The HR Room Podcast

What happens to the world of work if living to 100 becomes increasingly normal?

Irish Life’s recently published Life100+ research explores how longer lives could change the way we work, plan and retire. With people potentially spending longer in the workforce, organisations may need to rethink everything from career development and recruitment to employee benefits, financial wellbeing and retirement.

Joining us on this episode of The HR Room Podcast is Barbara O’Malley, Chief People Officer at Irish Life Group, to explore what the findings mean for employers and HR professionals.

We discuss changing attitudes towards retirement, why organisations need to think differently about attracting and retaining experienced workers, and how longer careers could require a fundamental rethink of traditional, linear career paths.

Barbara also explores the importance of lifelong learning and the idea of developing a “skills passport” that allows employees to move between roles and even careers over the course of their working lives. We look at the pressures facing employees in the “squeezed middle”, the growing importance of financial wellbeing, and why flexible benefits and phased retirement could become increasingly important.

Guest:

Barbara O’Malley, Chief People Officer at Irish Life Group

In this episode, we discuss:

Why longer lifespans could fundamentally change the traditional career and retirement model

Why just 19% of respondents expect to fully retire and stop working

What motivates people to continue working beyond traditional retirement age

The gap between the value employers see in experienced workers and how actively they recruit them

Why organisations may need a dedicated longevity strategy

How AI, skills shortages and demographic change could make experienced employees even more valuable

The importance of lifelong learning, reskilling and creating a “skills passport”

How longer careers could allow people to pursue multiple different careers during their working lives

The pressures facing employees aged 35–64, including caring responsibilities, mortgages, careers and financial planning

Why financial advice and proactive retirement planning can help employees feel more confident about longer lives

How employee benefits may need to become more flexible to meet people at different stages of life

The practical steps HR leaders can take now to prepare their organisations for a longer-living workforce

Barbara’s key message for HR leaders is that this isn’t simply a challenge for 10 or 20 years from now. Employees are already looking for greater flexibility around careers, retirement and how long they remain in the workforce. Organisations therefore need to start examining their workforce demographics, understanding the skills they have today and identifying the skills they will need in the future.

Resources

Life 100+ Report

The Rosetto Effect - a 50-year comparison of mortality rates

Get in Touch
If you're dealing with a difficult employee relations issue, trade union negotiation, collective consultation or another complex HR challenge, the Insight HR team can help.

Get in touch with Insight HR:
Call 056 770 1060 or email info@insighthr.ie.

About The HR Room Podcast
The HR Room Podcast is brought to you by Insight HR, where we speak with HR leaders, legal experts and workplace specialists from across Ireland about the issues shaping the future of work.

If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with colleagues or friends.

We're always keen to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes.

For some HR professionals, working with trade unions is a normal part of everyday life. For others, the prospect of sitting across the negotiating table from a union representative can be unfamiliar – and more than a little daunting.

So, what do you need to know before you enter a negotiation? How do you build a productive relationship with union representatives? And what happens when talks become contentious – or even break down completely?

Joining us on this episode of The HR Room is Sharron Clancy, Senior HR Consultant at Insight HR, who has extensive experience working in unionised environments and negotiating with trade unions throughout her career.

Alongside Insight HR Managing Director Mary Cullen, Sharron shares practical advice for HR professionals who find themselves dealing with trade unions – whether that's around pay negotiations, organisational change, redundancies, employee relations or workplace disputes.

Guest:
Sharron Clancy - Senior HR Consultant, Insight HR

Topics include:

What changes when you're working in a unionised environment

The importance of building relationships with union representatives before you need to negotiate

Why preparation and good data are critical before sitting down at the negotiating table

Understanding your bargaining scope, red lines and existing union agreements

Why you should never make promises in the room that haven't been authorised

How to manage difficult or heated negotiations without taking things personally

The importance of listening and understanding what is really driving union demands

Why historic agreements and previous negotiations can still have a major influence today

What to do when negotiations begin to break down or strike action is threatened

When HR professionals should seek external HR or legal support

Get in Touch
If you're dealing with a difficult employee relations issue, trade union negotiation, collective consultation or another complex HR challenge, the Insight HR team can help.

