it, there is a bit of an identity crisis. You will hear these organisations as they move from growth to scale, from startup to scaleup, or whichever language you want to use, kind of hold on to the past. There's a certain language which is a real warning sign. "We need to preserve our culture", that's a big warning sign for me, because culture can't be preserved. It's not a jam in a jar, it's something which will evolve, because it is to do with how your team behaves and interacts together as a group. And when that group is 50 people, it's going to be very different to when it's 1,500 people, and that should be celebrated. I think that's more widely accepted these days. But there are other areas that I don't think have caught up.
The one that jumps out is this whole idea of bureaucracy and process. And you'll hear growing businesses say, "Well, we don't want to become one of these big, bureaucratic, corporate giants, and we want to keep nimble". The problem is, I think it's unrealistic, because why do you need the bureaucracy? Why do you need the process? This is bigger than just HR. As your whole systems get more complex, you need that. And there's a corresponding conflicting demand which is, "We don't want to be siloed. We want to work really well cross-functionally". Well, as your cross-functional landscape becomes way bigger, what do you need in order to help you work cross-functionally? Often you need process and you need more documented and accepted ways of working. I think that's the identity crisis that we still see where organisations struggle.
Then, there's a couple of other areas. One is the whole concept of change, and I don't think this is limited only to scaling businesses, but I think they are exposed to such a vast amount of change that they experience it. And this is something I really noticed looking within Bob, was that we had certain members of our team who had a great relationship with change, and others that were looking for more traditional solutions to change. And then, it all came together for me in January 2023, when a customer of HiBob, again, back to what we were saying earlier, was talking at our business kick-off in January, and he was asked, "What's been your ticket to success as you've grown?" And he said, "It's our whole business's relationship to change". And I started to then go back and think about the teams that I support, and I noticed that there are those that essentially have an ingrained change mindset. They understand that it is an inevitable part of working in a growing business and they are looking for, and are pushing for, the next iteration of how to work, the next org structure development. And then, there's another part of the business that are talking about needing change management, org restructures like they're one-off things that will finish. And this for me was a really important moment.
You realise at that point that the traditional approaches to change management are not fit for purpose, certainly not in a scaling organisation. It implies, (1) that someone else comes and helps you do it, (2) that there's a beginning and an end, and that you know exactly where you're going to. When you look at any model, most of those models for change management, it is about sketching out that view of the future and then navigating towards it through whichever preferred model you're going for. So, I think that's a big learning for me, and I've seen that pattern in different businesses, is that the way we even talk about change has to be very intentional, and we cannot talk about it as a period of instability that interrupts otherwise calm waters. That's before, David, we've even looked out into the wider world right now.
Then, the last one that jumps out for me, and it's very relevant I think right now, is the whole concept of performance. And a successful scaleup will often ride a beautiful wave in those early days. Once they get past kind of nailing what their product is, and they're going through series A, series B, and they're going through that, "Do we have product market fit and can we scale?" those two first big questions early on, if they do have the product market fit and they've got the right people in the business, then that can be an amazing and exhilarating period, and it can feel like nothing can stop you, like, "We are going to take over the world". And then what happens is competition appears where it didn't used to be, all the low hanging fruit and the easy things have been exhausted, there's a target on your back as a business that wasn't there before, so there's more scrutiny. And that's when it can get really hard on the performance side, because you've then got to really look inwards and really have a growth mindset to say, "The way that we think about what good performance is, is totally different now. What we're asking of people who have thrived here in the past, now needs to change". That's not easy, and I think I've seen that in a couple of environments. And candidly, I think we're also going through that right now at HiBob.
[0:15:58] David Green: This episode is sponsored by HiBob. Still managing comp, performance and onboarding across disconnected tools? It's costing you time and holding your team back. HiBob is the all-in-one HCM platform built for HR leaders who need connected data, flexible workflows, and a user experience people actually want to use. When Ecosia switched to Bob, they cut their contract and onboarding time from 8 days to just 15 minutes and saw a 706% return on investment. Get the full story at hibob.com/davidgreen2025, or come and see us at HR Tech in Las Vegas, booth 2822. HiBob, HCM for people-proud companies.
