EmployeeExperience

Why the Best Leaders Build Trust Before They Build Growth

July 22, 2026 by Ananth

July 22, 2026

Why the Best Leaders Build Trust Before They Build Growth

Every business wants growth, but the organizations that sustain success over the long term usually have something less visible driving their performance: trust.

Whether it’s between managers and employees, professionals and clients, or business owners and customers, trust creates the conditions for better communication, stronger decision-making, and greater resilience when challenges arise. While every industry approaches leadership differently, one principle remains consistent. People are far more willing to follow leaders who consistently earn their confidence than those who simply demand results.

Four business leaders from very different industries shared their perspectives on why trust has become one of the most valuable assets an organization can build.

For Oliver Downie, Owner of House of Hardwood, trust is built through consistency rather than grand promises.

“People usually assume trust comes from saying the right things, but in business it’s built by doing the small things consistently well. If you tell a customer you’ll call them Tuesday, call them Tuesday. If you promise an employee you’ll address an issue, follow through. Those moments may seem insignificant on their own, but over time they become your reputation. In any business, especially one built around craftsmanship and long-term relationships, people remember reliability far longer than they remember a sales pitch. Leaders sometimes focus heavily on vision, but trust is earned through execution. When people know they can depend on you, they’re much more willing to invest their confidence in your business.”

Downie believes dependable leadership creates stronger teams because employees feel confident that expectations apply equally across the organization.

Brian Marks, President of Knopman Marks, says trust inside an organization begins with honest communication, particularly during periods of uncertainty.

“Many leaders feel pressure to always have the answers, but employees are remarkably good at recognizing authenticity. Being transparent about challenges, while also sharing a thoughtful plan for addressing them, builds more credibility than pretending everything is under control, in my opinion. People don’t expect perfection from leadership, but tend to expect honesty, consistency, and a willingness to communicate. When employees understand why decisions are being made, they become partners in solving problems instead of simply reacting to change. That creates a culture where people feel respected, and respected employees are much more likely to contribute their best work.”

According to Marks, organizations that communicate openly tend to develop stronger engagement because employees understand both the direction of the company and their role in achieving it.

Sam Rockwood, CEO of Woods, believes businesses sometimes underestimate how much trust influences customer loyalty.

“Clients rarely judge you on a single interaction. They’re evaluating whether every experience reinforces the confidence they placed in you from the beginning. That means trust has to exist before a transaction takes place and continue even after it’s finished. Businesses that focus only on acquiring new customers overlook the enormous value of consistently serving the people they already have. When customers believe you’re genuinely invested in helping them succeed, they’re more forgiving when problems occur because you’ve already established credibility. Trust becomes something you’ve accumulated over time rather than something you need to rebuild after every challenge.”

Rockwood says organizations that consistently prioritize long-term relationships often find that referrals and repeat business become natural outcomes rather than marketing objectives.

Paul Mauro, Founder of Smart Financial Lifestyle, understands that trust grows when leaders consistently demonstrate that they’re thinking beyond immediate results. With more than five decades of financial planning experience, Mauro has long emphasized building lasting relationships over chasing short-term gains.

“The strongest business relationships I’ve seen were never built around quick wins, but were built because people believed the advice they received today would still make sense years later. That’s true whether you’re managing investments, leading a company, or serving clients in any profession. Short-term thinking produces short-term trust because people recognize when decisions are made for immediate benefit instead of lasting value. Leaders who consistently make decisions with tomorrow in mind create confidence that extends well beyond individual transactions. Over time, that becomes one of the most valuable competitive advantages any business can have.”

His perspective highlights an important lesson for organizations of every size: trust compounds much like any other valuable investment. It grows gradually, strengthens through consistency, and delivers its greatest returns over the long run.

Technology, automation, and changing workplace expectations continue to reshape business, but trust remains one factor that cannot be outsourced or accelerated.

The companies that build lasting cultures and loyal customers are often those whose leaders consistently demonstrate reliability, transparency, and integrity through everyday actions. While products, services, and strategies evolve, the human need to trust the people behind them remains remarkably constant.

For businesses looking to strengthen performance, investing in trust may prove to be one of the highest-return decisions they can make.

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Why the Future of Workforce Training Is Not More Courses

July 9, 2026 by HRSAdmin

July 9, 2026

Why the Future of Workforce Training Is Not More Courses

For years, corporate learning has often been treated as a content problem.

When employees needed to learn a new system, complete compliance training, prepare for certification, or build technical skills, the answer was usually more courses. More modules. More videos. More PDFs. More learning portals.

But many HR and L&D teams are now realizing that more content does not automatically create a better-trained workforce.

In fact, for many organizations, the problem is no longer access to learning materials. The problem is fragmentation.

Employees are expected to learn across disconnected systems. One platform hosts onboarding materials. Another handles compliance training. A separate tool manages assessments. Technical practice happens somewhere else. Live workshops are run through another application. Completion tracking still relies on spreadsheets. Certifications are stored manually or scattered across departments.

The result is a corporate learning environment that is busy, but not always effective.

