And I mean, what's your view now having been inside it for, I suppose, as we said, last 10 years? years or 20 years in HR, of credibility with the senior leaders in an organization? Is it very much now seen as part of the leadership of the business?

I started in retail over 20 years ago, and part of the role of the HR team where I started would have been just coming off the back of having responsibility for personnel files, and making sure that there was a hairdresser available to kind of provide people with support.

And that was, you know, on-site massage, that kind of vibe.

The profession's in a profoundly different space now.

But what's happened, I think, over the last... let's say 15 years let's go with that is uh the profession has started to focus on the value it would like to add rather than the value that organization needs from it at times and it's not universal i think people talk about hr having a problem hr having a chat i know some brilliantly well regarded hr teams doing absolutely fantastic work i know you know ceos that absolutely wholly rely on but when you start talking about problems in a remote way, as in the function would like you to do this rather than this is how we can solve for the business.

I think that provides a genuine challenge for organisations.

And as times get tighter and economic situation isn't kind at the moment in any dimension, I think one that invites organizations to do is to evaluate all the work they're doing going is this the most critical thing that we could be doing and that's where your positioning and your alignment as your activity needs to be absolutely in harmony with what the organization is trying to do so i think it's that there are lots of things that the profession does that um it might try and justify us because this is the right thing to do because this is the best practice start with business problem I remember speaking at a conference years ago on someone asked me about well-being.

Our evidence, would you say evidence and judgment now become the most valuable skills that an HR leader can have?

So in the next, say, five years, what new types of jobs do you think might be out there that you might be catering for, really?

That's a trap, right? That is an absolute trap.

So the really interesting thing is, look, the If you went back five years and tried to predict what was happening now, you'd be a million miles off.

I think the key thing is, organisations need to be better at scanning the landscape.

Individuals need to think about, in five years' time, what will I not want to have slept on? There is no version of what people are doing currently where ignoring the current trends is going to make sense in terms of people's careers in five years' time.

So are people going to have to adapt and reconfigure? Yes.

I think we'll learn more actually over the next 18 months and that will firm up.

There's almost no option other than to kind of go with the flow and that's exciting but I suppose if you're 35 it's more worrying.