So, let's talk about AI, especially agentic AI. How are you seeing AI change the way maybe HiBob, but also maybe some of your customers' organisations approach team and individual performance?
[0:17:20] Toby Hough: Well, for us, and again, I would say there's quite a lot of synergy here with our customers, we talk about this together a lot, if you look back to the last 12-plus months, there's been a big effort around, performance with AI means getting your hands dirty, having the courage to use it, to experiment. And certainly how we've been measuring has been really around engagement. We have opened up amazing resources, and I think it's an incredible example of trying to take a whole organisation through a skill shift. It's kind of amazing. But that's really been about opening up a range of resources, constant enablement around those resources, so that you get to a point where there's confidence and courage to use these tools and that everybody feels like they're using them in some way day to day.
In many ways, I would say, as I think about it now, this journey around performance with AI and agentic AI is like a compressed version of everything we've been talking about, because we now need people to shift that mindset. It's not about activity, it has to now become about impact, and also, recognising that some of your colleagues around you may have got there sooner and faster. Maybe the custom GPTs that they have built are better than yours and could have more day-to-day impact. We don't now need the whole business to be building their own custom tools. What we need is adoption around the ones that are driving impact. And this is the shift. This is the inflection point that we're at now. And part of the organisation that I support at HiBob, probably from my background, is not just the Europe region, but all of our customer success organisation, working with our customers. And in that leadership group, we've been discussing this very thing, which is, we kind of need to slow down now on everybody experimenting all the time, to let's hone in on those key four or five areas that we want to get real adoption around, because they're the ones that are going to move the needle in the day-to-day. It's exactly linked to what we were saying before. So, not the scrappy inventors and independents, but now understanding what the organisation's view is around the AI tools that will really move the needle.
That's where we are now, but you know this so well, we have to be looking to the future all the time with AI. I've just come back off of four days of strategising with our global people leadership, and a lot of it was on this topic around what's the organisation going to need from us in terms of how we structure, and performance-wise the skills that we put a pin in to say these are the ones that we really need to develop in the future.
[0:20:13] David Green: Well, I guess listening to you, Toby, and from other conversations, it almost feels like there's maybe three key areas for HR with AI. Number one is obviously to support the organisation with that transformation, the re-skilling of people, maybe changing the way we work, etc, so there's that kind of organisational piece. Then, there's applying the lens on ourselves, on the programmes that we deliver. And I guess, as you said, let's actually prioritise the stuff that's important to leaders, to employees, to managers, where we can have an outsized impact. And then, the third piece would really be, and I guess it particularly probably talks to a company like HiBob, is that kind of responsible AI piece, "How can we make sure that we're doing the right things, both obviously within HiBob as well, but also for our customers as well?" I don't know what your thoughts are on that, and whether you've got maybe an example of one of those three things that maybe you're doing at the moment?
[0:21:13] Toby Hough: As you were talking through them, the first one that really comes to mind about the right focus, I think now it has to be focused, and this is really relevant for us. One of my VP peers said, the danger of being too successful in mobilising the organisation around AI adoption is that we lose that important North Star, which is that AI is not the means, it should enable the solution. And so, we shouldn't be doing it for the sake of it. I think when you over-index on adoption, then you end up creating AI solutions, (1) to maybe ways of working which are obsolete and we shouldn't be doing anyway, and (2) for things that are not going to help the actual business problems that you are solving.
So, the second thing you were saying then is around HR's role in this. I heard a comment last week that really resonated, which is, "AI is COVID 2 .0 for HR professionals". Maybe you've heard that before as well.
[0:22:21] David Green: I haven't, actually, but I quite like it.