The next phase of workforce training will not be defined by how many courses a company can offer. It will be defined by how well companies can connect learning, practice, assessment, certification, and performance into one cohesive ecosystem.

Workplace learning used to be viewed as a support function. New employees were onboarded, compliance boxes were checked, and occasional professional development courses were offered when budget allowed.

That is no longer enough.

Today, corporate learning sits at the center of some of the biggest challenges facing HR leaders. Companies need to onboard employees faster, reskill workers for new technologies, prepare teams for AI adoption, retain top talent, maintain compliance, and build internal mobility pathways.

At the same time, employees increasingly expect learning to be relevant, flexible, and directly connected to their role. They do not want generic training that feels disconnected from their day-to-day work. They want to understand how new knowledge applies to their responsibilities, career growth, and performance.

This makes corporate learning much more than a training function. It is now tied to productivity, employee experience, retention, compliance, and long-term workforce planning.

But to deliver on that promise, companies need to rethink the systems behind learning.

Most organizations already have more training content than they realize.

They have onboarding documents, product guides, recorded webinars, internal SOPs, compliance manuals, sales enablement materials, customer support scripts, leadership training decks, technical documentation, and policy updates.

The issue is that this information often sits in too many places and is rarely structured as a complete learning experience.

An employee may read a document, watch a video, attend a workshop, and take a quiz, but those steps are not always connected. Managers may not have real-time visibility into progress. HR teams may struggle to prove whether training is actually improving skills. Employees may complete required courses without developing confidence in applying the material.

This is where many corporate learning programs fall short.

They measure participation, but not always capability. They track course completion, but not always skill development. They provide information, but not always practice.

For HR leaders, that distinction matters. A workforce that has completed training is not the same as a workforce that is prepared to perform.

The most effective corporate learning programs are moving beyond passive content consumption.

Reading a policy or watching a training video may be useful, but it is rarely enough on its own. Employees need opportunities to apply knowledge, test understanding, receive feedback, and practice in realistic scenarios.

This is especially important for technical roles, compliance-heavy industries, customer-facing teams, and organizations undergoing rapid change.

A software engineer learning a new framework benefits from hands-on coding practice. A support team learning a new product needs realistic troubleshooting scenarios. A compliance team needs secure assessments and clear documentation of completion. A new manager needs interactive training that helps them make decisions, not just memorize leadership concepts.

Applied learning turns training from a one-time event into a process of continuous improvement.

It also gives HR and L&D teams better insight into where employees are confident, where they need support, and where skill gaps may create business risk.

Artificial intelligence is already changing corporate learning, but not simply by generating more content.

Used well, AI can help HR and L&D teams turn existing materials into structured courses, quizzes, study guides, and personalized learning paths. It can help identify knowledge gaps, recommend next steps, automate repetitive administrative tasks, and support employees with real-time guidance.

That can be extremely valuable, especially for lean HR teams that are expected to support training across departments, regions, and employee groups.

However, AI alone does not solve the problem of disconnected learning.

If AI-generated content lives in one system, assessments happen in another, progress tracking sits in a spreadsheet, and certifications are managed manually, the organization still has a fragmented learning environment.

The real value of AI emerges when it is built into a broader learning ecosystem. That means training content, learner progress, assessments, practice environments, scheduling, collaboration, and reporting are connected.

For HR leaders, this matters because workforce development depends on visibility. You cannot effectively manage skills across an organization if learning data is scattered across disconnected tools.

Many companies have gradually built their learning technology stack one problem at a time.

They added an LMS for course delivery. Then a webinar tool for live sessions. Then a testing platform. Then a certification tool. Then a content creation tool. Then a scheduling system. Then a reporting dashboard.

Each tool may have made sense when it was introduced. But over time, the total system becomes difficult to manage.

Employees have to move between too many platforms. Managers struggle to understand who has completed what. HR teams spend too much time coordinating systems instead of improving learning strategy. IT teams have to manage integrations, permissions, data security, and vendor complexity.

This is the same issue many HR departments have faced across the broader HR tech stack. More tools can create more capability, but only if those tools work together.

In corporate learning, tool sprawl can quietly weaken the impact of training. The more friction employees experience, the less likely they are to engage deeply. The more manual work L&D teams have to do, the less time they have for meaningful program design.

A learning ecosystem takes a more connected approach.

Instead of treating training as a collection of separate activities, it brings the core pieces of workforce development into one environment: learning management, content creation, assessment, hands-on practice, live collaboration, scheduling, certification, and analytics.

This matters because modern workforce learning is not linear.

An employee may need to complete onboarding, join a live workshop, practice a task, take an assessment, receive AI-guided feedback, earn a certification, and continue developing skills over time. If those steps are connected, HR gains a clearer picture of employee growth. If they are fragmented, the organization loses visibility.

A connected ecosystem also makes learning more scalable.

For example, a company can build structured onboarding paths for new hires, automate compliance training across locations, deliver secure certification exams, provide hands-on technical practice, run interactive workshops, and track progress from a shared data layer.

That helps HR and L&D teams move faster without sacrificing quality or oversight.

Constructor Tech is one example of this ecosystem approach applied to corporate learning.

