Cold Open (00:00–00:18)
Perry Timms: [00:00:05] We just do not have the requisite data. When work comes in, what capabilities does it need to create a quality outcome for the client or the stakeholder?
Part 1 – Setting the Scene: What's Broken in HR? (00:18–03:54)
Will McInnes: [00:00:18] Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. We're back. Welcome to The Enterprise Content Show.
Franziska Thomas: [00:00:25] Welcome. Hello again. We're getting into a topic today that sits right at the intersection of people, process and technology. The future of HR.
Will McInnes: [00:00:42] Who? Because a lot of organizations would say their HR is modern. But if you look underneath, the reality for all of us can be a little bit messier, right? The systems might be modern, but the workflows, the documents and information gaps are often telling a different story.
Franziska Thomas: [00:01:03] And that's exactly why this conversation is a good one, because we're talking about what a new HR operating system really looks like, especially in a world where AI is changing expectations super fast.
Will McInnes: [00:01:17] Love it, Franzi. And joining us today is Perry Timms: Speaker, thinker, consultant, and someone who spent a lot of time working with and challenging how HR is designed, how it creates value, how it thinks about itself, and how it needs to evolve for both people and the business.
Will McInnes: [00:01:39] And there he is.
Franziska Thomas: [00:01:41] Welcome, Perry.
Perry Timms: [00:01:42] Yeah. Great to be here. What an intro.
Perry Timms: [00:01:44] I'm just full of enthusiasm already.
Will McInnes: [00:01:47] Yes. Me too. And I can tell Franzi is. Perry, it's awesome to have you here. So you have this phrase and this topic that you talk a lot about — the new HR operating system. Maybe just to level-set people: what's broken in the old system?
Perry Timms: [00:02:06] Wow. Geez, what a start.
Perry Timms: [00:02:11] So I think you're right. When you hit on the technology that might sit on the outside, it might look like HR is in the 21st century. But then what sits underneath it is almost like tablets of stone. It is really built on employment law and practices that are still a hangover from the industrial age, no matter how much we try and put a digital wrap around that.
Perry Timms: [00:02:37] Artificial intelligence and automation are absolutely thrashing around inside organizational operating systems, business models, and customer expectations. So I think the time has now come to acknowledge that this industrial relic with a digital wraparound can no longer service and function within modern enterprises — not just from a content point of view, but from the value and the impact perspective.
Perry Timms: [00:03:11] So what better time to think about an HR operating model and system than when the system around it is thrashing and reestablishing itself? We are just going to be on a hiding to nothing if we continue along the linearity and the traditional routes that we've taken so far as a people profession, when we are now talking about a much more complex world with much faster, shortened cycles and learning curves. That calls us into action in a very different way.
Perry Timms: [00:03:40] So I guess the time is absolutely right. When I started to conceive this, ChatGPT wasn't even out. And then as soon as it came out, it was like, wow, the whole world has changed on a dime.
Will McInnes: [00:03:54] I love it.
Part 2 – Digitising Work vs. Redesigning It (03:55–07:03)
Franziska Thomas: [00:03:55] Yeah, and Perry, do you think that part of the problem is that HR, as you said, has digitized some of the work and some of the function, but has not completely redesigned the work itself?
Perry Timms: [00:04:10] Yeah. I think if we look at the way customer service has kind of been reframed around both personas and journeys into a customer experience, we know differently now about how we service a market, how we interpret signals, how we understand what customers want. And inside the organization, the people experience is still like a raging teenager.
Perry Timms: [00:04:33] It hasn't grown up. It hasn't understood what it's there for. So we've still been playing an organizational nanny role, when really we ought to start thinking about liberating adults into their best potential. So it's a mindset thing, but also it's incredibly enshrined in process that we haven't really addressed for decades. And now we can't avoid it, Franzi.
Perry Timms: [00:04:55] We are being called into a very, very different paradigm.
Will McInnes: [00:05:00] Super interesting. And I guess there's this bridge between what we do at Doxis and the world that you're immersed in and consult people on. And in there, there's paperwork and there's this phrase that we have: HR is about people, not paperwork.