[0:22:24] Toby Hough: Yeah, I can't say it's mine. I just heard it, so I'm replaying it. But I love it because it exactly sums up where HR is positioned with AI. I sense that HR professionals have been a little bit tentative about maybe owning it in the same way that we did brilliantly own the response to COVID in our organisations. And I feel very excited now about this idea that we, and I think this speaks very well to your last point about doing it the right way, this is where HR can make such a big impact on two levels, one, the role that we play in organisation design and skills development, how we talk about leadership in the future. Those conversations have to be happening now. And then, the second one is around role modelling within our own HR functions, and we're very bad at that. I think as HR professionals, it's a horseshoe. I often talk about the horseshoe. Our strengths and weaknesses are very closely related. So, a good strategic HR function is so well embedded in the business that we spend all of our time thinking about how to solve the business problems. But we've got to look at our own department first to test this.
An example that we are exploring at HiBob, that I'm very excited about, is this concept of boundaryless HR. So, this isn't necessarily an AI-inspired concept, but more and more, we're seeing, and again, I know you've got lots of other references to this, but we're seeing challenges to the traditional HR team structures, and I really feel that this is where those trends plus AI come together really beautifully. If we are going to be able to build out those agents and have that human agent interplay to the best impact, it isn't going to be within silos. It's not going to be within a, "Well, I run this centre of excellence, so I'm going to build my agents to support me here, but you can work it out on the business partnering side". We're limiting the impact of AI if we think about it like that. But the conundrum is, we've built these HR functions that have got experts in these different areas that like being part of those centres of excellence, and those business partners that like the identity and the strategic connection with the business. So, how do we rip all of this up, restructure ourselves in a way that is much more homogenous, where I think AI and particularly agentic AI will have by far the biggest impact?
So, if we can explore that within our own organisational structures and create little pilot groups, around some programmes with it, this is not something we're doing, but it's a nice example, imagine you're rethinking your onboarding experience. And right now, there's a handover from talent acquisition to HR operations, to the business partner, to talent and learning. And each one of those sees their role in that as quite independent. If we were to create, and I know other businesses would have done this already, agents that kind of run that onboarding process, if we overlay that handover siloed structure to the agent, we're making it way more complicated and we're really limiting the impact of what it could do. So, this is where I feel, again, it comes back to HR leading what could be the right way, the good way of the future structures that we need for AI.
[0:25:52] David Green: I want to take a short break from this episode to introduce the Insight222 People Analytics Programme, designed for senior leaders to connect, grow, and lead in the evolving world of people analytics. The programme brings together top HR professionals with extensive experience from global companies, offering a unique platform to expand your influence, gain invaluable industry insight and tackle real-world business challenges. As a member, you'll gain access to over 40 in-person and virtual events a year, advisory sessions with seasoned practitioners, as well as insights, ideas and learning to stay up-to-date with best practices and new thinking. Every connection made brings new possibilities to elevate your impact and drive meaningful change. To learn more, head over to insight222.com/program and join our group of global leaders.
Career development is, I know, another area of passion for you and are you seeing the way that we're looking at career development changing?
[0:27:11] Toby Hough: I hear so many organisations still striving to be skills-based. We are as well. I actually think that AI is forcing us to rethink what skills-based means in a very literal sense that I personally have found incredibly helpful, as mentioned before, this idea that this is a skill that 98% of the organisation do not have, that a lot of the talent that we need to hire and want to have these skills do not have, so we have to develop it in-house. So, when do you get that opportunity? When have we had that opportunity in the past where regardless of function, department, sub-department, level, there's this wonderful leveller going on. So, this is one thing which is very exciting.
I'll tell you a different trend which I'm fascinated by, which is that Gen Z, who so often, I think, do push the boundaries of ways of working in a way that I have a lot of respect for, you'll never find me being a down-talker of Gen Z, not least because by the end of this decade, they will make up 30% of the workforce and be in a number of leadership positions, so it's going to be futile anyway to be a downer on it.
[0:28:22] David Green: Trying to push water uphill, yeah?