Rather than focusing only on course delivery, Constructor Tech provides an integrated learning ecosystem that combines learning management (Learn), assessment (Assess), secure proctoring (Proctor), virtual labs (Practice), live training (Groups), scheduling (Schedule), and AI-assisted content creation (Prism) on a single shared-data layer, so information moves across teaching, assessment, and administration without custom integrations.

For corporate learning teams, that means onboarding, compliance training, employee development, partner training, technical skill practice, and certification can be managed in a more connected way.

This type of model is especially relevant for organizations that need to train distributed teams, validate skills, and keep learning tied to measurable outcomes.

For example, new employees can follow structured learning paths and have their progress tracked from one dashboard. Technical employees can practice coding or IT skills in realistic environments. Employees preparing for certification can complete assessments with secure proctoring and automated grading. L&D teams can use AI to turn existing company materials into interactive training content instead of building everything manually from scratch.

The value is not just convenience. It is operational clarity.

When learning systems are connected, HR teams can better understand who is trained, who is certified, where skill gaps exist, and where additional support is needed.

Corporate learning is often discussed in terms of employee development, but the business case is broader.

Better learning systems can reduce onboarding time, improve compliance readiness, support internal mobility, increase employee confidence, and help organizations adapt faster when job requirements change.

They can also help companies protect institutional knowledge. As experienced employees leave or move into new roles, organizations need better ways to capture and transfer what they know. AI-assisted content creation and structured learning pathways can help turn internal expertise into repeatable training programs.

This is particularly important as organizations adopt new technologies.

AI readiness, for example, cannot be solved with one company-wide webinar. Employees need role-specific training, practical workflows, clear guidance, and ongoing reinforcement. A marketing team, finance team, customer support team, and IT team will all use AI differently. Corporate learning systems need to reflect that reality.

The companies that succeed will be the ones that treat workforce training as an ongoing capability-building system, not a one-time content library.

As learning becomes more strategic, HR’s role is also evolving.

HR leaders are no longer just administrators of training programs. They are increasingly responsible for helping the business understand what skills it has, what skills it needs, and how quickly the workforce can adapt.

That requires better data, better systems, and better learning design.

A modern corporate learning strategy should help answer practical questions:

Which employees are ready for new responsibilities?

Where are the biggest skill gaps?

Which teams need additional training?

Are employees actually applying what they learn?

Can the organization prove compliance and certification readiness?

How quickly can new training be created when business needs change?

These questions are difficult to answer when learning is scattered across disconnected tools. They become much easier when learning, assessment, practice, and reporting are part of the same ecosystem.

The future of workforce training is not about offering employees an endless library of courses.

It is about creating learning environments that are relevant, measurable, and connected to real work.

Employees need training that helps them build practical skills. Managers need visibility into development. HR teams need systems that reduce administrative work instead of adding to it. Organizations need learning infrastructure that can keep up with constant change.

AI will play a major role in that future, but AI is not the whole answer. The bigger shift is toward integrated learning ecosystems that make corporate training easier to build, easier to deliver, and easier to measure.

For HR and L&D leaders, the message is clear: more courses are not enough.

The companies that build smarter learning ecosystems will be better positioned to onboard faster, upskill continuously, validate employee capabilities, and adapt as workforce needs evolve.

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In Conversation with Dr Kathryn Page

June 24, 2026 by HRSpotlightTeam

In Conversation with Dr Kathryn Page, Leadership Partner at ByMany

HR has been through the wringer lately. From being the ‘bad guys’ during layoffs to the ‘fun police’ during RTO, a lot’s been happening. If you could clear the air right now, what is the one thing you wish every employee understood about HR?

Dr Kathryn Page:

HR professionals often get a bad rap – and often unfairly in my experience. Most HR professionals (and I put myself as an organisational psychologist in this bucket) care deeply about people. It is often why we were drawn to the profession. What is difficult however is that we often sit in the middle of tensions that don’t have easy answers. We are navigating the needs of employees, leaders, customers, regulators and the business all at once. Many days it feels like trying to solve a rubiks cube (minus the YouTube videos that explain exactly how to solve them!)

HR requires a weird mix of skills. You have to be part lawyer, part therapist, and part data analyst. If we stripped away the job title, what is the one ‘superpower’ you rely on most when the office is on fire?

Dr Kathryn Page:

Sensemaking.
In my work, I spend a lot of time helping leaders navigate complexity, uncertainty and change. The temptation in those moments is to rush to solutions. I’ve learned that the most valuable thing you can do is slow down long enough to understand what’s really happening. Often the issue presenting itself (or that others are adamant you need to solve) isn’t the issue that needs solving. The ability to listen deeply, spot patterns, challenge assumptions and help people make meaning together is invaluable when organisations are under pressure.

If you could describe the current ‘mood’ of the workforce in 2026 using just one word, what would it be? Why?

Dr Kathryn Page:

I’d say ‘Stretched’.
People are being asked to deliver more, adapt faster and absorb constant change, often without removing anything from their plate. AI, transformation programs and economic pressures have increased expectations, but many organisations are still operating with assumptions about capacity that no longer hold true. The challenge for leaders isn’t helping people squeeze more into the day. It’s designing work that is sustainable in a world that never stops accelerating.

