It's Time for Change

It's Time for Change Let’s put the human factor back into business. Real change doesn’t come from rigid frameworks. It’s not about ‘fixing’ people.

Helping leaders lead people (not just projects) | Culture, performance, & leadership | Partnerships, strategy, & support | Chartered Psychologist | 🎙 Host of Beyond the Water Cooler It comes from conversations that make space for reflection, connection, and clarity - and from support that meets people where they’re at. I support leaders navigating the more human (& often messier) side of work - the stuff that affects how people feel, how they show up, and how well they perform. In a nutshell: People Strategy = Leadership, Culture, and Performance. Yes, I’m a psychologist, consultant, and coach, but mostly I’m the person organisations come to when something’s simply not working and they don't know what to do about it - whether it’s a team dynamic that’s off, a manager who's overwhelmed, a culture that doesn’t match what’s written on the wall - that’s when I get a call. And it’s certainly not about just ticking boxes. It’s about understanding what’s going on beneath the surface and creating the conditions people need to thrive - so your culture holds strong, even when the pressure’s on. There’s no one-size-fits-all-off-the-shelf-quick-fix. Whether I’m working with you through a retained partnership, facilitating team development, or coaching leaders through complex people challenges, it’s always:

- Bespoke
- Practical
- Psychology-backed
- Human-focused

Oh, and often - quite fun! Because when we get people right, we get business right. Fancy a chat about how we might work together?

📧 lisa@itstimeforchange.co.uk
🌍 www.itstimeforchange.co.uk
☕ https://itstimeforchange.co.uk/contact

🎙 Beyond the Water Cooler is where I chat with brilliant guests about leadership, culture, neurodiversity, burnout, and all the real stuff that affects how we work. Listen here: https://itstimeforchange.co.uk/podcast

🖊 Or check out my blog for honest advice and topical takes on people strategy, performance, mental health, and more: https://itstimeforchange.co.uk/blog

🌟 Client feedback? Head to Google or check out the testimonials on my site. They’ll tell you what it’s like to work with me - and why my clients tend to stick around. Off-duty you’ll find me hiking, travelling in our motorhome, wrangling children, and definitely enjoying a G&T (or 2).

We like to believe that being an “employer of choice” comes down to pay and perks, but it often has more to do with how ...
19/03/2026

We like to believe that being an “employer of choice” comes down to pay and perks, but it often has more to do with how people are treated on an ordinary day.

What comes up, again and again, is how much people notice when their workplace actually cares about their lived experience - not just the values it claims to care about. The challenge is, it’s one thing to say your leadership is “human-centred” or your culture is “inclusive” - it's quite another to see what that really looks like...

when things get busy,
or people want different things from their work,
or someone’s having a tough time in their personal life.

The message is clear: genuine care, respect for what matters to individuals, and compassion are not “soft” at all - in fact, they sit right next to high standards and accountability. The best cultures don’t trade one off one for the other.

I had an honest conversation with Robin Rogers, Director of Economy and Place at Oxfordshire County Council, digging into what actually matters day to day.

Would be interested to hear how you would define an 'employer of choice'. If you want to listen, the new episode is now up: https://itstimeforchange.co.uk/captivate-podcast/what-being-an-employer-of-choice-really-means-in-todays-world

18/03/2026

What's my one consistent piece of advice?
Enable people to be human, at work.

That's something I have to keep reminding leaders because it's too easy to focus on outcomes by numbers.

One way of going about that is by doing less to achieve more.

That creates the space for us to:

- do what is needed of us WELL by removing the barrier that is stress, caused by too much on our plates
- adjust how we're operating in a changing context, because we notice
- identify and address the little blocks that stop people being happy and performing well.

When we focus on those incremental steps, the cumulative impact on happiness and performance over time is astounding.

Sometimes the best thing we can do is pause, listen, and clear the path for our teams to be at their best, one small step at a time.

How are you creating the space for your workforce to be human?


Alliance of Independent Agencies

If harassment is still happening in your organisation, it’s a leadership issue.Not a policy gap. Not a training gap. A l...
17/03/2026

If harassment is still happening in your organisation, it’s a leadership issue.

Not a policy gap. Not a training gap. A leadership issue.

Data suggests that is probably IS still happening - and the numbers make for uncomfortable reading. In one major survey, a quarter of women reported sexual assault at work. Many more described offensive jokes, unwanted advances, being shown explicit images. These aren’t isolated incidents in “other” organisations. When you apply those numbers to your own team, it lands differently.

What stays with me is how rarely people report. Not because it didn’t matter. But because people question themselves first. They downplay it. They worry about consequences. Or they’ve learned, over time, that speaking up changes very little.