Will McInnes: [00:05:20] A lot of the challenges that organizations have are filing problems and structural gaps. I'm just curious — does that resonate with how you see things? What are you hearing when you engage with people on the front line?
Perry Timms: [00:05:37] Yeah. I use two words that begin with I. So I talk about the intelligence that HR teams rely on, need and can gather and use. And the answer to that is often those kinds of paper trails that you talk about, and even if they're converted into digital entities, they're never aggregated into the other I, which is insight.
Perry Timms: [00:06:01] They just sit there as almost like flat repositories of information that doesn't get mined and drawn out. So we talk about something where we might want to start using that intelligence, be a bit preemptive about an experiment we might want to cast, or some new service that we think we need to introduce — whether it's well-being or benefits or whatever — and we just cannot extract that intelligence from its flat form.
Perry Timms: [00:06:26] We haven't indexed it. We haven't used it. So there's definitely something about a paucity of that at the moment. What do we rely on? Anecdote and conversation, which can be helpful but can also be wrong. If we had a way to extract that intelligence to create insight, we would be able to shorten the curves and improve the predictability of what we want to put out into the world, because we could test it against that intelligence. But we just don't.
Perry Timms: [00:06:49] So there's a real flaw in the approach. Before we even put an AI layer on anything, we are dealing with information that is hidden, that is difficult to tabulate, that we just cannot use in the way we want to.
Franziska Thomas: [00:07:03] Yeah.
Perry Timms: [00:07:03] You nodded — I can see that.
Part 3 – The Intelligence Gap: From Data to Insight (07:06–09:33)
Franziska Thomas: [00:07:06] Yeah, I mean, it's very clear, and we're dealing with those kinds of challenges. I'd say in everyday life as we see these huge HR transformation projects at the moment, even at enterprise level, they are all reporting similar challenges, as you just said. And that is exactly it — where do you see the gap most clearly at the moment, between what HR says it wants to be and how it actually operates today?
Franziska Thomas: [00:07:37] Because I do feel that there is a huge gap at the moment.
Perry Timms: [00:07:42] Yeah. Perry Timms: [00:07:42] I mean, you're right, there are a number of gaps. In the UK we have a problem at the moment with potholes in the roads not being filled in — and HR has the equivalent potholes all over its own process and delivery mechanism. They're patching a few, but they're not really resurfacing the road, Franzi.
Perry Timms: [00:08:02] So I'll give you an example of where I think this comes into play: workforce planning, workforce intelligence and work design. We just do not have the requisite data that says when work comes in, what capabilities does that work need in order to create a quality outcome for the client or the stakeholder? And therefore, where does that capability sit?
Perry Timms: [00:08:24] Is it in a part of the organization or in specific roles? And then who has that capability so that we can allocate them to the work — without over-allocating or under-allocating? We just cannot do that. We go from work to the individual without all those really important middle steps about the capabilities and the strength of those capabilities and where they sit. It's not as simple as knowing John can do that kind of work.
Perry Timms: [00:08:54] We kind of go, 'John, that's your job now.' It's like a cottage industry, not an enterprise solution. So we're dealing with that 20th century industrial throwback again, when really we ought to be making very sophisticated decisions about how we resource work that comes in and how we can spot the trends of where we haven't got the capability and need to build it.
Perry Timms: [00:09:16] It comes back to that intelligence thing. There's an example, Franzi, where we are dealing very inefficiently with something, and therefore the outcomes are largely less effective than they could be. Everybody's working hard, but they're working in a system that isn't working for them.
Part 4 – AI in HR: Signal vs. Noise (09:33–12:17)
Will McInnes: [00:09:33] There are just so many little nuggets here, Perry — I'm absolutely loving it. So if you see me grinning, that's why. You touched on AI earlier. There's a huge amount of excitement around AI in HR, but also a lot of noise. In a really punchy way — how do you see AI changing the HR operating model itself?