It is a common notion that an HR team is called upon by leadership only during times of crisis. Have you ever felt that pressure to be the ‘fixer’ in a broken system?

Dr Kathryn Page:

As an advisor to HR leaders, one pattern I see repeatedly is the expectation that HR will solve problems that were never created by HR in the first place. A great example of that is burnout or engagement issues – two issues that leaders often expect HR to deal with. But both of these issues originate in the way work is designed and led at the business or work group level.
One of the most powerful shifts I see in leading organisations is moving from asking, “How do we help people cope?” to asking, “What are we asking people to cope with?”

What is the biggest myth about working in HR that you wish would die?

Dr Kathryn Page:

That HR are responsible for employee wellbeing. Yes, we can influence this and maybe run more programmatic responses. But programs alone (and therefore HR people) can’t make people more resilient, productive or adaptable. I would 100% agree that those skills matter – in fact, I would say they are absolutely vital for work today. However, I also know from my two decades of research in organisational psychology and public health that work itself is one of the strongest drivers of mental health, engagement and performance.
In my view, the future of HR isn’t helping people survive work. It’s helping organisations design work that is good for people in the first place.

HR is often described as a thankless job—you’re the villain when things go wrong and invisible when things go right. Why do you stay? What is the specific feeling that reminds you, ‘This is why I do this’?

Dr Kathryn Page:

Because work matters. We spend more of our waking lives working than doing almost anything else. Work shapes our health, confidence, relationships, identity and sense of contribution. It is, as I alluded to in my response to the previous questions, a social determinant of health
What keeps me passionate about this work is seeing the ripple effect. When a leader changes how he or she leads, a team might start having better conversations. When conversations improve, someone might feel safe enough to speak up. When people speak up, a source of frustration that’s existed for years might get redesigned and removed.
Those moments may seem small, but these small moments compound. And when we improve work, even in small ways, we improve lives.

What is one task AI will never be able to replace in your people strategy?

Dr Kathryn Page:

AI will help us analyse work. It won’t replace our responsibility to decide what good work looks like. The most important questions organisations face are fundamentally human ones: What kind of culture are we creating? What trade-offs are we willing to make? How much is enough? What does success look like?
Technology can help answer operational questions. Humans still need to answer moral ones.

What is one book every leader in HR should read?

Dr Kathryn Page:

I’m biased, but I would love leaders to read my book, Good Work: Transform your work from the inside out. I have written this book partly for HR Leasers as a bit of a distillation of two decades of knowledge into a blue print of sorts. Outside of this, I’d encourage leaders to read broadly beyond traditional HR texts.
One book I’d recommend is The Good Jobs Strategy by Zeynep Ton. Its central argument is that investing in better jobs isn’t at odds with performance and can be a driver of performance. At a time when many organisations are trying to balance productivity, wellbeing and adaptability, that’s an important idea for leaders to wrestle with.

If you had an unlimited budget for one year but could only spend it on one area of the employee experience (e.g., wellness, learning, compensation, physical space), where would it go and why?

Dr Kathryn Page:

Work design. Without hesitation. In fact, I wouldn’t spend it on wellbeing programs. I’d spend it on improving the quality of work itself. The way work is designed (i.e. things like workload, autonomy, role clarity, connection, learning opportunities and recovery) shapes almost everything else. It influences performance, engagement, wellbeing, retention and innovation.
I’d invest in helping leaders redesign jobs, teams and systems so that good work becomes the default, not something employees have to fight for. In my experience, the highest-return wellbeing strategy isn’t a wellbeing program. It’s better work. It is not as easy to do as implementing a program but over time, I genuinely believe creating better work will help to create a better world.

Dr. Kathryn Page is an organizational psychologist, author, and leadership partner at ByMany, who has spent her career asking one big question: What makes work good for us? Based in Melbourne, she has worked with leaders across industries to design work that protects people, fuels wellbeing, and unlocks performance. Her clients include some of the world’s largest companies and health systems, and her research is cited broadly. Her new book, Good Work:Transform Your Work from the Inside Out (Wiley, May 11, 2026), shows how leaders and teams can design work that’s both human and high performing. Learn more at bymany.com.au

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In Conversation with Matt Poladian

June 23, 2026 by HRSpotlightTeam

In Conversation with Matt Poladian, Chief People Officer, Liferay

Thank you for joining us, Matt! Let’s begin with the current ‘mood’ of the workforce in 2026! Using just one word, how would you describe it? Why?

Matt Poladian:

“Fearful. And I don’t say that to be dramatic. I say it because I think it’s honest.
There’s real anxiety in the workforce right now, in tech and outside of tech, and a lot of it is being driven by what people are saying about AI. Some CEOs have said publicly that people should watch out because AI is going to take their jobs. Other leaders have talked about how people can be quickly left behind if they don’t get “on board.” I don’t think this is particularly helpful. When you tell people to fear something, their imaginations take over and they start filling in the blanks themselves. Mercer reported that 40% of workers now fear losing their job to AI, up from 28% two years ago, so the impact of these narratives is measurable and consequential.
What I keep coming back to is that the antidote to fear is knowledge. I recently read an excerpt from a letter written by a farmer in the 1800s who was afraid the industrial revolution would take away his livelihood. Of course, with hindsight, we know that the industrial revolution also expanded economies and helped create new kinds of opportunity. I’m not saying I have a crystal ball. I’m just saying leaders have a responsibility to help people be a little more measured in how they think about change.”