This is where leadership comes in. Culture is shaped less by the policy and more by what happens in small, uncomfortable moments. What gets challenged. What gets ignored. What people see senior leaders tolerate.

Real leadership here is preventative. It’s specific. It’s asking better questions. It’s training managers to notice subtle shifts in confidence or behaviour. It’s being clear that safety at work is not negotiable.

I’ve written more about what this looks like in practice in the piece below.
This is one we can’t afford to soften.

https://itstimeforchange.co.uk/leadership-and-harassment/

12/03/2026

Too often we tell people to be more aware, but rarely say what that actually means in practice.

What I notice, particularly with leaders and managers under pressure, is how easily we overlook the small ways people protect themselves at work. The subtle adjustments that signal caution - changing a route, staying close to colleagues, carrying a conversation differently.

It’s easy to assume that if something doesn’t affect us directly, it isn’t an issue for the team. Yet organisational culture often lives in the moments we don’t talk about.

Workplace harassment remains worryingly prevalent despite policies and procedures. Addressing it requires far more than reactive measures. It asks for honest conversations, active leadership, and clear cultural boundaries - not simply hoping people will speak up.

I’ve pulled together key insights and practical actions in ‘Tackling Workplace Harassment: Leadership Responsibility in Action’ for anyone serious about creating safer, more respectful workplaces.

You can download the resource here: https://itstimeforchange.activehosted.com/f/45

11/03/2026

Trying to explain what you do for a living… in one clear sentence… is surprisingly hard.

Which is exactly what I’ve been wrestling with for the past few months while building my new website.

But it’s finally LIVE.

The process forced me to stop and properly reflect on how the work has evolved over the last few years.

What started as conversations about workplace wellbeing has grown into deeper work with organisations around leadership, culture, psychological safety and the messy, very human realities of work.

The new site captures that much more clearly.

It also includes a few things I’ve been quietly developing in the background that I’m really excited to share more about over the coming months.

A big thank you to the brilliant people who helped bring it to life behind the scenes. Stephanie O'Callaghan, Natali Williams and the team at LIME Marketing, Clark Wiseman.

If you’re curious, the link is in the comments.

And if you’ve ever had to describe what you do in a way that actually makes sense to other people… you’ll know exactly why this took a while.

10/03/2026

Change can feel threatening when it’s done to you. The experience is entirely different for those driving it.

Listening to Alex Rae talk about introducing AI, I keep reflecting on how simple, clear messages and honest conversations help manage those ripples of anxiety. What often happens is leaders get so caught up in the mechanics of the project, they forget how unsettling it can be for those on the receiving end.

Being involved in planning or rolling out change, you see all the moving parts. You know the intention. But if you’re not in that inner circle, it’s easy for imagination to take over - people start to worry about jobs, their place in the team, the future. Uncertainty grows in the silence between updates.

Leadership isn’t just about moving things forward. It’s about noticing where fear or uncertainty might be taking root, and meeting it with clarity, not just another big announcement.

Let me know what you’re noticing in your own teams.

🎧 Listen to the whole conversation here: https://itstimeforchange.co.uk/captivate-podcast/prepared-or-panicked-how-leaders-build-resilient-teams/

International Women’s Day surfaces an uncomfortable tension: we celebrate progress, yet often assume harassment and bias...
05/03/2026

International Women’s Day surfaces an uncomfortable tension: we celebrate progress, yet often assume harassment and bias are largely resolved in our workplaces.

Organisations often line up behind statements and policies, yet the day-to-day culture tells a much quieter story. Far too many women still experience harassment at work, and most won’t report it. Sometimes, it's not recognised - harassment is not always about headline-grabbing acts but the small moments that get normalised or brushed off, the kind nobody wants to talk about.

Add to that the reality many leaders assume things are fine unless someone reports otherwise. But if nearly everyone affected stays silent, what does that tell us about the real atmosphere beneath the surface?

Talking with Prisca Bradley, employment and discrimination specialist, left me reflecting on how easily organisations default to compliance, when real change comes from leadership that takes responsibility. Managers who invite honest dialogue, normalise complexity, and create space for people to speak up - not because it’s written in a policy, but because it’s lived in practice.

What would it look like to move from compliance to responsibility in your organisation?

🎧Listen here: https://itstimeforchange.co.uk/captivate-podcast/harassment-at-work-the-leadership-responsibility-we-cant-ignore

Preparedness at work isn’t about predicting what’s coming next.It’s about whether your people are equipped to respond wh...
03/03/2026

Preparedness at work isn’t about predicting what’s coming next.

It’s about whether your people are equipped to respond when things don’t go to plan.