Perry Timms: [00:10:00] Yeah. So it's not what it's perceived as at the moment, which is almost like a training capability or even an ethics solution. It is much further left — into the work design and the flow and the throughput — that changes the dynamic of what work people do and what work machines do. We simply haven't got that kind of thinking right now.
Perry Timms: [00:10:19] So that is creating the noise.
Will McInnes: [00:10:21] Super, super interesting. Makes me think about the big famous company that moved AI agents under the Chief HR Officer as part of their AI strategy. That's so interesting — your answer there.
Perry Timms: [00:10:33] Yeah, thanks.
Franziska Thomas: [00:10:34] May I just throw in one quick side question? Because you mentioned a pre-AI-built HR team — have you seen the composition of HR teams actually change based on AI's impact?
Perry Timms: [00:10:50] Some, yes. They're not taking it as a purely technologist solution. But they are doing things like bringing in analysts who can pick up the data trails and use them much more smartly in the flow of work. I've got one client in pharma who has started to create some self-serve solutions — like cards on a custom GPT for standard queries that don't need deep engagement.
Perry Timms: [00:11:12] It's like: do you want to know about this? Here's the answer. And then it signposts them to an HRIS if they need to do some input. That level of recognizing the kinds of queries that people want — things that normally they'd pick up a phone or send an email for — has reduced their throughput by 80%. So they can do higher calibre, more strategic work.
Perry Timms: [00:11:32] So that's what I mean by a post-AI HR model. It knows what automation looks like, and it knows what higher-level quality work then transpires from that.
Franziska Thomas: [00:11:42] That makes sense, because that is also one of the tensions that we see with HR systems — in the end, it's still managing personal data. A lot of HR work still runs on documents: approval correspondence, document generation, contract signing, confirmation of employment, things like that. And if the workflow is disconnected, then we're far behind the point where we'd even be talking about predictive workforce planning.
Franziska Thomas: [00:12:13] It's like the basics, the foundation, that is still not really connected.
Perry Timms: [00:12:18] Yeah. And I think some of that documentation that might exist — say for a legal reason or some auditable process — you can still make it slicker and smarter by giving users upfront exactly why they're filling in that form, exactly what that form is being used for, and how they do that with the most appropriate level of data input that we can then reuse.
Perry Timms: [00:12:37] And we don't do that. We just expect them to work it out in the flow. Let's give them help to increase the chance that the data becomes useful for us.
Part 5 – The Foundation Problem: Unstructured Data & Information Silos (12:46–14:55)
Will McInnes: [00:12:46] There was a moment earlier, Perry, where I was stunned into silence — because what you said was so perfect for what Doxis does that I didn't know how to respond without everyone thinking, 'Oh, there's the marketing guy.' Let's talk about the quality of underlying information and how that enables this transformation you're describing.
Will McInnes: [00:13:08] We've seen estimates that 70 to 90% of enterprise information is unstructured, and that a big share of AI projects fail without AI-ready data. So are organizations trying to layer intelligence on top of fundamental disorder — or how would you characterize it?
Perry Timms: [00:13:28] Yeah, they are, Will. It's a kind of high-entropy state of that data, which is leading to fragmented processes and actually almost more painful processes. I've seen some people who have introduced AI into an HR arena, and the users go, 'That's more complex than it used to be,' because they're using it to try and tidy up the data, where they would have been better off just saying to people: it's a little bit of pain for a lot of gain down the line.
Perry Timms: [00:13:52] This is why we need you to do it this way. But they don't communicate that. So there's definitely something about a 'getting the house in order' moment that could and should come from that. But I think it also speaks to a fundamental need to change the way HR itself processes and builds its own information. It still locks it into little silos.
Perry Timms: [00:14:10] People operations, business partners, L&D, ER, reward — it's like islands of information. They should have a massively centralized repository that they all draw on and contribute to, and it's less role-dependent and more outcome-dependent. That's why I've built a model where there are very few rigid roles and more domains than silos, because that's the only way we're going to address it — not just through technology, but through fundamental reorganization of how HR does its throughput.