Have you ever felt that pressure to be the ‘fixer’ in a broken system?

Matt Poladian:

Absolutely. A lot of the pressure on HR leaders today comes from managing digital transformation.
HR leaders used to spend most of their time on culture and the employee lifecycle. Now, the head of HR is often one of the biggest owners of an organization’s internal tech stack. I am the executive sponsor of a dozen or so SaaS tools, and IT-related decisions now take up close to 20% to 25% of my decision-making space. That shift happened quickly, and a lot of people in HR were never really trained for it.
So you end up being called in to help solve problems HR didn’t necessarily create: systems that don’t talk to each other, tools employees aren’t adopting, or frustration from people who feel like technology is being done to them instead of for them. None of that starts as an HR problem, but HR often feels the impact when the people side breaks down.
HR leaders don’t need to become technologists overnight, but we do need the right relationships early with IT, legal, procurement and project managers, so that when we’re brought in to solve something, we’re not doing it alone.

What is the biggest myth about working in HR that you wish would die?

Matt Poladian:

That being a “people person” and being tech-savvy are somehow opposites.
I still hear HR professionals say, “I don’t deal with tech, I’m a people person,” and I don’t think that holds up anymore. Technology is part of the employee experience now. The tools people use to collaborate, manage performance, find information, get support and communicate with each other all shape how work feels. And AI magnifies all of that.
That doesn’t mean HR leaders need to become engineers. But we do need to understand enough about technology to ask the right questions, choose the right partners, and make sure tools are actually helping people. Because when technology is implemented well, it can create more human connection, not less. We saw that clearly in 2020, when platforms like Zoom and Teams helped people see each other’s faces at a time when many felt isolated. Technology can deliver real human warmth when it’s used thoughtfully.

If you could ban one corporate buzzword forever, what would it be?

Matt Poladian:

“AI will take your job.”
I know that’s more of a phrase than a buzzword, but it has become its own kind of corporate currency, and I’d love to retire it as quickly as it emerged. The language we use around AI is doing real damage to how employees relate to it. When people hear that framing, they start “protecting” themselves from AI instead of learning how to leverage it in their careers.
What I try to do instead is show people the tangible upside. We’ve built AI into parts of our product, and it’s helping us open new conversations with customers. That’s something to celebrate, as long as we’re using it responsibly. The conversation needs to shift from “watch out” to “here’s what’s possible.”

What is one task AI will never be able to replace in your people strategy?

Matt Poladian:

The personal relationship required to reach someone who has completely shut down.
We’ve been looking at a five-stage AI adoption model, and we actually added a “stage zero” because there’s a category of employees who aren’t just slow to adopt, but have folded their arms and decided, “this isn’t for me.” No policy, webinar, or AI-generated communication is going to reach that person on its own.
What reaches them is their colleagues and their manager. Someone who knows them, has built trust with them and can understand what’s underneath the resistance. That kind of human relationship is what helps people move from fear or avoidance to curiosity.

What is one book every leader in HR should read?

Matt Poladian:

Quiet by Susan Cain.
It’s a book about introversion and extroversion, and how people show up differently in group settings. But when I read it, I kept thinking about something beyond what the author originally intended: virtual and in-person participation has become its own version of that dynamic.
In a hybrid meeting, the virtual participant can sometimes show up like the introvert in the room: present and engaged, but structurally disadvantaged by the environment. That insight shaped how I think about hybrid work. At Liferay, I’ve recommended that virtual meetings happen on the days when everyone is remote, so no one is the person on a screen looking into a room.
To me, that’s the mark of a great book. It gives you a framework you can apply beyond the exact situation it was written for.

If you had an unlimited budget for one year but could only spend it on one area of the employee experience (e.g., wellness, learning, compensation, physical space), where would it go and why?

Matt Poladian:

Learning. Specifically around helping people understand and adopt the technology that’s already available to them. A McKinsey study found that 80%+ of organizations using AI haven’t seen enterprise-level impact yet, so there is clearly a deployment-vs-adoption gap.
I look at what companies are spending on AI tools and then I look at how people are actually using them. Right now, a lot of usage is still glorified Google searches, or expensive “rabbit trails” that drain token usage. We’re not getting close to the full value these tools can deliver.
If I had an unlimited budget for a year, I’d pour it into closing that gap. Not just webinars, but hands-on, gamified, practical learning experiences. McKinsey finds that organizations using gamified training see up to a 50% improvement in engagement and retention rates. We ran a competition on my team where people had to find a real AI use case that solved a problem they were facing at work. We got 18 ideas back. People built things, recorded presentations, and competed for a chance to attend a conference together. That kind of learning sticks. It improves productivity, but more importantly, it changes how people relate to the technology. They stop seeing AI as something to fear and start seeing it as something they can use. You can’t put a number on what it’s worth to have a workforce that is curious instead of fearful.