That came through clearly in a recent conversation I had with Alex Rae. We were talking about resilience, and not the kind that’s framed as “just cope and carry on”. What actually makes the difference is whether teams trust their own judgement and feel able to act, rather than freezing or waiting to be told what to do.

I keep seeing how easily leaders slip into feeling they need to have every answer. The unintended consequence is dependency. Pressure builds at the top, confidence drains lower down, and everyone feels more stretched than they need to be.

What helps more than anything is clarity and communication. When leaders stay quiet or vague, uncertainty fills the gaps. People imagine the worst. Simple, timely messages, and space for questions, calm things far more effectively than complex plans ever do.

And we can’t ignore the emotional side of change. When people don’t feel supported or safe, performance suffers. Not because they don’t care, but because they’re human.

Preparedness shows up in everyday moments. How managers listen. How learning is encouraged. How challenge and care sit side by side.

I’ve written more about this way of thinking in the piece below.
I keep seeing different versions of this in teams.
What are you seeing?

https://itstimeforchange.co.uk/preparedness-starts-with-people/

26/02/2026

Caring for people at work is often mistaken for removing challenge altogether.

What keeps coming up in conversations with leaders and managers is this sense that if we’re to support our workforce, it must mean making things easier, less demanding, more comfortable. But that tends to miss something critical. Growth, progress, and - frankly - the work itself should come with challenge built in.

The trick isn’t to eliminate it, but to build capacity - to actually support people as they move through uncertainty or change, rather than simply shielding them from it.

In practice, I watch how this plays out when a team is stretched or a business faces choppy waters. Sometimes we try to take the edge off the pressure too quickly, when real support is about creating enough safety for people to stay engaged with the challenge, without burning out.

It’s a messy, shifting balance. I wouldn’t claim there’s a neat answer. What I am sure of is that the most resilient teams I see aren’t the least challenged – they’re the best supported.

Download my free Insight to Action resource: Preparedness, Possibility, and People - How Leaders Build Resilient Teams - for practical steps for a more human approach to leadership, ready when you are: https://itstimeforchange.activehosted.com/f/43

17/02/2026

The way organisations treat data often says more about company culture than you think.

What I keep noticing: teams work hard to produce reports, track every metric, tick every box. But who is actually paying attention?

Lorna Moles put it plainly - if you stop sharing data and no one asks for it, what does that say about how connected leadership is to the realities of work? I see this a lot with management meetings. Data gets air time, but the real stories or underlying trends rarely do. Headcount, turnover, engagement metrics - a few minutes on the agenda, a cursory glance, then off to the next topic.

It’s easy to assume that collecting and sharing information means we’re running a careful, thoughtful business. In practice, what often matters more is whether leaders actually pause, ask questions, and make space for deeper conversation.

Reporting isn’t pointless, but it does reveal a lot about priorities. Are we performing for the process? Or are we performing for everyone to thrive and to deliver value for the business?

Tune in and hear what happens when you question whether a report is really adding value https://itstimeforchange.co.uk/captivate-podcast/making-people-data-matter-from-reporting-to-real-influence/

Inspiring day last week with Hitachi Energy for the first of 6 development days for their grads. Gemma & I took them thr...
16/02/2026

Inspiring day last week with Hitachi Energy for the first of 6 development days for their grads.

Gemma & I took them through what it means to be a scientist in the workplace, how to hypothesise about challenges & then how to design effective experiments to nudge practice.

When we make time to think about how we show up & engage, how we want to be, & what we need to be, it really shifts the dial on performance.

Afterwards I sat in the train station feeling tired but energised at the same time. This is an impressive group of people & I’m already looking forward to round 2 in March.

Never expected to experience being on a cargo ship! But that’s what happened yesterday… in rural Oxfordshire - who would...
16/02/2026

Never expected to experience being on a cargo ship! But that’s what happened yesterday… in rural Oxfordshire - who would have thought! 🚢

It was fascinating getting a completely different insight to HR Wallingford from my usual view of their leaders. Visiting in a different capacity as part of the Thames Valley Chamber of Commerce, I was lucky enough to visit the simulation centre… impressive stuff.

Thanks to Claire Madle & Natasha Staines for the HR Forum. Jeff Kong - your suggestion to test alternative approaches resonated with me. Jonathan Matthews & Rosemary McLean - I enjoyed hearing about the Career Deal & am looking forward to talking more about how organisations identify what it is they need in terms of talent. In my experience, many aren’t quite clear enough.

I can also recommend the cafe at Howbery Business Park (the home of HR Wallingford) who do an awesome hot chocolate (thank you Paul Maclennan)!

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