CulturWorks | Growth Strategies

At CulturWorks, we help organizations see, understand, and transform their workplace culture through AI-powered intelligence — turning what used to take months into actionable insight in just 21 days.

We built CulturOS, our proprietary AI system, to decode the hidden patterns in organizational trust, engagement, and leadership. It pinpoints where culture thrives, where it’s at risk, and exactly how to rebuild it — using science, data, and behavioural insight.

Our work bridges AI analytics with human empathy, helping leaders move from dashboards to real behaviour change. We’ve supported 600+ organizations and 400,000+ employees around the world — from the factory floor to the executive suite.

As CEO, I lead a global team of innovators who believe HR deserves tools as advanced as the challenges they face.
We help HR and People Leaders look like the superstars they truly are — delivering workplaces that employees love, leaders are proud of, and boards can confidently stand behind.

Because culture isn’t soft. It’s smart, strategic, and now — AI-powered. It’s the system that drives trust, performance, and growth — the foundation of every organization’s bottom line.

Skills: AI Strategy · Workplace Analytics · Organizational Culture · Leadership · Transformational Change · Leadership Development · People Development · Policy Analysis · Human Rights Law · Employment Law

Chief Executive Officer

Canadian Lawyer Magazine

✅ Generated compelling columns and features related to workplace diversity and inclusion, behavioural change, assessment, including essential aspects training, unconscious bias, and de-biasing the hiring and promotion process. Shared my research and practical approaches for global workplaces on anti-racism, sexism, homophobia and diversity & inclusion

📌 Key Impact: proved to be a creative, consumer-focused storyteller with a passion for the D&I topics, and a particular obsession with human rights and labor law. Exhibited excellence in strong copywriting, content development and editing.

Culture and DEI Coach and Regular Columnist

The Lawyer's Daily

Columnist (Culture & DEI)

ART Realty Investments

A successful private investment and equity group centered on long-term, equity and capital growth, through real estate, real estate partnerships and joint ventures.

Various Regional, National and Global Media Outlets

✅ For over a decade, I have been invited to provide expertise to inform essential conversations across the Globe on Diversity,  Inclusion, the law, immigration and migration policy, the legal profession, and corporate social responsibility with over 500 speaking events and media engagements.  

Media interviews, engagements include:

CBC Newsworld
CBC Radio One
CTV News
CTV Power and Politics
CP24
Aljazeera 
Toronto Star
The Globe and Mail
Reuters
Associated Press
The Kitchener-Waterloo Record
The Straight.com
Le Devoir
The Hamilton Spectator  
Canadian Lawyer Magazine  
The Law Times

Media Contributor/Speaker/ Panelist

The BlackNorth Initiative

✅ I was privileged to be invited to support the great work of the Black North Initiative.  I get to leverage my experience engaging technology, data, science and metrics related to Diversity, Inclusion, Safety, Belonging, anti-racism & anti-oppression.  Together we will eradicate systemic anti-Black racism and anti-Blackness within Canadian companies and organizations!

Measurement & Metrics Committee Lead

✅ Invited to be a Peer-to-Peer Leader/Facilitator for DEI professionals from a wide variety of industries, sizes, market capitalization, and experience whose employers are signatories to the Black North Initiative
✅ An opportunity to utilize my coaching and facilitation skills to support Black North Initiative signatories achieve their pledge goals, including the elimination of anti-Black racism

Peer to Peer Lead

MESH/diversity

✅  Brought on board by Canada's largest full-service Diversity & Inclusion company with the mandate of working with organizations of all sizes to drive them towards there diversity and inclusion goals using, data, metrics, education and technology. 

➡️	Embedding anti-racism, anti-oppression, and all facets of diversity and inclusion into the culture of the organizations.

📌 Key Contribution: world-class diversity and inclusion/anti-racism/anti-oppression educator, coach, facilitator, strategist and speaker working with the C-Suite, the board, leaders, and executives.

Chief Legal Officer

United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW Canada)

General Counsel

✅ Recruited by Canada's largest private sector union as a Legal Counsel – rapidly progressed through organization ranks, achieving the role of a Director of the Human Rights, Equity, and Diversity Department in 2008. Worked closely with provincial, federal & international governments on issues facing foreign migrant workers & integration into workplace

➡️	Conducted one of the largest D&I audits of any membership organization to establish the disparity between staff, leadership and membership, which formed the foundation for effective policies relating to diminishing bias in hiring and promotion
➡️	Spearheaded a team to developed and deployed a multi-year education, multi-phase education programming (in-class, online) to over 1000 staff at local unions based on anti-racism, anti-sexism, and D&I.
➡️	Developed a D&I system based on metrics, data, and meaningful community engagement and internal "in-reach". 

Key Contributions:

📌   Mentored, coached and managed a team that has established and executed complex multi-year, multifaceted diversity and inclusion strategy for the over 250,000 members - one of the largest and most robust diversity and Inclusion initiatives in Canada.
📌   Built a positive National profile recognized and engaged by governments, employer groups, and National International NGOs for advice on diversity and inclusion policy and programming.
📌	Developed meaningful National Partnerships with National and International human rights organizations such as EGALE Canada (Helen Kennedy), the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society (Cindy Blackstock), WOMEN\'S LEGAL EDUCATION AND ACTION FUND (LEAF), Centre for Sexual and Gender Diversity.
📌	Increased the representation of women in leadership from zero to just over 50 percent in my time in this role. Augmented the number of people of colour in leadership roles nationally.

Director of Human Rights, Equity and Diversity

Chairperson, National Council Human Rights Equity and Diversity Committee

The Broadbent Institute

http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/en/staff/naveen-mehta

I am honoured to be part of this diverse, multidisciplinary group of distinguished scholars, policy experts, and leaders from the Canadian business community and civil society. They inform the Institute’s research and policy agenda and contribute their knowledge and analysis to further the institute’s efforts to impact public debate in support of progressive change.