Franziska Thomas: [00:14:42] Yeah, we could help with that — we do have a platform that can solve most of those problems. Creating that wisdom, connecting information and making access easy.
Franziska Thomas: [00:14:55] We don't want to go into the marketing though.
Perry Timms: [00:14:58] No, you don't have to. But I think that is such an important point — talking about wisdom. Because we often talk about data and knowledge and information as an asset, but the 'so what' is: you use it to create wisdom to make better decisions about what you do with people, what performance really looks like, what learning is on the horizon, and so on.
Perry Timms: [00:15:18] How on earth can we close the skills gap when we don't even know what skills we've got now?
Part 6 – The Human Element: Where People Still Matter Most (15:22–19:03)
Franziska Thomas: [00:15:22] Absolutely. We talk a lot about automation and bringing machines to do the work for us. Where do you see human beings becoming more important?
Perry Timms: [00:15:35] Yeah. So McKinsey did a paper — they called it the Agent Organization — and it left me cold because it was like The Matrix, where we are literally just click-through agents not doing any cognitively additional work. That's not what this is about. I think we know there is a point where machines kind of stop being as effective as they can be, and we come in for variables, imaginative thinking and contextualizing.
Perry Timms: [00:16:04] Judgment and critical thinking are absolutely part of what will still be ours. There's something about a threshold for automation that then kicks us in. But it's not a human in the loop — it's the system in the loop. And we're acting in the interests of the system.
Perry Timms: [00:16:22] We are not thinking, 'I'm a bit paranoid, so I want to check every output.' No — the system says 98% of this is going to be spot on. So you're there to help understand what that 2% variable is as a risk to manage. That's the system driving it — not your preference, not your capability. You acting in the interests of the system.
Perry Timms: [00:16:41] I think the more we get that right, Franzi, the more we're likely to see people not get hooked on jobs, but think about what they're doing to add value in this system.
Franziska Thomas: [00:16:51] Makes sense. One last question from my side on the AI theme — we could talk about that for hours, but I know we have a limited amount of time. Where do you see AI going in recruiting?
Perry Timms: [00:17:08] Enormously powerful. It has such potential. I've seen some tools that have been developed that are very conversational — they'll call people up, talk them through some kind of assessment, and it sounds like a human being. And all of that is really good, because at scale you can give people a very consistent level of experience that can also be tailored for neurodiversity and cultural difference, because the machine can help adapt to that.
Perry Timms: [00:17:36] And we can take that as a first-pass data input exercise for us to then start going into human judgment and the relational stuff we'd want to do as humans. There has always been this massive funnel we've been trying to narrow to make the right choice on a candidate to put forward for a role.
Perry Timms: [00:17:56] I think machines can help us enormously with that. But we can't outsource the whole thing, because the attachment that people have to the role and to their team is such a human thing. You cannot digitize or sanitize that.
Perry Timms: [00:18:13] It's about: do we get you? Do you get us? Can we work it out? Does it feel like the right thing? It sounds contrived — why on earth would you base recruiting on that? But recruiting is the most important decision you make. Your value proposition is set, your branding is set, and it evolves as you need it to.
Perry Timms: [00:18:31] But recruiting — who you bring in — that's who you become. So we can't rely on machines to do that alone, but we can't rely on humans either, because it's just too complex a game. We need to think about the best way to differentiate human input and machine input. Ultimately it comes down to this relational sense of: are you here for the value that we're creating in the world, and what do you value? Let's work out how we make that part of the deal.
Perry Timms: [00:18:52] So I think recruiting will change enormously, Franzi. Everything changes. Probably we won't recognize it in three years.
Part 7 – HR's Irreplaceable Value & the Stakeholder Ripple Effect (19:05–23:12)
Will McInnes: [00:19:05] So interesting. Thank you, Perry. And picking up on your point there — where do HR people still hold the most irreplaceable value? What is the unshakeable human element in the modern team?
Perry Timms: [00:19:24] Yeah.
