Like salmons swimming upstream, flocks of employer brand practitioners and internal communicators descended on the ExCel venue for this year’s Employee Xperience Expo! Employee experience can mean a million different things, sometimes within the same organisation, it was a great opportunity to think strategically about how to improve retention, efficiency, and engagement and learn from thought leaders

Building better bosses – one block at a time

In the first session, we were treated to a talk from Debra  and Ken Corey – co-authors of several HR-focused books – from Step Up HR to talk about how we can work with bosses to make healthier and more transparent workspaces. Their research shows 99.6% of people have had a bad boss and that 57% of people have left a job because of their manager, so they developed a no holds barred framework to engage, train, and develop bosses.

This framework was designed to answer three questions:

• Why is it important to have a good boss?
• What are the tools at our disposal to make good bosses?
• How can we use these tools?

Debra shared how managers can have negative impact in all kinds of different ways, which inspired her to develop ten bad boss personas, varying from Unappreciators (inattentive and often ignorant leaders) to Micromanagers, Hoarders (who keep information from you), and Blamers.

From there, Debra introduced her two pronged system of training bosses. Inspired by the book, Radical Candor by Kim Scott, it established

• What you need to have, i.e. insights, information, data, and
• What you need to do (empower, listen, inspire).

Although concise and easy to understand, it was an effective system for connecting action to result.

Agile HR management: building employee engagement for the future of work

After a quick coffee refuel, it was time for Danielle Stigwood’s talk on creating agile HR management. This took case studies from Humand’s own experience of digitising internal communications for different companies.

• Get creative with employee journeys – there are more routes than directly up.
• Agency in career trajectory can boost engagement. Did you know 70% of disengagement comes from lack of development and flexibility?
• 1:1 meetings are good for more than info transfer. Regular in person meetings reinforce psychological safety and demonstrate investment in the individual.

Danielle shared the example of Humand’s own 3-pillar framework which she uses to guide their employee journey:

• Simplify processes
• Enhance employee experience
• Drive real-time feedback and collaboration

Fireside chat on toxic leadership

As the afternoon started, it was time for a more relaxed fireside chat between Yasar Ahmad, the Global VP of Hello Fresh and Catrin Lewis from Cultures That POP on how to navigate toxic leadership.

Leadership trends in 2025?

Yasar didn’t separate wider global concerns from organisational issues, pointing to:

• Increased polarisation
• Popularism in the workplace.

This tended toward the more political, such as taking a strong stance against DE&I initiatives, as well as established C-suite staff leaning into “big swing decision-making,” potentially to the detriment of colleagues.

What are the early warning signs for toxic leaders?

Yasar knew the difference between leaders who are actually listening and reflecting on their actions and when they’re focussed on simple box ticking exercises. Looking at their ability to reflect was the means of gauging what you’re headed towards.

Sometimes, CEOs need to be shown where they are being influenced as often they don’t believe it could happen from their position of control. From here, it’s about creating a clear sightedness around decision making to find the best solution.

How can we embed accountability into our company culture?

Yasar pointed to how they had launched “accountability partners” in a few organisations they worked with.  These were two people at the same level assigned to each other and once a week would get together to run through the lists of their responsibilities including the likes of:

• Appraisals of cultural commitments
• Personal development opportunities
• Diversity initiatives

By doing so the goal was to

• Remove the dynamic of employee and employers
• Allow for honest conversation
• Work towards an equal approach to leadership.

It was a simple yet effective tool to utilise and give a space to be honest about workflows simultaneously.

The workplace tug of war panel

The final session was a panel discussion on the “workplace tug of war” and finding the balance between CEO needs and employee wants. Andy Macleod chaired proceedings and was joined by Home’s Fiona Caines, Trainline’s Charelle Wigley, Caroline Ward, and Nicholas Wardle from Brand Experiences.

Where does the responsibility for employee experience fall?

Charelle believed it had to be someone with influence and the authority to get the organisation’s ethos of investing in the employee journey across.

Caroline’s approach was more holistic:

• Enhancing customer platforms for greater clarity across departments.
• Focus on engagement scores as your benchmark.

How can communicators protect the employee experience agenda?

For Fiona, it was about measurement above all else; it’s more vital than ever to position yourself strategically and if you don’t have the stats to prove your strategy’s worth, it can’t last.

Nicholas shared this sentiment, pointing to return to office mandates that so many organisations didn’t have strong data points to discuss effectively, even though it has been on people’s mind for years now.

How do you balance CEO expectations with employee needs?

Fiona believed it came down to what she called “good listening” and that she wouldn’t work with a client if they were refusing to listen to their own people.

She stressed the importance of making the data representative. If it’s only 10% of the business, it still needs to capture a spectrum of role type, department, and region.

Alongside this she used:

• Employee resource groups to understand how campaign rollout should begin.
• Shadow boards to nail down employee concerns that are reported quarterly to C-suite stakeholders.

Gen Z impact on the modern workforce

Modern organisations can have a workforce that spans from 16 to 76, meaning comms professionals simply don’t have time to get distracted by stereotypes about any one generational persona.

Overall…

To us, the theme of these sessions was minute focus on the task at hand and your people’s version of working for you. There’s so many opportunities to improve collaboration, reconnect to what drives businesses, and generally understand what it is to work at your organisation without launching a shiny new initiative that your people don’t want. There are big questions for all sectors to reckon with in the coming years and communicators need to sit in the discomfort of their answers to breed effective solutions with their people.