Policy Fellow -  Diversity & Inclusion -  Immigration/Migration Policy

Canadian Labour Congress

Member, Legal Challenges Committee

Vice-President, WOC, Canada Council

Vice-President, Executive Committee Member

Chairperson, National Human Rights Committee

We Empower People to Build Thriving #DEI Businesses | The Business of #DEI Newsletter | #Diversity Entrepreneur | 2 Million LinkedIn Views | Human Rights Lawyer | Nominated Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers | @culturworks

The law can be rough. After 20 years in the courtroom representing employers and employees, I realized most workplace problems aren’t about money — they’re about culture.

The law taught me the power of the "stick" — compliance, control, and consequence. But the real lesson came later: knowing when to use the "carrot." Because real performance doesn’t come from fear. It comes from clarity, trust, and belonging.

Even though I was “the lawyer,” my biggest wins never came from the courtroom. They came during mediation — when people stopped arguing and started understanding. That’s when I realized I didn’t just want to fight for workplaces.

I WANTED TO FIX THEM.

So in 2008, I founded CulturWorks — to help organizations build cultures people love to be part of, not pulled into or run from.

What began as my personal mission became a shared purpose. Today, the CulturWorks team blends expertise in law, psychology, analytics, AI, and leadership to build workplaces that truly work — for everyone.

Here’s the truth: from our 20s until our 60s, we spend half our adult waking lives at work. That’s bloody 50%! WTH? It had better be a fantastic place.

That belief drives everything we do.

Our AI-powered system, CulturOS, delivers a lightning-fast, science-backed roadmap within 21 days — pinpointing where trust is strong, where it’s fading, and how to rebuild it with measurable results. Then we turn insight into action — helping you build the kind of culture your employees thrive in, your leaders dream of, and your board can proudly stand behind. All the while, unmasking your HR team as the superheroes they truly are.

And it’s working. CulturWorks has partnered with 600+ organizations and over 400,000 employees worldwide.

We bridge analytics and action — turning insight into leader habits that drive retention, engagement, and growth.

Because culture isn’t soft. It’s smart, strategic, and now — AI-powered. Great culture cuts turnover costs, boosts productivity, strengthens loyalty, and protects brand reputation — quietly improving margins quarter after quarter. Most organizations overlook it because it hides in intangibles like belonging, collaboration, and purpose — but we make those intangibles measurable, and then we make them profitable.

I’ve spent a career on both sides of the table.
Now, with the team at CulturWorks, I’m building the table itself — one where people and performance finally align.

If you’re an HR or People Leader ready to build a culture where everyone can thrive, connect with me here or visit CulturWorks.com to learn more.

Naveen Mehta

Thank you Samantha for moving this message forward. 

Some stories stop you in your tracks.
Amber Czech’s is one of them.

A 20 year old welder.
At her station.
Doing her job.
And she never made it home.

Her death was not random.
It was not unforeseeable.
It was gender based workplace violence.

And whenever something this devastating happens, the question isn’t “how did this happen?” It’s how many moments came before this that no one acted on?

Across 25 years supporting HR leaders, unions, and employers, I have learned something hard but true:
before violence shows up in headlines, it shows up in culture.
In the jokes.
In the comments.
In who gets dismissed.
In who feels unsafe raising concerns.
In who gets protected — and who doesn’t.

Policies don’t prevent tragedies unless the culture makes those policies real.

If we are serious about protecting women in male dominated environments, then we must treat early warning signs the same way we treat physical hazards — visible, documented, and acted on immediately.

Because safety is not an add on.
Safety is culture.
And culture is the daily behaviour of leaders.

My hope is that Amber’s story pushes all of us — HR, operations, health and safety, executives — to look closely at our own workplaces and ask one question with honesty:

Would a woman who felt unsafe trust this system enough to speak up — and trust leadership enough to act?

If the answer is anything but yes, then that is the work.

CEO ⎸ Lawyer ⎸ Keynote Speaker ⎸ Women in Business ⎸ Women @Work

On November 11th, 20-year-old welder Amber Czech was murdered at her workplace in Cokato, Minnesota, by a male coworker who told police he “did not like her” and had planned the attack. She was at her station doing her job. She never went home. 

Amber was just starting her career. Her family and community describe her as a hardworking welder who took pride in her craft, with a bright future ahead. 

This is gender-based workplace violence.

When a woman is killed at work by a coworker who openly admits he “didn’t like her,” every employer, union, regulator, and industry association should be asking what systems failed her long before that day. Reports already show trade groups calling for stronger protections for women in construction and manufacturing in response to Amber’s death. 

Some immediate, practical steps for leaders in any sector that has women in traditionally male-dominated roles (trades, construction, manufacturing, logistics, tech, and beyond):

- Treat gender-based harassment, threats, and stalking behaviours as safety hazards, not “interpersonal conflict.”

- Create clear, confidential reporting channels that do not route complaints only through one supervisor.

- Train leaders and supervisors to recognize early indicators of targeted hostility and to intervene decisively.

- Build joint safety/HR protocols for responding to threats, including removal from site, security measures, and support for the targeted worker.

- Work with joint health and safety committees and unions on specific protections for women and gender-diverse workers on job sites.

- Track and review incidents, not just injuries, and act on patterns instead of waiting for something “serious enough.”

For those of us who work in employment law, HR, health and safety, and leadership, this is a call to go back into our own policies, our own culture, and our own sites and ask where someone like Amber would have turned for help, and how the organization would have responded.

My heart is with Amber’s family, friends, coworkers, and community. The most respectful thing the rest of us can do is to grieve her, say her name, and then do the hard work of making sure women are actually safe at work, not just “welcome.”

If you are in a position of authority at a workplace and are unsure where to start, please call me. I will help you make your workplace safer for women. 

Link to GoFundMe in support of Amber's family: https://lnkd.in/gW7XY-My

Before many organizations come to us, they’ve already tried to “transform their culture.”

New slogans. New posters. Even branded mugs.
Six months later, engagement tanks — and everyone quietly admits the obvious: nothing actually changed.

I’ve seen this story repeat itself across industries.

Not because leaders don’t care, but because the approach misses what culture really is — the lived behavior of people every day.