Perry Timms: [00:19:25] It's a lovely question, because I think it manifests in a couple of areas. Not just in how we go out to the world and say, 'Hey, you want to come work for us because we're one of those employers where you'll think, wow, I get paid to do this.' So I think there's that.
Perry Timms: [00:19:39] But I think it's more about connecting more deeply to a sense of purpose and a sense of value that people want to create in the world — and they just happen to be able to do it through you as an employer. And this sense that actually you might not be there forever: the job-for-life idea has become something of a lamented relic.
Perry Timms: [00:19:58] It's almost like — do we really want that? Or do we want people who look at their career as a journey and choose to hop around?
Perry Timms: [00:20:06] And if they're good enough, they'll come back with so much more than they would have done if they'd stayed. So I think the lockdown idea of a job will become less of a consideration. We won't be looking at employee retention as some kind of psychological prison.
Perry Timms: [00:20:25] We'll be saying: if you want to go, go with a blessing — but help us find out who could come in your stead, and what you're going to go away and learn and then share with us. More like an alumni relationship. The relationship isn't going to end when it normally does.
Perry Timms: [00:20:40] There's a continuance and a different version of it that's likely to come back in. We've talked about boomerang employees — I think that's a little unsophisticated. I think the relationship will feel much more like: I want to do something good in the world, you do good in the world, let's see what we can do together and see where it goes.
Perry Timms: [00:20:57] It will feel much more like a theatrical production or a box set.
Will McInnes: [00:21:03] Very cool. Love that. So Perry — the really important part of the impact of all this is about stakeholders, where traction and impact are created. If HR's operating model is fragmented, who feels that first in today's world? Is it employees, is it managers and teams, or is it the business?
Perry Timms: [00:21:30] Yeah, I think it would be a trickle of success. And I think managers would feel it first, because I think we're finally going to break this dependency that managers have on HR to bail them out of people-management responsibilities — because they're very busy with their projects and workloads. I think they'll go, 'Oh, wow.'
Perry Timms: [00:21:48] And then it's like, hang on — that's what I'm supposed to be here for, isn't it? So this whole team-leading thing will hit them first. I think the next wave will then be employees who'll be like, 'Oh wow, what's HR doing? It's pulling more performance levers. It's giving me more certainty, more choice, more intelligence.'
Perry Timms: [00:22:04] 'Wow, what's happened there?' So I think they'll be pleasantly surprised, but also a bit suspicious.
Perry Timms: [00:22:14] And then I think the strategic leaders will pick it up next. And I think that's the pathway out to customers, shareholders and citizens — if it's a government or nonprofit. Because there will be this trickle out where people go, 'Why are they emitting such positive signals and doing such good things?' And they will look at the HR impact and go, 'Wow, I never knew HR could do that much.'
Perry Timms: [00:22:35] I thought it just held things tight, steady and legal. But it's almost like creating a liberating force for good. Things like ESG and what the planet needs — HR's footprint will be throughout that, because it has to be. That's a stakeholder it will need to service in its work design and employment proposition across every walk of life.
Perry Timms: [00:22:56] There's already this phrase: HR is not about HR — it's inside out and outside in. I think there's a dawning realization that HR won't be so inside. It will be much more visible outside, because it has to be.
Franziska Thomas: [00:23:13] Yeah.
Part 8 – Onboarding, Information & the Cost of Disconnection (23:13–27:13)
Franziska Thomas: [00:23:13] Totally agree. It's far more external — it has an impact on the outside and the broader business than you might expect at first glance. And this is also where, when I come back to documents and disconnected workflows — we all know they create admin pain and they take time. And you've confirmed that too. They affect onboarding, they have an impact on compliance, on productivity. Ultimately on the business and its success.
Franziska Thomas: [00:24:01] I wouldn't say most of the time, but pretty often, onboarding isn't going well.
Franziska Thomas: [00:24:08] Only a few companies have really great onboarding processes.
Perry Timms: [00:24:12] Yeah.
Franziska Thomas: [00:24:13] The day-to-day business workflow can have a huge impact on employee satisfaction.