Get in touch with Insight HR:
Call 056 770 1060 or email info@insighthr.ie.

About The HR Room Podcast
The HR Room Podcast is brought to you by Insight HR, where we speak with HR leaders, legal experts and workplace specialists from across Ireland about the issues shaping the future of work.

If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with colleagues or friends.

We're always keen to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes.

What can a reality TV show built around deception, suspicion and group dynamics teach us about how organisations really work?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

In this episode of The HR Room Podcast, Mary Cullen and Dave Corkery are joined by Katelyn Divilly, organisational development consultant, leadership coach and former Traitor on the first season of The Traitors Ireland.

Drawing on Katelyn's background in work and organisational psychology – as well as her first-hand experience inside the castle – we explore the fascinating parallels between The Traitors and the workplace.

Why do informal leaders emerge within groups? Why are we so susceptible to groupthink? How quickly can labels become accepted as fact? And what happens when the systems and incentives inside an organisation encourage exactly the behaviours leaders say they don't want?

We also look at trust as the infrastructure behind high-performing teams, the difference between confidence and genuine leadership competence, and why technical high performers don't automatically make good managers.

Katelyn explains how organisational systems can unintentionally reward the wrong behaviours, while Mary explores what happens when influential individuals are allowed to behave poorly because they're considered too valuable to challenge.

Finally, we discuss what pressure reveals about leaders – and why self-management, emotional intelligence and strong relationships become even more important when things start going wrong.

In this episode, we discuss:

Why The Traitors is such an interesting case study in organisational psychology

Trust as the foundation of high-performing teams

How labels such as "difficult", "troublemaker" or "not a team player" can become embedded within organisations

Why groupthink happens – and how organisations can build systems that challenge bias

The emergence of informal leaders and influencers outside the organisational chart

Why confidence, charisma and social dominance aren't necessarily signs of good leadership

The problem of "accidental managers" and promoting technical high performers without giving them leadership training

How HR professionals can build greater influence and credibility with senior leadership

Why organisational problems are often symptoms of badly designed systems rather than simply "people problems"

How incentives can unintentionally reward secrecy, corner-cutting and poor behaviour

What strong leadership looks like when an organisation is under pressure

Why emotional intelligence and self-management matter when leaders are stressed

The importance of relationships, trust and "social credit" in effective leadership

Resources
- Here are more details on The Trust Equation that Katelyn mentioned in this episode. 

Need Support?
If some of the issues discussed in this episode sound familiar – from poor management and dysfunctional cultures to leadership development and organisational change – Insight HR can help.

We provide a range of Training & Development programmes for managers and leaders, as well as organisational culture audits and HR consultancy support tailored to your organisation.

Get in touch with the Insight HR team to find out more:

Email: info@insighthr.ie
Phone: 056 770 1060

And if you're new to The HR Room Podcast, make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow Insight HR on LinkedIn for more HR insights, webinars, resources and upcoming episodes.

Recent events at KPMG Australia have developed into a major corporate governance scandal, following allegations concerning the misuse of confidential client information and questions over how the organisation responded to the whistleblower who originally raised concerns.

In this episode of The HR Room Podcast, Dave and Mary are joined by Rebecca Bowman, Head of Investigations at Insight HR, to examine the case through an Irish HR and workplace investigations lens.

They explore what employers can learn from the KPMG controversy, what constitutes a protected disclosure under Irish law, and why simply having an investigation process isn't enough if that process isn't independent, rigorous and fair.

They also discuss what HR should do when a protected disclosure lands on their desk, when an external investigator should be brought in, the danger of treating a whistleblower as the problem rather than addressing the underlying concern, and why a poorly handled investigation can ultimately create far greater reputational and organisational damage than the original allegation.

Finally, the conversation looks beyond individual investigations to organisational culture: do employees genuinely feel safe speaking up when the issue they're raising goes to the heart of how the organisation operates?