[0:28:24] Toby Hough: Yeah, exactly. It's happening. I love how they challenge things, right? So, I love how the traditional structures, certainly when I started my career in the Big Four consulting arena, we looked to people that had been in that business for 30, sometimes 40 years, to sort of tell us how to be successful there, to show us the skills that we needed. And, and we sort of were mini versions of them, that's what we did. And I like now that that is often being challenged. However, there's one area where I do feel Gen Z are not actually pushing the innovation, and that is in career development. So, when I sit down and talk to our teams around what they need in order to be successful in their roles, quite often it's, "Well, I need to know how I can be promoted to this level and this level and this level", and the structure that they're mapping out is very traditional, inline, ladder career development. So, it's actually incumbent, I think, on the deep L&D passion, those that are passionate about it, to help innovate on what some alternatives could look like.
One thing in the scaling business that we can really benefit from is internal mobility. This actually comes back to an earlier question you asked with, "How do you deal with some of those difficult performance conversations when what the business needs is changing, and people that have been successful in the past might not be now?" Not every stage of your organisation is at the same level of maturity at the same time. I love to see those moments of internal mobility opening up more and more. The big corporates, I think some of them have got really beautiful examples of how this works all the way down to forced movement. Every two or three years, you need to move into a different area. It's so interesting. We don't have that luxury in the scaleup world, but often it's a great way to start to imply those more Squiggly Careers. I'm now seeing colleagues at Bob who are on their second or third internal mobility, not because things aren't working, but because they're proving themselves to be a great transferrer of skills and knowledge into different parts of the business. And I think we'll be able to see more of that.
The other piece is really a big question mark over two areas, I would say, leadership and the concept of expertise. I think AI is going to shake up the concept of expertise. If we get to this point of generative AI at the pace that we're being told to prepare for, then humans will not be the experts. So, is it worthwhile investing in becoming deep experts in areas; or is it instead worthwhile becoming an expert in how to manage agents and AI tools that can be those experts? And for me, this is one of the first times where I feel really excited about what the world of work could look like in a sort of post-AI world. Because I do think as much as we say we really want to have enriched career paths for both individual contributors and managers, the reality is the manager track is going to get you further up the business. There is more opportunity for those. And this is a sort of awkward truth that we dance around a bit, I think. And there are some great senior IC positions, but they're not the ones that are going to get you all the way to the top. But there is a version of the world where if you can become supreme at managing agents, and that will be a very different skill set, that could open up a whole new career path which just doesn't exist right now. I don't hear people calling out for this.
So, this is for me what's so interesting with this trend, that the call-outs are for traditional structures around career growth and development. And I think it's incumbent upon business leaders and HR to start to sketch out some alternative versions to get people excited around, because that's then where we'll see the change and mobilisation around it.
[0:32:36] David Green: That's really interesting. So, listening to you there, Toby, it's almost if you're an individual contributor who maybe isn't excited around people management, and as you said, people that move into the people management role tend to be the ones that flow up in an organisation, obviously with some exceptions, what you're saying there was maybe that individual contributor, or the IC, maybe there's an opportunity for them to manage agents and get that kind of more senior experience. So, they're playing to their strengths, their desires, but they're having an outsized impact than maybe they could have as an individual contributor. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see where it gets to, won't it?
[0:33:21] Toby Hough: Yes, for sure. And I think organisations will become leaner, and I hope not drastically so, don't get me wrong there. But I think in our world, in the scaleup world, we have to be lean. And HiBob's always taken really quite a cautious view of the macroeconomic situation. And as a result, I think we've remained a nicely lean organisation. So, we're fortunately not in a position where there's lots of extra people sitting around. But I know that there are some organisations that have maybe been a little bit bullish with their hiring, particularly if they maybe closed the funding round and off they go, and are now questioning whether they have overblown workforces, and we're seeing some of the impact of that. But the trend will be for leaner organisations. And so, when it comes to career development and skills development to keep people in that organisation and developing in that organisation, we're going to have to find other ways for people to grow, and that's where that fantastic AI opportunity comes up.