Perry Timms: [00:24:20] Totally agree. I remember in the early 2000s being part of a group — Orange Telecom was one of them, which shows you how long ago that was — who were trying to really improve onboarding and induction, as it was called then. And we still haven't cracked it. It's still ridiculously painful and inappropriate. Often it's two days of talking heads with directors, bored out of your life, forgetting everything.
Perry Timms: [00:24:42] So this whole sense of how do we get people into a workplace so they feel it and know they're making a contribution as soon as possible — well, you don't do it the way you're doing it now. And I think the other important thing you've tapped into, Franzi, is the fact that entry-level jobs are already starting to decline. Graduate schemes and intakes are down — this is the work that's being automated.
Perry Timms: [00:25:03] So that entry point that used to be almost like the longer-tail version of onboarding is gone. We're getting people in at a higher level with more judgment, more criticality, more relational building. We've got to take onboarding seriously, because these people might be coming out of a career break or straight from university into a world of work that's now at a much higher and more intense level.
Perry Timms: [00:25:29] We can't just do what we're doing now. It's got to be: here's the information, here's how workflows work, here's where you find things out, here's where you build your own journey, here's how you know who you need to know. That becomes a learner-led exploration. I think it'll always be like a kind of boot camp for about six months to get into it.
Perry Timms: [00:25:51] And if you're doing that with information that's scattered, good luck — because they'll be lost and amazing before they've even started.
Franziska Thomas: [00:25:57] Yeah. And even as you said, it's the more expensive people that you're hiring now — not entry-level first-job-takers entering the business ecosystem. You pay a lot of money to recruit those roles and get them to sign with your company.
Perry Timms: [00:26:20] Totally. Yeah, exactly. So the experience of them both pre-joining and as soon as they land — if the information again is scattered and difficult to find — they're going to be relying on people, going around asking who they need to know. And it all suddenly becomes very pre-industrial.
Perry Timms: [00:26:40] We shouldn't have to suffer that. We should be able to just tap into what I need to know, where can I find it, how can I do it. And then boom — that's when the information really comes to life, because it's giving people agency instead of a headache.
Franziska Thomas: [00:26:54] Yeah.
Franziska Thomas: [00:26:55] That's why I'm here 12 years on.
Franziska Thomas: [00:26:58] I never wanted to go through the onboarding part again.
Perry Timms: [00:27:00] Oh, man.
Perry Timms: [00:27:00] Yeah. But there's something serious about re-onboarding, because it's almost like: where is the company at, what is going on now? We are sort of continuously on-boarding and we just don't call it that.
Part 9 – Doxit Like It's Hot: Rapid-Fire Round (27:13–29:01)
Will McInnes: [00:27:13] 100% agree. We were talking about this as a leadership team, actually, not so long ago. I really think we should onboard everyone again, because we're a different company from the one we all joined. So — now we're going to do everyone's favorite section, and it's called: Doxit Like It's Hot...
Will McInnes: [00:27:30] Doxit Like It's Hot. Rapid-fire, quick, practical, instinctive answers, Perry. 3, 2, 1 — Franzi is going to kick off with the first one. Go, Franzi!
Franziska Thomas: [00:27:40] Number one: One sign an HR model is outdated.
Perry Timms: [00:27:44] That people still talk about process only.
Franziska Thomas: [00:27:47] One thing HR should stop treating as admin and start treating as infrastructure.
Perry Timms: [00:27:54] That we capture intelligence about what talent really is — regularly.
Will McInnes: [00:28:01] That is a super cool answer. All right, next one. One reason AI in HR could under-deliver...
Perry Timms: [00:28:09] That we still look at it as a tool, not as the fabric of how we work.
Franziska Thomas: [00:28:13] Nice one. Next one: One stakeholder pain point that leaders underestimate.
Perry Timms: [00:28:21] I think that's: we think we know what customers feel, but we only know what they buy.
Will McInnes: [00:28:27] Perry, I'm going to call you every morning and do this. This is so much fun. One capability every future HR team needs.
