SOUND: Giving HR Professionals a Place to Think Out Loud
Skills
HR and People Community
The challenge
HR can be a lonely job. People professionals are often the ones everyone else turns to, which leaves them with fewer places to take their own problems.
The issues are rarely simple. A flexible working request that doesn’t fit neatly into policy. A performance case that’s getting complicated. A Subject Access Request landing at the same time as an Employment Tribunal claim. These are the moments where a second opinion matters, and where it can feel like you’re the only one dealing with it.
What we did
Mark Proud, HR Specialist at We Are Zenith, set up SOUND to fix that.
SOUND is a small, informal group where HR and People professionals get together to talk honestly about what’s happening in their world. There’s no presentation and no sales pitch. People bring real situations, share experiences, and work through the things that don’t have an easy answer.
The idea is simple: get good people in a room and figure things out together.
The session
The latest SOUND session brought together HR professionals from a mix of organisations and sectors. The conversation covered:
- AI in the workplace
- Flexible working
- Performance management
- Policy issues
- SARs, and the complexity when one sits alongside an Employment Tribunal
Some big subjects, some very practical ones, and some that can feel difficult and a little scary when you’re the person responsible.
What attendees said
We asked attendees for honest feedback afterwards. Here’s what one HR Business Partner told us:
“It was a really good session. I enjoyed the sounding board aspect and being able to get some different perspectives on the situations we’re dealing with. It was also really interesting hearing about the different issues and challenges going on in other organisations and sectors.
I think the group size worked really well, and everyone was really open, which made it easy to have honest conversations. It was nice that we all felt we had enough time to talk through our own situations properly and get some useful input, without it feeling rushed.”
HR Business Partner, SOUND attendee
When asked what they’d change next time, the answer was simple: not much. The format and group size worked, and they’d like to keep it that way.
The results
- A trusted space for HR professionals to test their thinking before making difficult decisions
- Practical input on live issues from peers who’ve faced similar situations
- Reassurance that they’re not the only ones dealing with complex cases
- Strong support for the format, with attendees keen to return
Looking ahead, our attendee was clear about what they’d like to keep:
“The mix of different organisations and sectors was really useful, so having that variety again would be great. It would be good to continue having space to bring our own situations and get different perspectives on them.”
What's next
SOUND isn’t a one-off. The sessions will keep running, with the same small group format, the same mix of sectors, and the same space to bring real situations and work through them together.
It’s also just one part of a growing HR community here at We Are Zenith. We’re building more ways for HR and people professionals across the North East to connect, share and learn from each other, and there’s plenty more to come. Watch this space.
Want to join a future SOUND session? Get in touch with Mark Proud at We Are Zenith.