I think, a very practical example of this idea of expertise versus knowing how to get the expertise rather than being the expert is something I've experienced, together with my team, around our international expansion. So, I don't have Croatia, Portugal, German experts on my team. I have people on my team who know exactly what steps they need to do in order to gain that knowledge or tap into it from other people, "What's our ecosystem that we need in order to be able to employ responsibly and robustly in a new country?" And it's that sort of example but played out in an agentic world that I think we need to cast our minds forward. And it just opens up tremendous opportunity for people that may feel really hindered and daunted by that people management route.
[0:35:16] David Green: I'm just wondering, as a company that's growing, that's in an exciting space, with this economic uncertainty, those geopolitical tensions that we hear about in the news every day, and cost of living pressures, how are you seeing some of those external pressures maybe showing up in your workforce?
[0:35:35] Toby Hough: Well, they are showing up, I think we have to be really honest about that. And again, it's now a cliched expression because, for good reason, which is this idea we want people to bring their whole selves to work, we invite people to bring their whole selves to work, and there's lots of research about why, and we know that it helps build trust if you're being truly authentic, and we know that it also helps drive innovation if people feel that they can show up truly as themselves, and we bleed them into Project Aristotle and psychological safety. So, all of these components that we've celebrated in the workplace also have another side to that coin, which is if you really invite people to show up to work as their true selves and bring all of themselves to work, HR leaders and wider business leaders, we have to then be prepared for the fact that means we get the hard times as well as the good times. And it's a challenge for our managers and it's a challenge for our individuals.
I do see, again, this is an area where the strong HR teams are thriving. We're not put off by this. We understand that life happens. But definitely, we used to say that an EAP, an Employee Assistance Programme, was what you would need in order to be prepared for the world outside the walls of the office. But those EAPs are designed for the 1% that are in crisis mode. To begin with, I haven't got the data, but my sense from what I see is that more people now than 1% are in crisis mode. But there's this new layer now, which is people who are faced with anxiety and stress and worry because of what they see out in the world. If you're listening to this, and for you as well, David, think about the conversations that you've had in the last month where maybe you said to the person you're chatting to over a drink somewhere, "You know what, let's just stop this conversation, it's too depressing". Maybe you're talking about geopolitics, maybe you're talking about a future that's too unknown, but I keep hearing that soundbite, "Oh, you know what, let's just change the subject, it's too much". And it's so telling. If that's how people feel in their downtime, then inevitably it's going to bleed into work.
We have been trying to get on the front foot of this more and more. As an organisation, if you're not really on top of things like your absence rates, and not the big ones but the kind of day-to-day ones that are implicit of maybe people feeling just a little overwhelmed, if you're not signposting enough that your sick leave policy is just as valid for mental health as it is for physical health, that's a quick win, by the way -- we had some survey feedback in one of our anonymous surveys six months ago saying, "I really think we ought to have sick days for mental health", and we were able to respond and say, "Hey, these are sick days, they're paid sick days. We're not telling you whether it's for physical health or mental health. And right now, it could well be either. So, you are empowered to make that call". But there's more and more data that points to that sort of 20%, 25% of the organisation being in a state of anxiety and stress that is that confluence of the outside world meets the inside world. And I think it's an investment well worth making to provision for that.
We are in the process of going through some really exciting conversations with a supplier that will bring, I think, quite a really forward-looking approach to all of our mental health, where we'll actually be going to the organisation and saying, "We are providing you with this range of mental health tools, and we really want you to use them". This, for me, is a shift. I remember five or six years ago, working with business stakeholders who would say, "Yeah, but if we invest in all of this counselling and stuff, does that mean people are going to use it and then they're going to take time off because of it? I think it's fine. Let's not open up that can of worms". And that can of worms is open, and it's been opened because of what's going on in the outside world and employers can make a win-win difference there. It comes back to, "Empower your people, power your business". We can't close our eyes to the fact that the wider environment right now is causing immense amount of worry and concern for people, not everyone, but a lot more people than used to be struggling with these things even five years ago.