Matt Poladian is the Chief People Officer at Liferay, a global technology company. In that capacity, he is responsible for all areas of HR across the company's worldwide offices and several hundred remote employees. Before joining Liferay, Matt held various HR business partner and HR manager roles at large companies, most recently within Disney's Animation studios. He has degrees from UC Irvine (MBA) and Claremont McKenna College (BA). Matt keeps busy outside of work holding several non-profit leadership positions. His most important role is as husband to Jenny and dad to their three young kids.

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Quitting An Internship: Warning Signs That Tell You to Bail

February 18, 2026 by HRSpotlightTeam

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Quitting An Internship: Warning Signs That Tell You to Bail

February 18, 2026

What if that “dream” internship is quietly derailing your career before it even starts?
In a market flooded with opportunities promising growth, many hide toxic traps like endless busywork or ghosting mentors that leave interns questioning their worth.
How do you spot the moment to cut losses and run, preserving your confidence and time for real development?
HR Spotlight turned to CEOs, founders, and strategists who’ve seen it all: from vague roles breeding cynicism to ignored ideas eroding potential.
Their unfiltered warnings?
When feedback vanishes, hours explode without purpose, or your voice echoes in silence—bail fast.
These aren’t minor hiccups; they’re signals of environments that exploit rather than empower.
Discover how reframing “stuck” as a cue to exit can transform a bad gig into a stepping stone.
Ready to decode the signs and safeguard your future?
These eye-opening insights await on HR Spotlight.
Read on!

Aditya Nagpal
Founder & CEO, Wisemonk

A clear red flag that signals to an intern it’s time to walk away is when the company treats them like free labor instead of as a budding professional deserving of guidance.
An internship should provide structure, feedback, and opportunities for learning.
If weeks pass and the intern is stuck doing repetitive tasks without understanding how their work fits into the overall goals, that indicates the environment is not focused on their growth.
At Wisemonk, we collaborate with global teams and young talent across India, and we notice a consistent pattern.
Interns do well when they have a manager who takes a few minutes to coach them and show real interest in their development.
When that support is lacking and the culture ignores questions or makes interns feel replaceable, the intern should consider stepping away.
The early stages of a career should build confidence, not take it away.

Walk When They Treat You Like Free Labor

Cyrus Partow
CEO, ShipTheDeal

When your interns are constantly exhausted and making cynical jokes, but management doesn’t seem to notice, that’s a bad sign.
Good teams talk about this stuff.
They actually ask if you’re drowning in work.
But when your concerns get brushed off and nothing changes, the work gets sloppy and people just stop caring. If they’re not interested in fixing things, it’s time to go.

Burnout and Cynicism Signal a Toxic Team

Justin Carpenter
Founder, Jacksonville Maids

Here’s a red flag: a company that wants you to work insane hours but can’t tell you what you’ll actually learn.
I’ve seen interns get treated like extra bodies, not future talent, and they just quit caring.
It’s not the only reason to leave, but every time I’ve managed interns, the ones with predictable schedules did the best work and learned the most.

Quit When Hours Spike and Growth Stays Vague

Aja Chavez
Executive Director, Mission Prep Healthcare

Look, if you keep getting work that has nothing to do with the company’s big picture, it’s time to go.
I’ve seen so many interns get stuck in that rut.
One kid told me he spent weeks just copy-pasting data and felt totally useless.
If you ask for different work and nothing changes, you should probably leave.

Busywork That Ignores Strategy Means Go

Justin Herring
Founder & CEO, YEAH! Local

If your supervisor never replies, meetings keep getting cancelled, and you’re left guessing what’s next, that’s a real problem.
I’ve watched interns just freeze in situations like that.
Their learning stops dead without any feedback or direction.
If you’re not getting actual guidance after giving it some time, you should find an internship where they’ll actually show you how to do the work.

Walk When Guidance Vanishes and Feedback Never Comes

Rakesh Kalra
Founder & CEO, UrbanPro Tutor Jobs

If the intern list turns over every few months, or you can’t figure out what you’d actually be doing, that’s a bad sign.
I’ve worked in education and I’ve found that good companies give interns clear direction and real feedback.
If you’re just making coffee runs, find another place.
You deserve a spot where you’ll actually learn something and where people take you seriously.

High Turnover and Vague Roles Signal Exit

Debbie Naren
Founder, Design Director, Limeapple

When an intern finds their ideas are routinely brushed aside or go unheard, that’s a glaring signal that it’s time to consider other opportunities.
An internship should be a launchpad for growth and mutual respect—not a place where one’s potential is stifled or self-worth chipped away.
If your voice is consistently silenced, it’s not just a setback for your learning, but a cue to seek an environment that welcomes your contributions and values your development.