Here are the Top 5 Disasters in Culture Change Initiatives — and how to avoid them:

 1️⃣ The Slogan Makeover Trap — Values on walls don’t change what happens in halls. Focus on visible behaviors.
 2️⃣ The Top-Down Tornado — People resist being changed. Co-create instead.
 3️⃣ The Hero Leader Myth — Systems, not saviors, sustain culture.
 4️⃣ Data Blindness — You can’t fix what you don’t measure. Listen to real signals.
 5️⃣ The One-and-Done Syndrome — Culture is a daily workout, not a one-time event.

In this week’s Leading Culture newsletter, I unpack each one with stories from real workplaces — and share practical ways to build momentum that lasts.

➡️ Read it here below — and if you find it useful, subscribe to Leading Culture for more data-driven, story-rich insights each week.

#Leadership #WorkplaceCulture #HR #OrganizationalDevelopment #ChangeManagement

Everyone loves the idea of culture change. Until they realize it’s less “motivational posters” and more “open-heart surgery… while running a marathon 

Open article: My Top 5 Disasters in Culture Change Initiatives and How to Avoid that Pain by Naveen Mehta • 5 min read

My Top 5 Disasters in Culture Change Initiatives and How to Avoid that Pain

AI will not replace HR.
But HR that ignores AI will quietly lose its seat at the table.

In our recent interviews with 45 CHROs, we heard the same tension over and over.

Publicly, everyone agrees AI matters.
Privately, most are still trying to work out what that actually means for HR.

We consistently saw three patterns:

Some CHROs are experimenting with AI to clear admin work
Freeing their teams to focus on strategy, coaching, and complex people issues.

Some are overwhelmed and cautious
Worried about bias, employee trust, and “getting it wrong” in sensitive areas like hiring and performance.

Some are avoiding it almost entirely
Hoping to wait until everything feels clearer.

The risk isn’t that AI will suddenly take HR’s job.
The real risk is that other functions will define how AI is used
In hiring, performance, talent, and culture
Without HR’s voice shaping guardrails, ethics, and impact.

From those 45 conversations, one thing was obvious:

The CHROs who feel most confident aren’t the ones with the flashiest AI tools.
They’re the ones treating AI as a people and culture decision, not just a tech decision.

They are:

Using AI to reduce low-value manual work
Not to outsource judgment or empathy.

Using AI to see patterns in engagement, exits, and sentiment
Not to hide behind a score.

Using AI transparently
So employees understand where it’s used, why, and with what limits.

For HR and People leaders, the question is no longer “Should we use AI?”
It’s: “Will we lead how AI shows up in the people experience, or let others decide for us?”

AI won’t define the future of HR.
HR will define the future of AI at work — or it won’t.

Ready for the deeper dive?
Join LEADING CULTURE—concise, step-by-step and science-backed People Strategies trusted by thousands of HR and Culture leaders—so you can become your organization’s greatest competitive advantage.

https://lnkd.in/d_E8EuTp

#HR #PeopleAndCulture #AI #FutureOfWork #Leadership #WorkplaceCulture #EmployeeExperience

Some of the most damaging leaders in an organization are also the kindest.

Not the screamers.
Not the obvious bullies.

The avoiders.

They avoid hard feedback.
They avoid conflict.
They avoid saying, “This isn’t working.”

On the surface, everything looks calm.

No blowups.
No visible drama.
People describe them as “nice” and “supportive.”

Underneath, here’s what HR and People leaders tell us they see:

Performance issues dragging on for months.
High performers quietly carrying the team.
Resentment building because nothing really changes.
Exits that could have been prevented with one honest conversation.

“Nice” becomes harmful when:

We sugarcoat until nothing is clear.
We delay feedback until it’s too late.
We protect adults from discomfort instead of helping them grow.

Employees don’t need leaders who are harsh.
They need leaders who are honest and humane at the same time.

Plain language.
Clear expectations.
Real consequences.
Delivered with respect and empathy.

We often hear, “We don’t want to hurt their feelings.”

The reality:

Avoiding the conversation doesn’t protect people.
It keeps them stuck.
It frustrates the team.
It increases the odds that termination becomes the only option left.

Brave leadership is not about being less kind.
It’s about being more truthful, sooner, with support.

That’s where culture shifts.
One clear, courageous conversation at a time.

Ready for the deeper dive?
Join LEADING CULTURE—concise, step-by-step and science-backed People Strategies trusted by thousands of HR and Culture leaders—so you can become your organization’s greatest competitive advantage.
http://bit.ly/43CoVj4

#HR #PeopleAndCulture #Leadership #Feedback #PerformanceManagement #WorkplaceCulture #EmployeeExperience

Employees are not less loyal.
They are less naïve.

We see this across organizations and industries.

People are still willing to give a lot.
Energy.
Ideas.
Discretionary effort.

But they are no longer willing to:

Sacrifice their health for a company that treats them as a line item.
Stay loyal to leaders who don’t tell the truth.
Trade years of their career for vague promises of “someday.”

The old loyalty contract was simple:

You show up.
You work hard.
You stay.

In return, the organization gives you:

Stability.
Progression.
A sense that you belong somewhere.

That contract has cracked.

Mergers.
Layoffs.
Reorg after reorg.
Short-term thinking at the top.

Employees have been paying attention.

Today’s loyalty sounds more like:

“I’ll give you my best while I’m here.
But I won’t bet my entire future on you.”

From our vantage point at CulturWorks, we see a new loyalty contract emerging – one that HR and People leaders can actually shape.

It sounds like this:

We will invest in your growth.
We will be transparent about what we can and can’t promise.
We will treat your time and wellbeing as finite, not unlimited.
We will make this a place you’re proud to have on your story, whether you stay 3 years or 13.

In return, we ask for:

Honest effort.
Honest feedback.
Honest notice when your chapter here is ending.

This isn’t “soft.”
It’s strategic.

Because the organizations that honour this new contract:

Attract stronger talent.
Get more real effort while people are with them.
Become alumni brands employees are proud to recommend.

The ones that don’t?

Rely on perks to fix trust.
Confuse compliance with commitment.
Act surprised when their best people leave for places that feel more grown-up.