[0:40:00] David Green: Well, it certainly seems, I mean I've been in the workplace quite a long time, there certainly seems to be more things happening around the world now. And then, when you add the AI revolution as well, and how that makes people maybe feel a little bit insecure about their jobs as well, you add that to the economic, the geopolitical stuff, the health stuff, given that we've recently had a global pandemic, you can understand why lots of people perhaps are struggling, I guess, at the moment.
[0:40:29] Toby Hough: What you've said is really critical, because there can be some intergenerational play here of kind of writing off younger generations for being a little weak with this stuff, and I don't buy into that. First of all, I think in what we're seeing, it's not limited to specific generations in the workplace. I think people are feeling it for different reasons at different stages. And secondly, it's exactly what you were saying, which is, you teed it up, you said the last five years, the last decade, we seem to be really in a new normal of uncertainty. And that's unprecedented, there's that word, I've got that in now, it's unprecedented for us in business as well, because we haven't had to cater for a workforce that has been in such a protracted period of uncertainty. I heard a phrase the other day that really made me smile, where someone said, "I just want to live in precedented times", and I really liked that. But we don't, so we need to support our teams through it.
[0:41:32] David Green: And you've talked a little bit about how we do that support. What else should organisations maybe be doing differently to support mental health and wellbeing at work? You gave that great example about reminding people that sick days can be for mental health as well as physical health. What other sorts of things do you think companies could be doing?
[0:41:53] Toby Hough: Two things come to mind. One is investing in a proper provider for this. I mean, this is where we are now in some quite advanced stages for a pilot, and I won't say more on that yet, but I'm really excited about this and I think it will be a very proactive start. So, that's the first thing. If we are reactive to this, it's going to really eat into our available workforce. So, I think there's two 'whys'. One why is, because it's the right thing to do; and the other why is, because of productivity and the workforce. So, it will start eating into our available workforce, which means we need to get on the front foot, and not wait for people to be in difficulty, but provide them with the tools and resources to self-support throughout, is the first thing. And the second one, and I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but it's supporting our leaders, particularly frontline leaders, in how to spot the signs and what to do when they spot the signs of people who are struggling. and also create those environments where it's okay to be talking about it.
I think that what we were saying earlier, with regards to bringing your whole self to work, that statement carries a lot of responsibility for organisations. I still feel that the default is that if that whole self is not bubbly and fun and creative and is harder and struggling, then I'll call HR. And that's not scalable. And also, it stops us from picking up the warning signs. And I'm not just talking about mental health first-aiders here, I'm talking about really baking into our leader enablement things around team wellbeing, the skills around team wellbeing. In our code that I mentioned earlier, there are behaviours there around leading with intention, for example. And that includes understanding the individuals on your team and how they are doing. And then, the second piece is providing support to our leaders to know what to do with that.
So, one of the tools that we're looking at that I'm really excited about has a whole section which is specifically to do with leaders. If you lead teams, you need more support, because there's a real double reality that we have to confront and it's so challenging for the leaders of those teams. Someone will come to them and say, "I'm worried about this person on my team. I think they might need to be signed off as sick, they're not well. I didn't spot it before, I missed the signs. And what am I going to do about the shortfall in the work?" It comes back to what we were saying earlier about organisations are becoming increasingly more lean. And when I started my career in those Big Four consulting, if somebody was taken off a project, you had somebody on a bench and you put them on the project. But no one's on the bench anymore. So, those managers are under so much pressure, because they're also thinking, "I want to look out for that person and do right by them. But if I support this route that I can see ourselves going down, what am I going to do? How am I going to cover the work?" And so, there's two angles to that manager enablement. It's helping them spot the warning signs, it's helping them build a psychological safety, it's giving them confidence of what they can and can't say in the day-to-day, in the legislative landscape. We've seen already within Bob, just tackling that can make a huge difference to sickness rates on teams.
