WEEKLY EDITION BY ZIHAN LYU

Welcome to your latest HRD Connect's Weekend Digest, your go-to source for the week’s top insights and updates tailored for HR professionals.

Here’s what’s inside:
◾ Gen Z is stressed and looking for real leadership. These five shifts will help you support younger teams while improving performance across the board.

◾ Lloyds’ Tom Kegode shares how to build people-first workplaces that embrace digital change without losing the human connection.

◾ Novartis’ Nazim Ünlü explains how to meet the needs of every generation at work by designing around individual experiences, not outdated labels.

EXPERT INSIGHTS

Leading the Next Generation: Five Leadership Shifts to Reduce Stress and Unlock Performance

Gen Z is showing up to work with ambition, fresh ideas—and unprecedented levels of stress. According to recent research, nearly half report feeling anxious most of the time. The culprit isn’t laziness or entitlement. It’s a system that still rewards presenteeism, ignores mental health until crisis hits, and limits autonomy in the name of tradition.

This piece explores five key leadership shifts that can help today’s managers do better—without burning out themselves. From normalizing conversations about mental wellbeing, to building cultures where failure is part of learning and not a career-ending event, this article is packed with practical, high-impact changes. Want to know the fastest way to win trust with a stressed-out junior employee? Ask them what they’re not seeing.

Because if we want sustainable performance, leadership can’t just be about managing tasks. It has to be about meeting human needs.

Q&A

Shaping the Future of Work with Tom Kegode

What if your tech strategy started with empathy—not efficiency? That’s the provocation from Lloyds Banking Group’s Tom Kegode in this wide-ranging conversation on people-first transformation. As digital disruption redefines how we work, Tom argues the real opportunity is to use technology to enhance—not replace—what makes us human.

From rethinking the hybrid experience to redesigning office spaces for connection, Tom shares how Lloyds is approaching transformation with storytelling, co-creation, and experimentation at its core. He also unpacks their “Catalyst” network—7,000 internal changemakers driving peer-led innovation across the business.

Tom’s philosophy is clear: HR doesn’t just manage change. It leads it. And in a tech-saturated world, the winning strategy is one that puts culture, clarity, and care at the center of the conversation.

Q&A

Leading Across Generations – Exclusive Insights from Nazim Ünlü

How do you design work for five generations at once—without falling into clichés? In this exclusive conversation, Nazim Ünlü of Novartis shares a pragmatic, purpose-driven approach to managing multigenerational teams in the age of disruption.

Nazim pushes back on one-size-fits-all policies and explains why HR needs to think more like product design: start with the user, build iteratively, and test as you go. From hyper-personalized learning to real-time feedback loops, he outlines a future where each employee is treated not as a demographic, but as an individual.

This is embedded in Novartis’ strategy, through initiatives like their Culture Lab and inclusive design processes that engage employees at every level. If you’re leading transformation in a diverse organization, this is the roadmap you’ve been waiting for.