Title: When One Size Doesn’t Fit All: When to personalise your HR practices

In HR we have always tended to prefer standardisation. The instinct to make everything and to treat everyone in the same way comes from a mixture of practicality, compliance, and tradition. Standardisation makes processes easier to administer at scale, creates the appearance of fairness, and reduces the risks of inconsistency. For HR teams under pressure to manage large workforces efficiently, there is comfort in producing a set of policies or frameworks that apply equally to all. However in recent years there has been an increasing demand for the personalisation of HR, to counteract the limitations of having standard, universally applied processes. In this episode Lucy is joined by her co-founder of Disruptive HR, Karen Moran to consider when HR should be customised or personalised – and when it should be a standard, consistent approach for all.

They look at when it makes sense to have standardisation and the risks are of being too rigid in your uniformity. They give three practical examples of customisation in action, how AI helps to personalise and they also discuss how to personalise without adding complexity, by using “employee personas” to design around real people.

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Chapters

00:03 – Why HR Loves Standardisation
Lucy and Karen reflect on HR’s instinct to make everything consistent – and why “fairness through sameness” has dominated for so long.
03:32 – The Risks of One-Size-Fits-All HR
They unpack how over-standardisation ignores individuality, stifles judgement and turns processes into tick-box exercises.
09:48 – When Standardisation Still Makes Sense
From safety and brand consistency to data accuracy, Lucy and Karen explore where sameness genuinely adds value.
15:06 – How to Personalise Without the Chaos
Real examples from Telstra, Wipro and Adobe show how HR can tailor experiences – with help from AI and employee personas.