Lucy Adams

Lucy Adams is on a mission to help organisations bring their human resources departments into the 21st century. Through her agency, Disruptive HR, she aims to provoke the HR community into creating new ways to support businesses in today’s complex and ambiguous world. In doing so she challenges leaders and HR professionals to learn from sources as varied as management theory, consumer organisations, marketing, neuroscience, and the latest thinking on motivation and reward. She also addresses how businesses can deal with public scrutiny, and advises them on leadership and change.

Lucy was HR director at the BBC during one of its most turbulent periods. Responsible for all aspects of employee relations, reward, training, and development, she also reduced the corporation’s management by over 30%. In her five-year tenure Lucy witnessed four director generals come and go, oversaw the move to the Salford site, and coped with numerous and very public crises, including executive payoffs and the Savile scandal.

Prior to working at the BBC Lucy was group HR director at Serco, the government services organisation; this came after a period working for the law firm Eversheds.

Along with her business partner, Lucy runs workshops and consults on many topics within the HR arena. She specialises in helping HR and other business professionals to step back from their old assumptions about motivating people and to see more creative and effective ways of engaging employees.