Topics include:

What happened in the KPMG Australia whistleblower case – and why it escalated so dramatically

What constitutes a protected disclosure under Irish law

How employers should respond when a protected disclosure is mixed in with a grievance or other workplace complaint

What HR and management should do when a potential protected disclosure is first received

When an organisation should consider appointing an independent external investigator

How organisations can ensure an investigation is fair, balanced and defensible

Why organisations should conduct a wider systems review after a serious workplace issue

What it really takes to create a culture where employees feel safe speaking up

The role of ethical leadership when allegations could have serious consequences for the organisation

 

Resources
Here are a few links to media articles covering the case: 

KPMG Australia cuts hundreds of workers and partner pay after audit scandal

Five key takeaways from parliamentary hearings into client leaks at KPMG

Macquarie drops KPMG Australia as auditor over whistleblower scandal

Leaks, lawyers and a whistleblower: how did KPMG’s failings emerge – and could more have been done?

Get in Touch
If you're not already following us on LinkedIn, we'd love to connect with you.

If you have suggestions for future podcast episodes, or would like to appear as a guest on The HR Room, contact Dave Corkery at dcorkery@insighthr.ie or connect with him on LinkedIn.

About The HR Room Podcast
The HR Room Podcast is brought to you by Insight HR, where we speak with HR leaders, legal experts and workplace specialists from across Ireland about the issues shaping the future of work.

If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with colleagues or friends.

We're always keen to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes.

For immediate HR support, contact Insight HR on 056 770 1060 or email info@insighthr.ie.

What can a toxic CEO, a disgruntled employee and a desert island teach us about good HR practice? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

In this episode of The HR Room Podcast, Dave and Mary are joined by Joe Redmond, HR Consultant at Insight HR, for another trip to the movies as they put the workplace practices in 2026's Send Help under the HR microscope.

The film follows Linda Liddell, a highly capable but socially awkward corporate strategist who finds herself stranded on a desert island with Bradley Preston – the toxic CEO who has repeatedly undermined her career. As the traditional workplace power dynamic begins to unravel, the film provides plenty of examples of exactly how not to manage people.

Using scenes from the film as a jumping-off point, Mary and Joe explore what these situations would look like in a real Irish workplace and what employers and HR professionals should do differently.

It's a slightly different – and considerably more cinematic – episode of The HR Room, but behind the desert island, plane crashes and Hollywood drama are some very real lessons about leadership, workplace culture, employee relations and fair process.

Because while you hopefully won't find yourself stranded on a desert island with a disgruntled employee anytime soon, the management decisions that got these characters there are much more familiar than you might think.

Here are the clips we discuss if you'd like to watch along:

Clip 1

Clip 2

Clip 3

Clip 4

Clip 5

Topics we cover include:

How managers should handle difficult conversations around promotions and career progression

The impact of power dynamics and poor management behaviour on employees

What to do when an employee claims a colleague is taking credit for their work

When undermining, exclusion and belittling behaviour could become a dignity at work issue

How HR should approach sensitive conversations around personal hygiene with empathy and privacy

Why employers shouldn't make assumptions about the circumstances behind an employee's personal presentation

What employers should do when an employee believes they've been unfairly denied a promotion

Why formal complaints are often the end result of a much longer series of workplace problems

When behaviour outside the physical workplace can still fall within an employer's remit

The importance of investigation, disciplinary and appeal processes when dismissal is being considered

What fair redundancy consultation and selection should look like in practice

Get in Touch
If you're not already following us on LinkedIn, we'd love to connect with you.

If you have suggestions for future podcast episodes, or would like to appear as a guest on The HR Room, contact Dave Corkery at dcorkery@insighthr.ie or connect with him on LinkedIn.

About The HR Room Podcast
The HR Room Podcast is brought to you by Insight HR, where we speak with HR leaders, legal experts and workplace specialists from across Ireland about the issues shaping the future of work.

If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with colleagues or friends.

We're always keen to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes.

For immediate HR support, contact Insight HR on 056 770 1060 or email info@insighthr.ie.