For HR and People leaders, the real work now is to:

Design cultures where loyalty is mutual, not assumed.
Make your promises specific, not fuzzy.
Equip leaders to have adult-to-adult conversations about growth, performance, and exits.

Loyalty 2.0 isn’t “stay forever.”
It’s:
“While we’re in this together, let’s make it count.”

Ready for the deeper dive?
Join LEADING CULTURE—concise, step-by-step and science-backed People Strategies trusted by thousands of HR and Culture leaders—so you can become your organization’s greatest competitive advantage.
http://bit.ly/43CoVj4

#HR #PeopleAndCulture #WorkplaceCulture #Leadership #Retention #EmployeeExperience #FutureOfWork

AI is not the end of HR.
It’s the next evolution of HR.

The future of work will not be humans versus AI.
It will be human + AI versus organizations that refuse to adapt.

In our interviews with 45 CHROs, one theme is unmistakable:

The most forward-looking HR leaders aren’t fearing AI.
They’re shaping it.

They’re using AI to:

Strip out low-value admin work
So HR can spend more time on strategy, coaching, and complex people issues.

Spot patterns in engagement, exits, and culture data
That would take humans weeks to see — and act on.

Personalize learning and development
So managers get targeted support instead of generic leadership decks.

Support, not replace, human judgment
Keeping decisions grounded in context, ethics, and relationships.

The gap we see isn’t between companies “with AI” and “without AI.”
It’s between companies where HR is leading the conversation
And companies where AI is treated as a pure tech project.

When AI is led by HR and People & Culture:

Guardrails are defined with people in mind.
Transparency is built in, not bolted on.
Trust is actively protected, not accidentally eroded.

When HR is left out:

AI gets dropped into hiring, performance, and talent decisions
With little thought to bias, messaging, or how employees actually feel.

The CHROs who feel most confident right now have a few things in common:

They see AI as a capability, not a threat.
They are building basic literacy across their HR teams.
They are piloting small, smart use cases instead of waiting for “perfect.”
They are clear that empathy, judgment, and relationships stay human.

The future of work and AI is not science fiction.
It’s incredibly practical:

Fewer hours lost to manual reporting.
Better questions asked of your data.
Managers who are better prepared for real conversations.
Employees who feel the technology is helping them, not watching them.

HR does not have to passively receive the future of work.
We get to design it.

The only real risk is sitting this one out.

Ready for the deeper dive?
Join LEADING CULTURE—concise, step-by-step and science-backed People Strategies trusted by thousands of HR and Culture leaders—so you can become your organization’s greatest competitive advantage.
http://bit.ly/43CoVj4

#HR #PeopleAndCulture #AI #FutureOfWork #Leadership #WorkplaceCulture #EmployeeExperience

Every organization has a “good soldier” — and they’re burning out in plain sight.

We see this pattern in almost every culture assessment we run.

The good soldier is the person who:

Says yes when everyone else hesitates.
Takes the extra project “just this once.”
Stays late to fix what others dropped.
Keeps the team running when systems and clarity are missing.

They’re praised as “reliable,” “dedicated,” “such a team player.”

But here’s what HR and People leaders quietly tell us:

They’re also the ones who:

Are closest to the edge of burnout.
Feel taken for granted.
Carry unspoken resentment.
Wake up one day and say, “I’m done,” and no one saw it coming.

The good soldier trap happens when:

Saying yes is rewarded.
Setting boundaries is punished (openly or subtly).
Leaders don’t fix broken systems — they lean harder on the same dependable people.

In the short term, it looks like high performance.
In the long term, it looks like:

Silent disengagement.
Sudden resignations.
Team morale dropping when “the glue” leaves.
A reputation for chewing through your best people.

From our vantage point at CulturWorks, one thing is clear:

Over-reliance on good soldiers is not a sign of a strong culture.
It’s a sign of a fragile one.

Healthy cultures:

Notice who always says yes — and ask why they feel they have to.
Reward sustainable performance, not heroic over-functioning.
Teach leaders to redistribute work instead of defaulting to the same people.
Normalize “no” and “not right now” as professional responses, not disloyal ones.

If you’re in HR, you probably already know who your good soldiers are.

The real question is:

Are we protecting them and designing around them
Or quietly exploiting them because they never complain?

Because by the time they do, they’re usually halfway out the door.

Ready for the deeper dive?
Join LEADING CULTURE—concise, step-by-step and science-backed People Strategies trusted by thousands of HR and Culture leaders—so you can become your organization’s greatest competitive advantage.
http://bit.ly/43CoVj4

#HR #PeopleAndCulture #WorkplaceCulture #Leadership #Burnout #EmployeeExperience #Retention

The most energizing HR conversation I had this week wasn’t in Canada.
It was in the Gulf.

An HR leader with 25+ years of experience said something that stopped me:

“We don’t call this ‘change’ anymore.
We call it our growth phase.”

That one line says everything about what’s happening in the GCC right now.

New economic sectors.
New expectations from a young workforce.
New pressure on leaders to move faster, be smarter, and still keep people at the centre.

But instead of talking about “disruption” and “uncertainty,” this leader framed it differently:

This isn’t instability.
It’s an opportunity window.

Here were my big takeaways from that conversation:

Growth, not survival
When you label everything as “change,” people brace.
When you frame it as “growth,” people lean in.
Language is strategy.

Curiosity after 25 years
This leader wasn’t tired.
They were more curious than some people 5 years into their career.
They asked: “How do we build cultures that are ready for what’s coming, not just reacting to what’s here?”

Culture as regional advantage
In the GCC, it’s not just about internal engagement scores.
It’s about becoming an employer of choice in a region competing for global talent.
Culture becomes part of the national story, not just the HR strategy.

Leaders need better tools, not bigger slogans
They weren’t asking for another vision statement.
They were asking for:
– Hard data on what their people are really experiencing
– Clear roadmaps, not vague recommendations
– Practical tools leaders can use tomorrow morning

At CulturWorks, this is exactly what excites our team in the Gulf:

Not “managing change.”
Designing cultures that turn rapid transition into long-term growth.
Equipping leaders with the insight and tools to make that real.

