The HR Room Podcast

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.

We tend to think of procrastination and productivity problems at work as issues of motivation, discipline or time management. But what if the real barrier preventing someone from getting started is emotional?

In this episode of The HR Room Podcast, Dave is joined by Brendan Mahan, internationally recognised ADHD coach, host of the ADHD Essentials Podcast and author of Overcoming the Wall of Awful, to explore why people can sometimes find seemingly straightforward tasks incredibly difficult to begin.

Brendan introduces the concept of the “Wall of Awful” – the emotional barrier that can develop between us and tasks we've previously struggled with. Built from experiences of frustration, disappointment, guilt, shame and failure, that wall can make simply getting started feel exhausting. 

The conversation explores what this means in the workplace, particularly for managers and HR professionals dealing with performance issues, neurodiversity, procrastination and burnout. Brendan explains how changing the conversation from “Why aren't you doing this?” to understanding what's making the task difficult can create a safer and more productive route towards solving the underlying problem.

Guest
Brendan Mahan — Internationally Recognised ADHD Coach, Host of the ADHD Essentials Podcast & Author of Overcoming the Wall of Awful

Topics include:

How difficult experiences and emotions create barriers around particular tasks

Why recognising and naming those emotional barriers can make them easier to overcome

How managers and HR professionals can use the concept when addressing performance issues

Why neurodivergent employees may encounter more – and bigger – “Walls of Awful”

The workplace behaviours associated with ADHD that managers can easily misinterpret

Brendan's five ways people respond to the Wall of Awful

Why “smashing through” tasks using anxiety or anger can contribute to burnout

How body doubling, music and changing your emotional state can help you get started

How high-pressure and “hustle” workplace cultures can make burnout more likely

Why compassion, dignity and psychological safety matter when someone is struggling

Key Takeaways for HR

Don't immediately interpret difficulty as a lack of motivation.

Depersonalise the problem.

Look at the employee and the environment.

Be careful about cultures that reward constantly “pushing through”.

Create enough psychological safety for people to solve the problem.

Put the problem on the other side of the table.

About Brendan's Book
Brendan's book, Overcoming the Wall of Awful, is available to buy now. You can also hear more from Brendan on the ADHD Essentials Podcast.

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.

Training and development can be a powerful tool for improving performance, but not every performance problem is a skills or knowledge problem. Sometimes what an employee really needs isn't another course or LMS module – it's clearer expectations, better feedback, coaching or simply an honest conversation.

In this episode of The HR Room Podcast, Dave and Mary Cullen are joined by Ann Halloran, Talent & Learning Development Professional and author of Helping Others Learn in the Workplace, to explore how managers and HR professionals can distinguish between genuine learning needs and wider performance issues.

Together, they discuss why managers can be too quick to reach for training as a solution, the importance of properly diagnosing the cause of underperformance, and why avoiding difficult conversations can allow relatively straightforward issues to become much bigger problems. They also explore what makes workplace learning genuinely effective, how managers can help new skills stick after training, and what organisations can do to create a stronger culture of continuous learning.

Guests
Ann Halloran — Talent & Learning Development Professional | Author, Helping Others Learn in the Workplace

Topics include:

How to tell whether poor performance is really a training issue

Why managers sometimes use training to avoid difficult conversations

Taking a diagnostic approach to performance problems

Ann's RIPPLE framework for designing effective workplace learning

When performance issues may require a structured performance improvement process

The role of mentoring, peer learning, coaching and reflective practice

How organisations can create a genuine learning culture

Why developing managers is central to improving employee performance and engagement

Key Takeaways for HR
Diagnose before you prescribe. Before recommending training, establish what's actually preventing someone from performing. Training won't solve unclear expectations, poor motivation, workplace conflict or a manager's reluctance to address an issue directly.

Training doesn't end when the course finishes. Managers play a critical role in helping employees transfer learning back into their day-to-day work through reinforcement, accountability, encouragement and ongoing feedback.

Don't ask employees to self-diagnose. Giving people access to a large library of LMS modules isn't the same as identifying their development needs. Managers need to be actively involved in understanding where performance or capability gaps exist.

Sometimes the answer is a conversation. If someone has the ability to perform but isn't doing so, another training course may achieve very little. Clear, specific and timely feedback can be far more effective.

Invest in your managers. Direct line managers have an enormous influence on how employees learn, develop and perform. Organisations that want a genuine learning culture need to equip managers with the communication, feedback, conflict management and performance management skills to support their teams effectively.

About Ann's Book
Ann's book, Helping Others Learn in the Workplace, is a practical guide designed for managers and trainers who are responsible for helping others learn but may never have been taught how to train effectively themselves. It is available to purchase here.

You can get the free checklist we mentioned in the podcast here.

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.