Leave When Your Voice Is Consistently Silenced

Bennett Maxwell
CEO, Franchise KI

After starting a few companies, I noticed a pattern.
High intern turnover or a manager who can’t explain your job clearly usually means the company itself is lost.
We always did better when we gave interns an actual plan and clear work.
If you’re stuck with vague tasks and no real support, just leave.
It probably won’t get better.

Exit When Leadership Can’t Clarify Your Role

Carissa Kruse
Business & Marketing Strategist, Carissa Kruse Weddings

A definite warning sign is when you feel like the internship dismisses your time, growth, or contributions, and this demonstrates a consistent pattern even after bringing up the issues, or seeking clarification.
For example, if you are repeatedly just assigned low level tasks with little learning value, your questions continue to go unanswered, and if deadlines or expectations are ambiguous enough that they create excess stress, this is a clear indicator that this experience is not being intentionally created to support your growth.
Another powerful warning sign is the absence of mentorship or constructive feedback.
Internships are meant to be places to learn, not just be a working environment.
If your supervisor or manager is unable to even find time to mentor you, review your work, have you understand the “why” behind each project, you are no longer learning a skill, you are just providing free labor.
Once either of these patterns becomes the norm or the expectation, you can feel certain it’s time to reconsider and find a placement that values your potential, growth and time in a fair way.

Leave When Mentorship and Purpose Are Absent

The HR Spotlight team thanks these industry leaders for offering their expertise and experience and sharing these insights.

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Triumphs in Talent: Executives Reveal Their Proudest 2025 Milestones

February 11, 2026 by HRSpotlightTeam

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Triumphs in Talent: Executives Reveal Their Proudest 2025 Milestones

February 11, 2026

What if the HR triumph that elevated your year wasn’t a viral perk, but a subtle pivot fostering deeper trust, sharper skills, and unbreakable bonds?
In 2025’s demanding talent landscape, leaders discovered that blending empathy with innovation—through AI-assisted hiring, personalized growth paths, and authentic recognition—didn’t merely retain staff; it ignited performance in ways that reshaped entire cultures.
These victories stemmed from attuned choices, proving that investing in human potential yields exponential returns beyond metrics.
HR Spotlight convened CEOs, directors, and officers to recount their pinnacle moments: from zero-turnover feats via flexible scheduling to morale surges through real-time coaching, and global engines hiring 100 stars.
Their insights spotlight efforts like competency frameworks, quarterly one-on-ones, and community-driven mentoring that turned fragmented teams into unified forces.
Intrigued by how promoting internal pathways or embracing data-driven resets could redefine your dynamics?
These compelling narratives demonstrate that the strongest wins prioritize clarity and connection.
Discover the strategies fueling thriving workplaces on HR Spotlight.
Read on!

JZ Tay
Founder, WFH Alert

The HR Win That Transformed My 2025
I believed my biggest HR win for 2025 was when I consolidated feedback from the online community into a well-honed quality system for evaluating work-from-home jobs.
I had to dismantle my vetting process entirely because everything suddenly became too much for the job hunters to process.
This transition alleviated some burnout among applicants, replacing it with clarity so they no longer wasted snows of time on roles with sheepish communication or shady expectations.
Initially, there were a lot of positives from these job ads: they were attracting more appropriate applicants who were more motivated in respect to the job.
This win, due to my focus on identifying recurring patterns, made me rethink and strategize deeply.
Reports from a lightweight feedback loop were also introduced to aid candidates in pointing out compliance and responsibility in the hiring execution.
So with the year 2026, my eyes are set on scaling the system to help job seekers feel more supported and more confident while applying for any job.

Community Feedback Builds Quality Job Pipeline

Stefan Stojanovic
Director of Recruitment, Digital Silk

I believe that the best thing we did this year was to make our hiring process a truly strategic, data-driven talent engine that will help Digital Silk grow better over time.
By unifying competency frameworks and implementing formal evaluations, we made hiring faster and better.
We also invested in improving the applicant experience and internal mobility to strengthen our brand and cut down on attrition.
The most important thing was leading by example; we wanted to empower departments to make fact-based recruiting decisions by communicating their needs openly and adopting consistent hiring practices.
This shift produced our most efficient and high-performing hiring year to date.

Data-Driven Hiring Fuels Scalable Growth

Michael Goble
HR Consultant, Thehrconsultant

Starting my own firm wasn’t a leap away from corporate life—it was a step toward purpose.
I wanted to bring big-company experience to small and mid-sized organizations that often need it the most but couldn’t afford a full time HR professional.
I have connected with community and business leaders and the one thing we all have in common is that we need people to accomplish our goals.

Purpose-Driven Consulting Empowers Small Businesses

Chris M. Walker
CEO, Legiit

In 2025 my biggest HR win was integrating AI into recruitment and employee support while keeping empathy at the center.
We deployed AI screening to manage thousands of applications, cutting time to hire by 40 percent.
The key decision was ensuring human oversight remained part of the process.
Recruiters reviewed AI flagged candidates to confirm cultural fit and long term potential.
At the same time we introduced AI assistants to handle routine HR queries, which freed managers to focus on mentorship and career development.
The result was higher employee satisfaction scores and a stronger pipeline of talent.
This effort showed that technology can enhance HR when balanced with judgment and compassion.
For 2026 we are expanding into predictive analytics to anticipate retention risks and growth opportunities.