If you’re leading HR or People & Culture in the GCC, three questions are worth sitting with:

Are we treating this moment as a risk to survive or a growth phase to design?
Do our leaders have real data and tools—or just pressure and slogans?
And after 20+ years in HR… am I still as curious as that leader was on our call?

Because their enthusiasm, after 25 years in the field, might be the most strategic asset they have.

Ready for the deeper dive?
Join LEADING CULTURE—concise, step-by-step and science-backed People Strategies trusted by thousands of HR and Culture leaders—so you can become your organization’s greatest competitive advantage.
http://bit.ly/43CoVj4

#HR #PeopleAndCulture #GCC #MiddleEastHR #WorkplaceCulture #Leadership #Transformation #FutureOfWork

Open article: LinkedIn: Log In or Sign Up by linkedin.com

Who actually holds your culture together in between the big announcements and strategy decks?

We’ve noticed it’s usually not the people on the org chart with the fanciest titles.

It’s the person who remembers the birthday card.
Checks in on the new hire who looks lost.
Translates the CEO’s town hall into words the team can actually use.
Calms everyone down after a tough email or restructuring.

That’s not “extra.”
That’s culture.

And most of it is invisible.

You don’t see it on a balance sheet.
You rarely see it in a performance review.
But you feel it immediately when it’s missing.

In our work, HR leaders can usually name these people in seconds.

The unofficial mentors.
The quiet fixers.
The ones people turn to before they ever go to their manager.

Here’s the problem:

We lean on them for emotional labour.
We depend on them to “keep things smooth.”
But we almost never:

Name it.
Measure it.
Reward it.

We talk about engagement, inclusion, and psychological safety.
Yet the people doing the heaviest relational lifting often carry it on top of their day job, with no recognition.

If we’re serious about retention and culture, we need to:

Acknowledge relational work as real work.
Bake it into performance conversations and talent decisions.
Develop and support the people doing it, instead of quietly burning them out.

Because the person who quietly holds your culture together
Is often the one most at risk of leaving if they feel unseen.

We can’t afford for their contribution to stay invisible.

Ready for the deeper dive?
Join LEADING CULTURE—concise, step-by-step and science-backed People Strategies trusted by thousands of HR and Culture leaders—so you can become your organization’s greatest competitive advantage.
http://bit.ly/43CoVj4

#HR #PeopleAndCulture #WorkplaceCulture #Inclusion #EmployeeExperience #Engagement #Leadership

I’m going to sound like a Jerk. I have no choice.  HR leaders, VPs of HR, CHROs — I want you to think about you are doing about workplace culture right now?
Not in theory. In practice. This quarter. Many of you will quietly say:

 “nothing now but for sure next quarter.”

I totally understand.  

A CHRO  client of ours told me that I have no choice but to write this post. I . We want to give HR leaders a clear heads up about what we’re increasingly seeing on the ground.

We completely empathize. Your world is packed with:

Headcount and approvals
Leadership meetings
Comp, pay equity, and calibration
Employee relations and investigations
Hybrid, RTO, policies, systems, vendors

It is a lot.
None of it is small.

But here’s what 3 CEOs told us privately since about June. 

One CEO said, “We brought you in because our CHRO seemed disengaged from culture. Someone has to own it.”

That stings — and it’s often not fair — but it is real feedback.

Most senior HR leaders care deeply about culture.

They’re just buried in fires.

The problem: culture is rarely urgent
Until it shows up as:

Turnover spikes
Manager fatigue and apathy
Low trust in leadership
Reputational risk with candidates and regulators

By then, it’s already expensive.

The research is consistent and boringly clear:

Deliberate, healthy cultures outperform on profit, growth, innovation, retention, and resilience.
Culture is not “extra.” It’s how sustainable businesses are built.

And whether it’s written in your job description or not, culture is your portfolio to lead.

That doesn’t mean doing everything yourself.

It means making sure your organization is:

Measuring culture with real data, not vibes
Linking that data to retention, performance, and risk
Turning insights into a clear, time-bound roadmap for leaders
Equipping managers with practical tools and training, not slogans
Showing employees visible, concrete changes — not just another survey

If you are the senior People leader and almost none of this is on your calendar, then a critical part of your job is being left on the table.

We’re not saying that to criticize you.
We’re saying it because CEOs, boards, and employees are already noticing — and for your sake, we’d rather you hear it now than in a crisis.

For a deeper, practical dive:
Join LEADING CULTURE—concise, step-by-step and science-backed People Strategies trusted by thousands of HR and Culture leaders—so you can become your organization’s greatest competitive advantage.
http://bit.ly/43CoVj4

#HR #CHRO #PeopleAndCulture #WorkplaceCulture #Leadership #FutureOfWork #EmployeeExperience #Retention

How many tired decisions did your organization make this week?

We talk a lot about burnout, but not enough about what it quietly does to judgment.

When leaders and teams are always on, we see patterns repeat:

Emails fired off at 11:47 p.m. that create three new problems by morning.
“Yes” to projects no one has capacity for.
Rushed hiring decisions that become long-term performance issues.
Policies written in reaction to the last crisis instead of the next 12 months.

On paper, people are “fine.”
They’re showing up.
They’re hitting deadlines.

But under the surface, the cost is stacking up in places HR and Finance both care about:

Quality drops.
Rework increases.
Conflict escalates.
Turnover quietly rises.

From our vantage point at CulturWorks, we see a simple truth:

The most expensive thing in many organizations isn’t turnover.
It’s tired thinking.

You don’t fix that with yoga posters or a wellness week.

You fix it by:

Reducing fake urgency so real priorities get oxygen.
Training leaders to protect focus time instead of flooding calendars.
Making it safe to say, “We can’t do all of this well,” and choose.
Linking wellbeing directly to risk, quality, and ROI — not just “being nice.”

HR leaders are often the first to feel the shift.
The volume of “small issues” goes up.
The tone of conversations gets sharper.
The creativity in rooms quietly fades.

That’s not just a people problem.
It’s a business strategy problem.

