AI, Employment Law, and the Entry-Level Squeeze with Craig McCoy

0:00Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit harkazet.com. Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, Bill Bannum, and joining me on the show for the first time is Craig McCoy, chair of the HR Connection Group and London HR Connection and a trusted advisor to boards and see sweet leaders across the UK. Craig brings a wealth of experience as a former chief people officer across major organisations including Sky, BT, Booper and the Crown Estate and today leads one of the UK's most influential HR communities connecting over 6,000 senior HR professionals through private

1:02dinners, round tables and large scale events across degrees such as London, Manchester and Birmingham. In this conversation we're going to explore how the HR function is evolving, what's really keeping chief people officers up at night and our HR leaders can step up as a strategic driver of business performance in an increasingly complex world of work. Craig, how are you doing? Welcome to the show today. Thank you very much Bill, it's pleased to see you again and thank you very much for the opportunity looking forward to our conversation. Me too, let's start by getting to know a bit about you as we often like to do on this show, a bit of background, tell us a bit about your story, could you maybe talk to us a bit about yourself and your background and what's been the key transition points and memorable moments along the way, Craig? Yeah, so basically a career HR guy, my career in HR spans around 40 years, initially in

2:02the learning development profession and then moving through management consultancy in the Sue Mainstream HR, I've worked for many large corporates, initially in the technology of media sector, companies like BT and Sky, EGISB and advertising, it's true into healthcare, companies like Booper, and then laterally by choice into the interim markets, I've now done 16-inch in assignments as HR director, across various industries, primarily healthcare in the latter part of my career, so it's been a great career in the HR profession over many years, some of the main turning points were the decision to move out of learning development into Mainstream HR through the vehicle of management consultant to the Accenture for

3:03a couple of years, and then through into healthcare and then the choice to become an interim to give me the variety and the breadth of assignments as well as different locations and sectors and challenges, that's been something which has really appealed to me over the recent years and it's given me a huge breadth and scope in terms of the HR situations I've found myself in. Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hr Gazette.com and now back to the show. Very good, thank you very much, let's talk a bit about how you became a pretty famous community builder in the HR space I'd say. As you mentioned a moment ago, you've held senior HR roles at organisations such as Booper.

4:06What inspired you to move into building and leading communities such as the HR Connection Group? I've always enjoyed the networking side of things and I've always been really engaged with many communities in the HR space. I got the opportunity when I was at Booper actually to participate in what was then called London HR Connection and I became chair after about six months but it was very much on the side, it was a voluntary position and I was doing it alongside my full time roles and I continued in that mode for about ten years and so the opportunity came for me to make it my own to become my organisation. It was previously a branch of the CIP, the professional association in the UK and I took it up as my business and since then we've really mushroomed, we've taken many more locations

5:08and then six locations in the UK, developing from London. We run roughly 30 to 40 events a year. Many of them are invitation only private to dinners, breakfasts, round tables, larger conferences as well. We have a community of about 6,000 people, increasingly the focus is on senior end of the community so it's two people, officers and HR directors. Membership is always free of charge for the group. Our events are commercially sponsored and we have a range of sponsors across. Providers to the HR industry and they're a great combination of strong content and the latest learnings in the world of HR, combined with some great networking opportunities and good fun to network and meet with your peers. It's now become more or less my full time role, having been a hobby so I've turned my

6:11passion project into a job, but it's something which I very much enjoy and we'll continue doing it I'm sure for some years to come. Hi, this is Ryan Kamori, Founder and CEO of Sailor Liding, a company dedicated to empowering teams to live more joyful, productive and mentally fit lives and we're a proud sponsor this episode of the HR chat show. We exist a bridge, a key activation gap for many out there who have not yet crossed the figurative mental health gap, while also teaching helpful skills that are not normally covered in weekly talk therapy sessions. Our goal is to help people everywhere become more aware of their mental health and improve their mental fitness. Learn more about how we can help your employees at SailorLining.com. So you're very much getting the inside track in terms of what's going on, what are the key priorities, what are the key opportunities and challenges for senior HR leaders in

7:16the UK at the moment because you're having these deep conversations, two, three, four hours over lunch and whatnot and I'm sure you're all adhered to chat and house rules and all the rest of it, but perhaps you can share at a high level where I'll mention any names. What are some of those key opportunities and some of those key challenges in 2026? Sure. Well, as you can imagine, I regularly poll my membership and ask them, you know, what's top of their mind and that helps to shape our forward agenda in terms of the key priorities and the fashion. And yeah, I mean, the biggest one by far at the moment is the world of AI. And I guess everyone is grappling with it in terms of trying to understand what they should be doing, both as a business, but also as an HR function. But what I've found over the last year is the conversations of kind of deepened and moved on.