AI Screening Cuts Hire Time 40%

Paulina Roszczak-Sliwa
People & Culture Director, eSky Group

In 2024, eSky Group began a post-merger integration with Thomas Cook, bringing together two companies with long histories, distinct cultures, and different age structures.
In 2025 our biggest HR win was successfully navigating this integration while transitioning technology to our platform.
Aware of our differences, we focused on what unites our people. In traveltech, meritocracy is our anchor – talent, skills, and real impact matter most.
Multigenerational teams allow us to blend deep travel expertise with a tech-savvy mindset, strengthening our competitive edge.
When designing development programs, we combine short online formats with classic in-class training to meet the needs of all generations.
Flexibility is equally important: our remote-first model empowers teams to choose when online or in-person collaboration works best.
Finally, we ensure technology supports everyone by choosing intuitive tools and offering broad learning resources, from basic digital skills to advanced topics like AI, now central to our business.

Meritocracy Unites Multigenerational Teams

Christopher Pappas
Founder, eLearningIndustry

We recorded our biggest HR win in 2025 by promoting inclusive decision-making.
We invited more team members to join early discussions and this created a deeper sense of ownership.
We saw this in action when a strategist helped shape a major project after sharing ideas during an early planning session.
We learned that widening the room early gives people the freedom to contribute with confidence.
We supported this shift by sharing transparent meeting notes for every project.
We kept everyone informed and this helped teams stay aligned without confusion.
We noticed a clear rise in proactive leadership behaviors among employees.
We believe this happened because employees felt seen and trusted which strengthened their commitment to shared goals across the organization.

Inclusive Decisions Spark Proactive Leadership

Erwin Gutenkust
CEO, Neolithic Materials

The most meaningful HR win this year came from restructuring teams so every craftsperson operated strictly within their highest-value skill set, a move that defied the popular push toward extreme cross-functional blending.
In our world as a Natural Stone Supplier, precision matters more than multitasking.
When we reassigned a senior mason back to heritage-stone restoration instead of general installation, project efficiency jumped by 30% and rework dropped to nearly zero.
That single adjustment accelerated timelines on multiple custom builds and elevated morale across the shop.
The lesson: specialization isn’t old-fashioned; it’s the most reliable way to create mastery, accountability, and meaningful craftsmanship.

Specialization Sparks Mastery and Morale

Gregory Shein
CEO, Nomadic Soft

Our biggest HR win in 2025 at Nomadic Soft came from giving developers true autonomy and flexibility.
We realized that rigid workflows were stifling innovation and hurting retention, so we implemented a system where teams could choose their own sprints and tools within a clear strategic framework.
This approach was inspired by insights from our blog, highlighting that autonomy is now one of the top drivers of job satisfaction in tech.
The result? Employee engagement surged 35% in six months, and product delivery timelines improved while burnout rates dropped.
Looking ahead to 2026, we are doubling down on flexible work design and personalized growth paths, ensuring our SaaS teams feel trusted and empowered.
This isn’t just a perk; it’s a strategic lever that drives both culture and business outcomes.

Autonomy Boosts Engagement 35%

Pankaj Kumar
Founder, Naxisweb

The biggest HR win I registered in 2025 was the formation of a high-performing, retention-centric workforce as a result of the implementation of a structured Growth & Ownership Framework at Naxisweb.
With our clientele multiplying, the focus was on strengthening our core values of accountability and innovative thinking.
I was tasked with redefining job descriptions, instituting an element of transparency with the introduction of the OKR system for performance metrics, and forming custom paving for each team member.
This not only instilled a sense of productivity but also a sense of reduction in attrition levels by empowering employees to take the lead on their work and their destinies.
Furthermore, our flexible work arrangement, which married remote work autonomy with pre-scheduled collaboration days, enhanced morale considerably.
This, on the whole, transformed our HR and entrepreneurial ecosystem and a positive impact was felt as the construction of a motivated team for the future was realized.

Ownership Framework Slashes Attrition

The HR Spotlight team thanks these industry leaders for offering their expertise and experience and sharing these insights.

Do you wish to contribute to the next HR Spotlight article? Or is there an insight or idea you’d like to share with readers across the globe?
Individual Contributors:
Answer our latest queries and submit your unique insights:
https://bit.ly/SubmitBrandWorxInsight
Submit your article:
https://bit.ly/SubmitBrandWorxArticle
PR Representatives:
Answer the latest queries and submit insights for your client: https://bit.ly/BrandWorxInsightSubmissions
Submit an article for your client:
https://bit.ly/BrandWorxArticleSubmissions

Please direct any additional questions to: connect@brandworx.digital

Recent Posts

Why the Best Leaders Build Trust Before They Build Growth

July 22, 2026

Why the Future of Workforce Training Is Not More Courses

July 9, 2026

In Conversation with Michael Ang

June 25, 2026

In Conversation with Dr Kathryn Page

June 24, 2026

Discover the latest HR Tips and trends with our weekly newsletters!

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