If we want better decisions, we have to design cultures where people still have something left in the tank when it’s time to make them.

Ready for the deeper dive?
Join LEADING CULTURE—concise, step-by-step and science-backed People Strategies trusted by thousands of HR and Culture leaders—so you can become your organization’s greatest competitive advantage.
http://bit.ly/43CoVj4

#HR #PeopleAndCulture #Leadership #Burnout #FutureOfWork #WorkplaceCulture #EmployeeExperience

Middle management isn’t dying.
Bad management is.

We see this every week in our work with HR and People leaders.

The problem isn’t “too many managers.”
It’s too many managers whose real job is unclear.

They’re buried in dashboards.
Forwarding emails.
Sitting in back-to-back meetings.

But ask their teams what they actually need, and you hear something very different:

“Be clear.”
“Have my back.”
“Remove roadblocks.”
“Give me feedback before it’s too late.”

The future of management isn’t about more layers.
It’s about sharper, more human ones.

Managers who:

Know their real job is to create the conditions for great work.
Spend more time in 1:1s than in status meetings.
Understand how to use AI and tools to free up time for actual leadership.
Are measured on team health and outcomes, not email volume and meeting attendance.

From our vantage point at CulturWorks, the shift looks like this:

Old model:
Manage tasks.
Push information down.
Escalate problems up.

New model:
Coach humans.
Translate strategy into meaningful work.
Spot early risk in trust, workload, and behaviour.

For HR and People leaders, that means asking:

Are we promoting managers for tenure, or for their ability to lead humans?
Are we training managers to use data and AI as support, not as a shield?
Are we holding managers accountable for both results and the way those results are achieved?

Because in the organizations that are getting this right, managers aren’t “middle” anything.
They’re the engine that turns strategy, culture, and performance into reality.

That’s the future of management we’re betting on.

Ready for the deeper dive?
Join LEADING CULTURE—concise, step-by-step and science-backed People Strategies trusted by thousands of HR and Culture leaders—so you can become your organization’s greatest competitive advantage.
http://bit.ly/43CoVj4

#HR #PeopleAndCulture #Leadership #MiddleManagement #FutureOfWork #WorkplaceCulture #EmployeeExperience

HR leaders, your most powerful culture tool isn’t your engagement survey.

It’s a 30-minute 1:1 most managers still wing.

In almost every organization we work with, 1:1s are treated as:

Status updates.
Deadline check-ins.
A quick “How’s it going?” before rushing to the next meeting.

But when we listen to employees, the moments that changed them rarely come from town halls.
They come from small, specific conversations with a leader:

“I finally felt seen.”
“They told me the truth, respectfully.”
“They helped me name what I’m actually good at.”

Those 30 minutes quietly decide:

Who stays when things get hard.
Who tells the truth versus what sounds safe.
Who brings problems early versus too late.

Yet across organizations, 1:1s are:

Unstructured.
Inconsistent.
The first thing to be cancelled when calendars get tight.

As AI reshapes work, this becomes even more important.

AI can summarize performance.
It can draft questions and surface themes.

But it cannot sit across from someone and say,
“This looks heavy. Let’s figure it out together.”

From our vantage point at CulturWorks, the leverage point is clear:

Treat 1:1s as a core leadership ritual, not a meeting slot.
Give managers a simple structure for real conversations, not just status.
Use AI quietly in the background, but keep the human work human.

Culture doesn’t just live in values on the wall.
It lives in what is said – and not said – in those recurring 30-minute conversations.

Ready for the deeper dive?
Join LEADING CULTURE—concise, step-by-step and science-backed People Strategies trusted by thousands of HR and Culture leaders—so you can become your organization’s greatest competitive advantage.
http://bit.ly/43CoVj4

#HR #PeopleAndCulture #WorkplaceCulture #Leadership #FutureOfWork #EmployeeExperience #Retention

The Modern People Leader

Helping HR Leaders Build the Future of Work. We’ve learned from the best so you can lead like the best. Now we’re sharing those lessons—through our podcast, events, and Academy—to help you shape what’s next for HR and work.

CEO & Co-Host

Humu

Demand Generation Manager

Udacity

Digital Marketing Manager, Enterprise

Workify Inc

- Devised overall marketing strategy & execution at Workify
- Managed all demand generation activities (e.g., Paid Search, Marketing Automation, etc.) 
- Built out content strategy (e.g., blogs, webinars, case studies, etc.)

Marketing Manager

Marketing Analyst

Sales Analyst

I’m on a mission to learn what the leading orgs are doing to attract, develop, and retain their most important asset, their people.

Co-host of The Modern People Leader podcast: 
https://open.spotify.com/show/4nxU1ZaHfL608Y70AzNGwB?si=oc1MnBF-RlCHZkL3Ac5yug

_____________________________________
My posts are my own and do not reflect the opinions of my past employers.

Daniel Huerta

What a way to celebrate five years of The Modern People Leader with MPL Live Austin this week. 

I’ve grown up with the pod. 

Since we launched in 2020, I’ve moved cities, gotten married, left corporate to do this full-time, and welcomed a beautiful daughter into my life.

This week I had a couple of those quiet moments where it hit me - oh shit, this is something really special that Stephen and I have built.

And there was no better way to mark five years than with the people who actually make The Modern People Leader what it is. The community of thoughtful, generous people leaders who have been with us since the jump.

Looking back on 2025, we did A LOT:
- 61 episodes
- 8 webinars (fist year doing these)
- 4 MPL Live events (including our first two-day event)
- 2 new Huertas (Stephen Huerta’s little one will be arriving any day now)

Grateful doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Can’t wait for what 2026 brings.

No alternative text description for this image

After interviewing 60+ HR leaders in 2025, one thing is clear:
Becoming an AI-first org is hard work.

Which is why next week’s MPL Live Austin is fully focused on what the AI-powered workplace actually looks like - and the change management it takes to make it real.

Two days.
Zero fluff.
Speakers who are the real deal.

