It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the economic downturn seen in the last 2 years has meant we’re all having to do more for less. A situation that is at best turbulent and far from ideal.

And against that background, it also won’t come as a surprise that for HR teams, the key trends for 2024 look like they’re going to focus on technology and the desire to automate more practices in order to devote as much ‘human’ time to key strategic tasks as possible

We all know the story of the vain and self-absorbed Emperor whose preoccupation with finery puts him at the mercy of two swindlers posing as weavers who sell him the most magnificent new clothes that are visible only to the cleverest and most competent people in the land.

Even though they cannot see the clothes as they are being ‘made’, the emperor and a succession of his advisers pretend otherwise so as not to be thought fools. The story ends (spoiler alert) with the emperor parading naked in the streets to the derision of the city folk while the conmen depart very much richer than when they arrived.

Last Christmas a friend of mine gave me a notebook which was titled Notes From Another Meeting That Should Have Been An Email.

The friend obviously knows me well. Over a long and successful career, I’ve developed a healthy and quite vocal dislike and mistrust of meetings that I’m invited to at work.

That’s not because I’m unwilling to be part of an information-sharing process. Anyone who’s a regular reader of these blogs will know, for example, that I’m a big advocate of ensuring communication is regular, open and transparent.

At some point in our careers, most of us will have been on one side or the other of a difficult work conversation.

Confrontation is never easy, no matter how gentle, how constructive, or how well-intentioned it may be. No one likes to be criticised or to be told they’re performing or behaving in a way that is anything less that constructive or positive.

For most of us, those conversations might just be the slightly awkward variety that are part and parcel of being young and making mistakes as we take our first steps up the career ladder.

Since the pandemic we’ve seen the workplace and workplace culture change in significant – and almost certainly permanent ways.

Perhaps the biggest change has been the fact that hybrid working has become the norm. Where flexible working used to be something that involved a formal request and, in many cases, a contract amendment, working from home is now part of the normal landscape.

But another area that has seen huge change is in the globalisation of companies and their workplaces.