CIPD

“You can’t influence what you don’t understand.” For HR professionals, the link between business knowledge and organisational impact is no longer optional. To operate as strategic partners, people professionals need to understand how their organisation creates value: how it makes money, what drives performance, which metrics matter, where its pain points lie and how external trends are reshaping the business.

Join host Nigel Cassidy and guests Aly Fadil, Chief People Officer at Matalan, and Jane-Emma Peerless, Director of People and Chief Commercial Officer at Caxton, as they explore how HR professionals can build commercial awareness, turning business knowledge into sharper judgement, stronger people strategy and greater credibility.

In this episode, our panel explores:

Why commercial acumen matters for HR and what is at stake when people strategy becomes disconnected from business priorities.

What commercial acumen looks like in practice from understanding finance, customers and frontline operations to using the right metrics and making smarter workforce decisions.

How HR can build commercial credibility without compromising its commitment to good people practice
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What makes an HR function truly strategic — and how important is investment? As employers prepare for changes to unfair dismissal rights, how can people professionals help hiring managers make better recruitment decisions? Should employees have the right to know what their colleagues earn? Finally, as AI becomes embedded in the workplace, is it weakening our critical thinking and decision-making skills—or helping us use them more effectively?

Leah De Silva, Senior Programme Manager for the CIPD Trust, Head of People and Culture at Dowds Group, Rob Rees; and David Blackburn, Managing Director of David R. Blackburn Consulting.

Recorded: 30 October 2026

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Your next listen:
HR People Pod – Ep 60: Commercial confidence, productivity and AI – with Neil Carberry
CIPD Podcast 219: Dealing with AI use in recruitment and job applications
HR People Pod – Ep 54: Future planning as a discipline – with Tom Cheeswright

Additional resources:
Report: HR pulse 2026: Inside the people profession
Report: Resourcing and talent planning report 2026
Tracking law changes: Employment Rights Act 2025
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What opportunities does building commercial acumen as a skillset bring for the profession? Does quality of management matter more than any productivity metric? And what does it take for organisations to be bold about AI, without being reckless?

Lisa Pearl, People and Change Director at the CIPD, is joined by new CIPD Chief Executive, Neil Carberry.

Recorded: 16 October 2026

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Your next listen:
CIPD Podcast 235: Can AI governance drive innovation?
HR People Pod – Ep 59: Strategic workforce planning | Skills forecasting and productivity | Iced coffee debate
CIPD Podcast 225: HR’s role in boosting workplace productivity

Additional resources:
Explore this year’s CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition programme
Resources | AI in the workplace
Neil Carberry: people professionals are central to performance and productivity
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AI governance, the framework that ensures AI is deployed ethically, transparently and with proper accountability, is no longer a secondary concern. It is foundational to organisational stability and trust. Yet governance has not kept pace with implementation, exposing organisations to real business risks: loss of trust, reputational damage or litigation. But good AI governance doesn’t slow innovation. It establishes the foundations that make innovation possible.

Join Nigel Cassidy and this month's guests – Helen Dutta, Director of Governance & HR at DACS; Ray Eitel-Porter, AI expert, Senior Research Associate at Jesus College Cambridge and award-winning author; and Sharon Hill, Director of People at Pay.UK, as we explore how organisations can overcome the perception that governance stifles innovation, and instead build the guardrails that make AI investment and exploration sustainable.

In this episode, our panel explores:

Why AI governance has lagged AI implementation, and the implications for organisations and workforces
The importance of ensuring AI governance is a continuous, people-centred process that evolves alongside technology and ways of working
Why effective AI governance acts as an enabler of innovation, through creating confidence and trust

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Your next listen:
CIPD Podcast 229: From AI experimentation to AI maturity
HR People Pod – Ep 57: Innovation | Is ‘resilience’ a tainted word? | Dealing with AI grievances
CIPD Podcast 219: Dealing with AI use in recruitment and job applications

More from this episode:
AI in the workplace: Insights, guides, case studies
Guide: How people professionals can develop, deploy and use AI in an ethical, legal and sustainable way
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The CIPD’s latest Resourcing and talent planning 2026 report, supported by Omni, reveals that an increasing number of organisations are extending their workforce planning timeframes from the short to the medium term. Overall, 24% take a short-term approach (up to six months), down from 31% in 2024. However just a fraction of organisations (16%) are planning more than two years into the future.

So how can organisations build a strategic workforce plan for three to five years out, when the pace of change makes even the near future hard to predict?

Plus, as recent City & Guilds research suggests that a shortage of so called ‘soft skills’ is restricting productivity and growth – how should we be recruiting and developing those skills in the workforce?

And finally, hear more on whether these HR leaders would bring an iced coffee to a job interview...
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