If you live in Austin, come hang out. You’ve got until midnight to grab your Black Friday Pass before prices go back up: https://lnkd.in/gQ36TEDw

Day 1 Speakers:
- Kara Grenier, Chief People Officer, Sightly
- Vanessa Gutierrez (AI for HR)
- David Hanrahan, SVP People Success, SolarWinds
- Jackson Lynch (Talent Sherpa)
- 2 more to be announced in the next 24 hours
 
Day 2 Speakers:
- Jenna Eichberg, Chief People Officer, AlertMedia
- Priyanka Gupta, Head of People, Ownwell
- Shriya Josephsen, SVP Business Transformation @ R/GA

Come hang out with me, Stephen Huerta, and your peers who want to lead the transformation toward an AI-powered workplace.

HR folks - you’ve probably felt this tension lately.

Everyone’s saying “use AI”,  but not many people are showing how (we’re even guilty of this at this times at MPL).

The truth?

Most HR teams want to experiment, but they get stuck at the starting line -unsure what to build, how to get it approved, or where to even begin.

That’s why we’re having a live session that goes beyond the theory - real HR leaders sharing how they got over the biggest hurdle and showing 3 real examples of what they actually built.

Want to see what’s actually possible with AI in HR?

Sign up for our webinar with Brandon Sammut (Chief People & AI Transformation Officer, Zapier), Jenny Molyneaux (VP People at Vercel), and Valerie Gobeil (Head of Talent Management at Workleap) happening Thursday, November 20th at 1 pm CST.

Register here: https://lnkd.in/gUwXpc3b

When most people talk about “AI transformation,” they jump straight to tools.

Jessica Swank, Chief People Officer at Box, is thinking way bigger - she’s talking about rewiring how the entire business operates.

At Box, AI isn’t a layer on top. It’s baked directly into the product, which means the product strategy and business strategy move together from day one. That vision starts at the top, and it flows through every team.

Jessica’s People & Communities org is right in the middle of this shift, helping the company navigate one of the biggest transformations it’s ever taken on. 

And the way she breaks it down makes it feel a lot more doable:

1. Optimize: Look at every part of the employee experience and ask, “Where can AI actually make this better?” Not hype - real impact.

2. Elevate: Make sure every Boxer has the skills, training, and role clarity to thrive in an AI-native org and that the organizational systems evolve.

3. Amplify: Use Box’s own AI experiments to help customers, partners, and the industry understand what “practical AI” really looks like.

Her take is refreshingly honest: “This isn’t just a small upgrade. It’s a total rethink of people, processes, and how work gets done.”

Listen to the full episode with Jessica Swank here: https://lnkd.in/gXwgGqAg

#hr #podcast #ai

Most HR teams still approach the employee experience like a checklist.

Kit Krugman, SVP People & Culture at Foursquare, shared how different the work becomes when you treat it like an actual design problem.

What landed most was how she described the moment she stepped into Foursquare and realized the people team was carrying responsibility for experiences they didn’t fully control. We’ve seen that play out with so many HR leaders. They’re expected to “own” employee experience, while half of the experience lives in functions that never get invited into the design process.

The way Kit and her team rebuilt their approach is what impressed me.

Instead of making small fixes, they treated it like a full design reset:

1. Mapping the employee journey visually from end to end.

2. Capturing every signal they could find, not just the loud ones.

3. Pulling in cross-functional partners who actually shape the experience day to day.

4. Defining design principles to guide the feel of the experience, not just the mechanics.

5. Pairing qualitative narratives with quantitative data to pressure test what was real vs what was noise.

Go listen to our full conversation with Kit here: https://lnkd.in/gsEcbwQt

My biggest takeaways from Jessica Swank on building AI-native organizations:

1. At Box, AI isn’t being treated as a feature release - it’s a company-wide transformation. The People team is focused on three moves: optimize the existing employee lifecycle with AI, elevate job design and org structure around new skills, and amplify Box’s own story as a proof point for customers. AI isn’t a side project for IT. It’s a restructuring of how value gets created, how work flows, and how people grow.

2. In an AI world, a person with one year of deep AI experience can legitimately be the most knowledgeable person in the room - even when others have twenty years of domain experience. That flips the old hierarchy on its head. The leaders who win won’t just be the ones with the longest resumes; they’ll be the ones who are curious, comfortable in ambiguity, and willing to learn in public while they guide everyone else through the change.

3. HR doesn’t own AI, but they do shape how it shows up. Instead of fighting a turf war over who “owns” AI, Box created an AI council that brings together the CIO, COO, CPO, and leaders across the business. HR’s role is to bring the people lens: how work is changing, what skills are needed, how performance and rewards need to evolve. It’s not about bolting AI onto existing workflows; it’s about reimagining how work gets done and then rebuilding the people systems to match that reality.

4. Leading hybrid teams now means managing humans and agents. Box is already training managers to think of agents as part of the team, not just background tools. That raises new questions: How do you “give feedback” to an agent? What does performance management look like when part of the work is automated? How do you evaluate which agents are actually helping and which are slowing people down? Some of Box’s best agents are being built by ICs and then scaled to whole teams - and managers have to learn how to lead in that mixed environment.

5. Agent sprawl is the new shadow org chart. As more people spin up custom agents, Box is seeing exactly what you’d expect: duplicated effort, messy handoffs, and tools that nobody is quite sure are still useful. The fix is to treat agent management like team management. Tie agents to team OKRs. Track usage and outcomes. Share what’s working. And be willing to deprecate agents that aren’t pulling their weight. Not every experiment is supposed to survive - the discipline is in knowing when to let go.

Sign up for our newsletter to learn from some of the top people leaders: https://lnkd.in/gQvmd7aY

#hr #podcast

4 tips from two AI-first People leaders we've had on the show…

1️⃣ “The fastest way to learn AI is to start building with it.” Jenny Molyneaux, Vercel's VP of People, spent months in strategy meetings about how AI could reshape the People function - until she realized the real learning happens when you actually build something. So she made a simple tool to solve a personal problem: upload a photo of her apartment, layer in furniture images, and see how everything fits. No OKRs, no roadmap - just hands-on practice. Her takeaway: you don’t need a perfect strategy to get started. You need momentum.