But the second piece is actually providing them with support for the pressure and the stress that's caused when somebody on their team might need to take some time out because they're struggling. So, it becomes layered and complex.
[0:45:21] David Green: Toby, it's been a great conversation and we're moving now to the last question, which is the question of the series. So, this is the question we're asking everyone on this series of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, which HiBob are kindly sponsoring. I'm going to get you to look into your crystal ball now a little bit. What's the single biggest shift in the future of work that you foresee by 2030, and how will or how can HR lead it?
[0:45:49] Toby Hough: I think it's got to be AI-related, and more specifically, I would say the entire organisation's structure, the concept of the colleagues with whom we work being either human or agents, and the concept of specialism versus generalism is all up in the air for me. So, three main areas that I think could look drastically different in less than five years' time. And the exciting thing for HR is we have a leading role in all three of those areas. And the challenge here is so much of it is still conceptual. So, there's an element of kind of, "I can talk about this and I can get behind the theory, but what do I do tomorrow?" This is where we can already start to play a role. Let's build pilot pods for an organisation that works in a different way. And I would say that needs to be one that is far less siloed, much more boundaryless. Let's bring together people from different teams, put them in tiger teams or whatever the term is that you want to use, to start to train the organisation around thinking less about kind of, "Well, this is my swim lane and that's your swim lane". And, "Stop breaking the silo means that we have a one-to-one". We need to get more radical than that.
Then, the second piece is going to be around encouraging more and more today, tomorrow, this idea that the AI tools that you have access to right now are not tools, they're virtual colleagues that you work alongside, and they're brainstorming partners. And there's almost a bit of a personification. I don't want to get too frightening with that, but I think that will help people shift how they think about this AI, the AI options they have around them, from being another version of Excel, to that colleague that I can't get their attention on at all, and they're going to brainstorm with me. So, ask yourself, "What are the small things we can experiment tomorrow that will help position people ready for what is a somewhat uncertain future, obviously?" So, small steps also allow us to stay nimble.
[0:47:54] David Green: Really good, really exciting as well, because arguably many of our organisations have org charts from the 20th century, and we're 25 years into the 21st century. So, maybe it's time that we change them. And obviously, as HR professionals playing a big role in organisational design, we've got a big opportunity to do that. So, very good, Toby. I really enjoyed our conversation, I knew I would, and you've certainly not disappointed at all, Toby. It's been a real pleasure to speak to you today. Can you share how listeners can follow you on social media and find out about all the great work that you're doing, but also what HiBob's doing for the field as well?
[0:48:33] Toby Hough: So, definitely LinkedIn is my field. I'm very active on LinkedIn in a personal and HiBob capacity. So, Toby Hough is where you'll find me on LinkedIn, and that's where I hang out the most in all things professional.
[0:48:51] David Green: Perfect. And they can go to HiBob.com, presumably as well, to find out more about the work you're doing at HiBob?
[0:48:58] Toby Hough: Absolutely. And there's a lot of great material there as well from our own research articles, both from me, from the wider HR team, and some of the experts from other parts of the business.
[0:49:12] David Green: Fantastic. Well, as I said, Toby, it's been an absolute pleasure. Look forward to seeing you, maybe at UNLEASH in Paris in a few weeks' time.
[0:49:19] Toby Hough: I'll see you there.
[0:49:21] David Green: That's all for today's episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast. A big thank you to Toby Hough for joining me on the podcast and for sharing such an honest perspective on what really changes as organisations grow. And thank you as always to you, our listeners, for tuning in each week to the show. If today's episode sparked ideas, questions, or even a shift in perspective, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share the episode with a colleague or friend. It really helps us reach more forward-thinking leaders like you. To stay connected with us at Insight222, follow us on LinkedIn, visit our website at insight222.com, and don't forget to sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter at myHRfuture.com to support your journey in people analytics and HR. That's all for now, thank you for tuning in and we'll be back next week with another episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast. Until then, take care and stay well.