8:16So it's now talking in earnest about how to actively deploy AI rather than year ago, it's very hypothetical about, what is this thing called AI, how it's going to affect us. So many organisations are now in the middle of implementation across a broad range of applications for AI, not just process automation, whereas obviously that's a key enabling one, but helping to produce new new documents, new input policies, drafting documents, it just is a real time saver to really speed things up. So I think AI is definitely a big one. Another big one is the UK, the Employment Rights Act, which is coming to force parts of it coming to force from next month, which is giving many more rights to individuals to

9:17claim things like unfairly smith at an early stage, but it's also giving early access to benefits such as sick pay, parental leave, and a number of other things. It's quite wide-ranging legislation, and so HR people are really thinking about how to best implement that for the benefit of their businesses, without making the balance too much in favour of employees and against the benefits of employers, because that might have the perverse consequence of reducing job opportunities. So it's always a balance in these things, and related to that, another one which is top of mind is very much the economic situation in the UK, and measures that the government has taken, such as the increase in employers, national insurance contributions, the significant

10:19increase in the national living wage, and a number of other factors which are really increasing the employment costs, which is something which obviously businesses are concerned about, which is combined with the economic and global political situation we find ourselves in. It's made employers a bit more reluctant to invest in growth and to take on additional headcount. So all these things are also top of mind with HR people, and equally things like strategic workforce planning, which has seen a resurgence, and the strategic workforce planning has been around for many years, but it's been treated somewhat as sort of theoretical, hypothetical planning. It's now becoming more real, I think, possibly a help by the advent of AI, you start

11:20to think about the longer term, the critical skills planning for your organisation, gives you more data and tools and your fingertips to think about the future of your business. So I think strategic workforce planning, recruitment retention in many sectors is still a big one. I mean, many businesses are struggling to recruit, even though the unemployment statistics are going up. A number of young people out of work is getting close to a million now. But yeah, some industry, particularly front-facing industries, are really struggling to recruit and retain people. So again, these are all good examples of things which are top of mind, and we were always looking to put on events which helped to share the latest thinking on these topics. OK, great. You've done it now, because I had a whole bunch of other questions for you, but there's so much in that last answer that I just, I'm just going to dig into it a bit more with

12:25you, because I think it's so juicy and I think our listeners will enjoy it. So good. OK. I did mention to you before we hit record today that we might go off on a tangent a little bit. Yeah, that's fine. It's more conversation. But I want to pick up a few things that you mentioned in that last answer if you're OK. So you mentioned at the top of your answer there that a lot of the conversations that you're having with senior people and HR leaders at the moment is about the deployment of AI. I've had a lot of conversations recently with analysts, I guess mainly more in the US. So maybe that's something to do with it who are saying, actually, 2026 is about the year of proving out the ROI of the deployment that happened last year, AI, huge amounts of investment, billions and billions of billions of dollars invested in AI infrastructure in larger organizations and the last couple of years. So this year it's like, OK, we spent all this money. What's it doing? What's it actually doing for us? Are you having those sorts of conversations as well, Craig? Yes, definitely. I mean, I think there are some kind of ready, ready benefits and quick wins that are already

13:28emerging. So process automation, the ability to produce new documentation very quickly, the ability to even note taking tools and the ability to draft letters, disciplinary notes, but equally, the onus is also on the HR people to respond to other people. So the employees are using AI to generate grievances and other kinds of correspondence which then have to be responded to by the employers. So I think it works both ways. But I think, yeah, there is a big investment in AI and I suppose some of the obvious tools where it's deployed within core HR systems, within recruitment and recruitment processes. And yeah, there are clearly ways in which headcount could be saved, although it's often