2️⃣ AI can scale coaching in ways HR has never been able to.” Zapier’s L&D team built an AI-powered coaching bot that helps employees practice giving and receiving feedback, trained on their feedback model and filled with examples that deliver personalized guidance instantly without waiting for a manager, a workshop, or a live coaching session. Brandon Sammut’s view: AI won’t replace human coaching, but it finally makes quality coaching accessible at scale.

3️⃣ “Make AI a rhythm, not a one-off initiative.” Vercel's People team holds an internal AI offsite where everyone brings something they’ve built or automated, runs a Show & Tell on how they’re using AI, and then does a hackathon focused on eliminating manual work before turning what worked into a playbook the whole company can use. For Jenny, the offsite isn’t the magic - the cadence of continuous iteration is.

4️⃣ “Automate the questions so people can focus on the work only humans can do.” When Zapier was planning their company retreat, the People Ops team was drowning in repetitive logistical questions, so they built an AI chatbot to handle most inquiries automatically, freeing the team to spend time on the creative work that makes retreats memorable. This grew out of their internal “AI code red,” which pushed the entire company to stop theorizing and start prototyping. Today, over 90% of the org uses AI daily - and the People team helped lead the way.

____

Want to hear more from Brandon and Jenny on what’s possible with AI in HR? 

They’ll be joining our webinar with Valerie Gobeil (Head of Talent Management, Workleap) this Thursday at 1 pm CST.

Register here: https://lnkd.in/gUwXpc3b

For everyone in the middle of planning for 2026, this one hit me in a way I think will land for a lot of people teams.

Velocity without vibrancy doesn’t work. And vibrancy without velocity doesn’t either.

That line from Kit Krugman, SVP People & Culture at Foursquare, has been stuck in my head ever since we recorded.

Most teams pick one. They move fast but feel disconnected. Or they build a great culture but can’t execute. Kit walked us through how Foursquare's people team pushed for both at the same time, and the simplicity of the process is what stood out to me.

Here’s how they made it real:

1. They named the outcome they were trying to fuel: energy, connectedness, momentum, and speed.

2. They wrote a thesis for the year instead of pretending they had a perfect plan.

3. They split every people initiative into big rocks and prototypes. Big rocks were the must-move items. Prototypes were experiments they were willing to test and adjust.

4. They tied metrics to each one to understand what was actually working.

Nothing flashy. No overcomplicated frameworks. Just a clear direction, a willingness to iterate, and the discipline to measure what matters.

That’s the part I keep coming back to. You don’t need certainty to build something meaningful. You need a thesis. You need feedback loops. And you need to make the work legible enough for the team to move in sync.

Listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gsEcbwQt

My biggest takeaways from our episode with DJ Casto (EVP, CHRO, Synchrony):

1. HR should think like a product team. Instead of shipping fully baked programs from a conference room, they've adopted an MVP mindset: build fast, co-design with employees, iterate every quarter. HR started mapping the employee journey, gathering real-time feedback, and treating every program like a living product. 

2. You need multiple listening channels - not one. Synchrony treats listening as an ecosystem. Quarterly surveys sit alongside ERG insights, roundtables, and - my favorite - tapping interns for fresh, unfiltered ideas. One intern even suggested piloting an on-site therapist. They MVP’d it… and the demand was so strong it became permanent. The lesson: surveys show signals, not instructions. The magic is in knowing where to lean in.

3. Feedback only matters if people see it turn into action. Synchrony doesn’t disappear into a black box after collecting feedback. They name the source. “This came from a roundtable in Orlando.” “This idea came from a call center associate.” That transparency builds trust. Not every idea gets approved - and DJ is blunt about that - but people know how decisions were made and why. That’s what scales belief in the system.

4. MVPs require elite communication muscles. Shipping an MVP is the easy part. Getting the org to understand it, adopt it, and evolve with it is the grind. Synchrony uses a 20x communication rule: every message must be delivered 20 different times, in 20 different ways. Manager standups. Town halls. Newsletters. Leader talking points. Stories. “You can’t send an email and call it a day.” In an MVP world, communication is the operating system.

5. Great companies aren’t perfect - they’re transparent.  DJ made this point over and over: being a great place to work doesn’t mean saying yes to everything. It means operating with honesty and iteration. When things don’t work, they own it. When tradeoffs are required, they explain them. That’s what allows them to keep experimenting without losing trust.

This episode is a masterclass in building with your people, not just for them.

Give it a listen: https://lnkd.in/gXwPWs4d

#hr #podcast

Open video: 271 - How 100-Year-Old Company (Synchrony Financial) Runs Like a Startup: DJ Casto (CHRO) on open.spotify.com

271 - How 100-Year-Old Company (Synchrony Financial) Runs Like a Startup: DJ Casto (CHRO)

Why AI agents need their own OKRs ⬇️

Jessica Swank has spent her entire career obsessed with the intersection of people, systems, and business strategy - from her early days studying human and organizational development at Vanderbilt to leading people teams at HP, Blue Bottle Coffee, and now Box.

So when the question came up, “will we eventually have OKRs for AI agents?”  you could hear the excitement in her voice to talk about where things are heading. 

Jessica describes the next evolution like this:
- Today, organizations move from company OKRs → team OKRs → individual OKRs.
- Tomorrow, there will be a new sub-layer beneath the individual: the specific outcomes owned by AI agents.

Not all agents will perform the same.

Some will consistently “get it right.”

Others will underperform and need to be rethought, retired, or realigned.

And all of it will need to ladder back to the business priorities of the team.

But Jessica also warns about the biggest risk ahead: agent sprawl.

As teams spin up dozens of agents across recruiting, marketing, operations, and beyond, the real work becomes:
- Identifying which agents actually move the business forward
- Deciding which belong within specific functions
- Ensuring every agent clearly supports a defined business problem
- Keeping prioritization and alignment front and center

Jessica’s point is simple but powerful:

AI doesn’t eliminate the need for clarity - it raises the bar for it.

This is the new systems thinking leaders will need: not just more agents, but the right ones, tied to the right outcomes, driving the right impact.

Listen to the full episode with Jessica in the comments.

#hr #podcast

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