HR Leaders

What if the strongest workplace culture is not built through expensive perks, but through the everyday systems that make people feel seen, supported and able to grow?

In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, I sit down with Laura Lawson, Chief People Officer at United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), to explore how UWM has built an unusually intentional workplace culture for its 9,000 employees in Pontiac, Michigan.
From onsite healthcare and career coaching to monthly employee-led conversations and a long-standing commitment to avoiding layoffs, Laura explains why culture at UWM is treated as something leaders actively design rather than something they leave to chance.

5 things you’ll learn from this episode:
Why a workplace can have great benefits and still fail to create a great employee experience
The unconventional hiring approach UWM uses to identify attitude, curiosity and work ethic
Why Laura believes monthly employee-led conversations can be more valuable than the traditional annual review
How UWM approaches internal mobility and career coaching to retain people even when their first role is not the right fit
Why some of the strongest culture initiatives may require more creativity than budget

🙏 Thank you to our series partner, Leapsome
AI is already reshaping HR. Learn how to build an agentic HR team in six months and unlock Leapsome’s €24K Accelerator plus its HRIS Foundation at no extra cost before 31 December → https://hubs.li/Q04yT6Rh0
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if the biggest mistake companies are making with AI is trying to improve individual tasks instead of redesigning the entire process?
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, I sit down with Bruno Da Sola, Group Chief People Officer at Inetum, to explore what changed when the company moved beyond scattered AI experiments and started redesigning critical end-to-end workflows.
For HR leaders, the bigger lesson is not simply to add more AI tools. It is to identify the workflows that matter most to the business, redesign them around outcomes, and be transparent with employees about what the change means for their work.

5 things you’ll learn from this episode:
Why asking employees for individual AI use cases did not create the business impact Bruno expected
The change in approach that helped Inetum move from scattered experimentation to end-to-end AI transformation
How one workforce process went from taking weeks to producing results in minutes
Why Bruno believes the most powerful AI workflows still need carefully chosen human intervention
The mistake HR leaders may be making by choosing small, low-impact processes to prove the value of AI

🙏 Thank you to our series partner, Leapsome
AI is already reshaping HR. Learn how to build an agentic HR team in six months and unlock Leapsome’s €24K Accelerator plus its HRIS Foundation at no extra cost before 31 December → https://hubs.li/Q04yT6Rh0
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How Endeavor Health Is Building One Culture Across Four Health Systems
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, I sit down with Dianna Sparacino, MBA, SPHR, Chief People Officer at Endeavor Health , to explore how the organisation is bringing multiple healthcare institutions together as one system while continuing to protect what matters most to its people, patients and communities.
For HR leaders, the conversation raises a bigger question about the connection between employee experience and patient experience. From supporting frontline caregivers to experimenting with AI, knowledge transfer and new approaches to leadership development, Dianna shares what Endeavor is learning as it continues building one organisation from several distinct histories.

5 things you’ll learn from this episode:
The difficult balance Endeavor had to navigate when bringing four healthcare organisations into one system
Why frontline leaders may be the difference between employees understanding a transformation and simply experiencing more change
What prompted Endeavor to move from allowing culture to evolve naturally to shaping it much more intentionally
How the organisation is thinking about the relationship between employee experience and the quality of patient care
Where AI, simulation and new technology could help solve some of healthcare's toughest time, knowledge and capability challenges

🙏 Thank you to our series partner, Leapsome
The companies pulling furthest ahead are already rewriting how HR works. Explore 5,000+ data points from 100 leading tech companies and learn what their 2027 playbook looks like → https://hubs.li/Q04wvZ7g0
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Employee listening only matters if people can see what changed because they spoke up.
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, I sit down with Amy Schultz of DTE Energy to explore how employee listening can become a real operating system for culture and business performance.
For HR leaders, the bigger challenge is not collecting more employee data. It is building the leadership accountability, feedback loops and operating rhythms that turn sentiment into visible change. As organisations navigate AI, transformation and increasing uncertainty, Amy shares why culture has to become part of how the business operates, not something HR manages alongside it.
5 things you’ll learn from this episode:
What DTE discovered when employees started signalling that their opinions were not being heard as strongly as before
The mechanism that helped move engagement from an HR-owned process to an executive leadership priority
How DTE goes beyond survey scores to uncover what is really sitting underneath employee sentiment
Why closing the feedback loop can matter just as much as taking action on the feedback itself
How changing technology and AI are influencing the capabilities DTE may prioritise differently in future talent decisions

🙏 Thank you to our series partner, Leapsome
The companies pulling furthest ahead are already rewriting how HR works. Explore 5,000+ data points from 100 leading tech companies and learn what their 2027 playbook looks like → https://hubs.li/Q04wvZ7g0
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if burnout is not only about how much you work, but what you believe success requires from you?
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, I sit down with Nabeela Elsayed, MS, ACC, author of Breaking Burnout, to explore why high achievers can become exhausted even when they love their work, have supportive leaders and are succeeding on paper. Her research challenges the idea that burnout can always be explained by a toxic workplace or an individual who simply needs better boundaries.
For HR leaders, the conversation raises a bigger question about how we think about wellbeing at work. Burnout sits inside a wider system of work, relationships, caregiving, identity, expectations and personal beliefs, which means sustainable performance may require organisations and individuals to rethink far more than workload alone.
5 things you’ll learn from this episode:
Why some of the highest-performing people can also be the most vulnerable to burnout
The success belief Nabeela believes can keep people working harder long after hard work stops helping
Why having a strong sense of purpose can sometimes create an unexpected burnout risk
What Nabeela learned from sports scientists about performing at a high level without constantly operating at maximum intensity
The identity shift that can help ambitious people build a healthier relationship with work without giving up ambition

🙏 Thank you to our series partner, Leapsome
The companies pulling furthest ahead are already rewriting how HR works. Explore 5,000+ data points from 100 leading tech companies and learn what their 2027 playbook looks like → https://hubs.li/Q04wvZ7g0
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.