14:35going to be repurposed rather than saved. So the skills mix is changing for jobs. I think it's got some implications for headcount reduction particularly at the junior end. So I think for new graduates and first jobbers because a lot of transactional work is being replaced by AI. I think it might be harder for people to get their first foot on the career ladder as a result. But that aside, I think employers are seeing the early gains of automation and headcount reduction, which in theory should free up people to be perhaps more creative and to raise a level of their strategic thinking. I think that's yet to be proven. I think we're still in the early stages of the early gains from process automation, which is reducing the dependency on people and headcount.

15:36You mentioned there that the reality is that it's harder for entry-level folks to begin their career, they ain't going away, they ain't going to get any better, let's be honest about it. Okay, let's not downplay that. You mentioned also that in terms of young people, so folks under 25, there are almost a million young folks in this country who are actually needs at the moment, not in education training or employment, regular listens to this show, we'll know that I'm on a board of a CIC in the UK that tries to tackle some of this and I'm quite passionate about it. What's the sentiment? So you're sitting at these lunches, we've very seen your folks, what's the sentiment in terms of their responsibility to the younger generation? I think there's a lot of concern because in the short term, there might be some gains to be made through reducing dependency on headcount and numbers of people, but in the longer term, you're really stifling that sort of talent pool in early stage in people's careers,

16:41which may mean that it's harder to get people to learn, to work the way up through the career ladder and to take on bigger and more important roles in the organisation. I think there is more interest in things like apprenticeships, modern apprenticeships and certainly skills training and AI can help in that respect because it can give more efficient access to things like skills profiling for the workforce and the candidate workplace. So I think there's a recognition, I sort of the mood is that there's a responsibility towards younger people, which is not just a selfless thing, it's about thinking about the needs of the organisation, longer term, and I suppose a rekindling of interest into the strategic skills programmes whilst recognising that perhaps motivations are changing

17:47in the world to talk about generational differences in how to engage younger people in the world of work and rethinking the proposition, but I think that in itself could be a good thing. So as a corollary, a lot of HR people are thinking actively about the employer value proposition. Why would people come and join my workforce? So it's making people rethink rather than perhaps go through a more traditional sort of training ship where the initial work can be fairly basic, but it's obviously like a right of passage to work through to take on more skilled roles. So I would say people are conscious of it and they're not just fixated on short-term headcount reduction. Quick follow up to that, in 30 seconds or less, for those young folks listening to this episode, to those folks who are looking to get into a career for the first time, might be a one-word

18:53answer, yes or no, maybe I don't know, but 30 seconds or less is it now a reality that if they want to get into the labour market, they want to begin their career, they need the imperative of getting work experience is more important than ever. Maybe they should even think about networking opportunities, you know, you and I are both in the networking space to help them get there. And a lot of people are saying, you know, something that will make an entry-level person stand out as if they've tried their own things, started their own little business before they've applied to us. Any of those things resonate with you in 30 seconds or less? Yeah, definitely. I think a number of people going to university will reduce. I think there's emphasis on work experience, real world experience, getting out there and trying it, rather than deferring it to the long term. So I think that's absolutely right. Okay, very good. I had so many more questions for you. I saw it. I'm back more of the previous answer. They wanted to go into the employment right bill, but we just don't have time.

19:59So last question for you for today, Craig, how can folks connect with you and learn more about all of the core networks that you're involved with? Yeah, the easiest thing to do is, you know, find me on LinkedIn and very, very willing to accept LinkedIn connection invitations. Have a look at our website www.londonhr.org. It gives details of all our events. You can sign up on the website. It's free of charge. Everything's free of charge. So don't be shy. And I hope to meet you all in the future, man. Wonderful. Well, that just leaves me to say for this particular interview, but I suspect that I'll be getting you on again fairly soon. But for now, Craig Macquarie, thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much, Bill. Thanks a lot. All the best. And listeners, as always, until next time, happy working. Thanks for listening to the HR chat show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and

20:59listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette. And remember, for what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media, and visit HR Gazette.com.