Perry Timms: [00:28:36] Product thinking. We just make products all the time, so let's do more of that.
Franziska Thomas: [00:28:42] And one last one: one myth about people and business performance.
Perry Timms: [00:28:48] That it's all about intellect. It's all about smartness. But it's also about imagination and stamina.
Part 10 – Perry's Book & the New HR Operating Model (29:01–30:55)
Franziska Thomas: [00:29:01] That was it.
Will McInnes: [00:29:02] Perfect. I knew this would be good. And it's been even better, man.
Perry Timms: [00:29:06] Gosh, I loved it too. Yeah.
Will McInnes: [00:29:08] Perry, before we wrap up, tell us about your book.
Perry Timms: [00:29:11] For about 30 years, the dominant HR operating model — which hasn't even really been named as such — has been the Ulrich model of shared service, business partners and centers of excellence. You look everywhere, whatever size and denomination, and everybody defines it differently, which is kind of okay. But it was built in the 1990s when the world was very different. So we haven't had a different one.
Perry Timms: [00:29:31] I did some research and found that lots of consultancies built more complex versions of it that nobody would adopt anyway. So I just thought, let's go to the essence of what HR teams are kind of playing with, as well as delivering through. And obviously process was front of mind — people operations. You absolutely can't have that stuff not functioning well. But the product thinking is lacking.
Perry Timms: [00:29:54] And that's why I put that in next. But then it's completely and utterly amplified by a massively strong awareness of the systems you build in, the systems you're in, and the systems you're using — and then the science. We need the science. We have the science. We just don't use the science that's emerging. So I put those four together and put it out to some Chief People Officers and HR practitioners I trusted, who came back and went, 'Oh wow, I like it.'
Perry Timms: [00:30:18] 'But how do I do it?' I said: well, the fact that you like it is good enough. So I built on it after that, and so far I've been able to bring it into a few clients. They don't show me the model I've built — they show me their people experience journey and the impact they're having on top of it.
Perry Timms: [00:30:33] To me that means the operating model is doing exactly what it should. It's not the dominant force — it's the thing that underpins and empowers it.
Part 11 – Key Takeaways & Closing (30:40–End)
Will McInnes: [00:30:40] Absolutely love it. You're a legend, Perry. Thank you so much.
Perry Timms: [00:30:44] Thank you. Gosh, yeah. Can we do this again?
Will McInnes: [00:30:47] Yeah.
Franziska Thomas: [00:30:49] Anytime.
Perry Timms: [00:30:51] Ciao for now.
Will McInnes: [00:30:55] It was great, wasn't it? I think what really stood out was — well, everything. But fundamentally, I loved it when Perry was talking about the fabric and the model, and rethinking the whole operating system underneath: how information flows and how HR creates value for employees and the business in this future world. Super cool.
Franziska Thomas: [00:31:15] Yeah. And it really lands for me, always, because I don't like it when the foundation isn't digital and connected. There is no modern HR if you don't solve the challenges at the foundation — and then you can think about AI, then you can think about moving further and doing amazing things.
Franziska Thomas: [00:31:37] But yeah, you've got to take care of the root business first.
Will McInnes: [00:31:40] Love it. So thanks to Perry again for joining us.
Franziska Thomas: [00:31:45] And thank you all for listening to The Enterprise Content Show.
Will McInnes: [00:31:50] Yep. And I'm going to pretend to be a YouTuber now and say: if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, and share this with someone in HR transformation or Digital Workplace. We would love them to connect with these ideas. And of course, they probably already know Perry's work. See you next time! And remember: your HR is modern. Your documents might not be.
Will McInnes: [00:32:13] Store them somewhere safe — we can help. And look after yourself. Keep your content — what do we normally say, Franzi?
Franziska Thomas: [00:32:20] Juicy, fresh, hot and smart overall.
Will McInnes: [00:32:23] Excellent.
Franziska Thomas: [00:32:24] Anyway, we'll see you next time. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Over and out.
Franziska Thomas: [00:32:29] Bye.
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