Natalie Jayne Upton

Scaling fast? People Ops shouldn't be the thing that holds you back. Founders move quickly, but onboarding, offboarding, HR workflows, and compliance need structure to keep pace. Meet the People Ops Checklist for Early-Stage Teams: a free guide designed to help founders create the structure they need to grow. Use it to spot what’s missing, keep what’s working, and grow with a lot less chaos. https://lnkd.in/eYpSztZN

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The HR Morning Show returns with headlines, global trends, and a people-first lens on what’s actually working in talent. Today’s episode digs into the state of recruiting and retention with actionable ideas you can put to work this week. We kick off with The Global Report and the latest market signals, then hand the mic to our first guest, Kate Warman, who shares the inside view of navigating a full TA outsourcing event and what leaders can learn about process, governance, AI tooling, and keeping recruiting human during change. In our second guest segment, Tricia House unpacks the evolution of AI in HR—why a human-centered approach matters, how to build genuinely inclusive, skills-based hiring, why flexibility is non-negotiable for the future of work, and the competitive edge of moms in your workforce. We also check The Weather Report with Serge, spotlight upcoming events (including ERE in San Diego on Nov 4–5), and wrap with practical takeaways you can bring to your team today. Big thanks to our marquee sponsor, Keka, the all-in-one HR, payroll, and performance platform powering a better employee experience.

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INTERVIEW: How pay transparency and digital innovation are shaping the future of HR Laura Fink, people and culture director at HiBob, said: "To truly unlock the value of HR innovation, organisations must also invest in empathy and psychological safety." https://lnkd.in/ekvnUNC7

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🎙️  Mastering Climate Events: The guide - with Joanna O'Malley. The latest episode of Scaling Green-Tech welcomes its first expert guest: Joanna O'Malley, Partnerships Manager at NatureFinance. 🚀  Joanna brings frontline experience from major climate events like COP16 and London Climate Action Week, and she’s here to share how green-tech organisations can make the most out of events in this space. Too often, green-tech founders attend events without a clear strategy - missing crucial opportunities to build partnerships and amplify their message. 🤝  In this episode, we unpack how to prepare strategically for events, build authentic collaborations, and make sure your mission gets heard. As Joanna O'Malley puts it in the episode: “Make sure you’ve got something valuable to say, something valuable to add, and that you're having those conversations, not two weeks before the event - you’re building up the relationships throughout the year.” 📻  Tune in if you’re a green-tech founder or comms professional looking for practical, actionable advice on growing your network and increasing your influence.   🎧 Listen now: https://lnkd.in/eV5BM8Rs #GreenTech #ClimateTech #SustainableFinance #StrategicPartnerships #Events Matt Jaworski Katherine Keddie 🟢

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Inspiring climate career journeys, such as Chris Adams's, are a driving force behind the ClimateAction.tech CIC community! Chris Adams shares a powerful perspective: a climate career isn’t about business as usual, but about actively walking away by addressing the systemic issues and building something better.   Chris discusses the work that led to building thriving communities like CAT and Green Web Foundation, the challenges he faced in transitioning, and offers practical advice for those wanting to join the climate space. A must-read for anyone considering a purpose-driven career! https://lnkd.in/d6Vwmh5C #climatecareers #sustainability #leadership #impact #CATcommunity #climateaction

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Behavioural Alignment Poor behavioural alignment is one of the biggest reasons senior hires fail, yet interviews rarely uncover it. The JOH Partners Assessment Suite measures how someone thinks, leads, adapts, and responds under pressure. It supports hiring, promotions, and succession planning without needing a recruitment process behind it. Companies use the Suite to see beyond interview performance and understand true behavioural fit. If you want a closer look, we can show you a sample leadership report. https://lnkd.in/dUBmzfxh

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Big news: We're shaking up environmental strategy Most sustainability efforts fail not because of bad intentions, but because nobody understands why people aren't engaging with them. That's why Assured Clarity Limited has partnered with DeepFathom to launch Green Pulse - the first platform that combines environmental expertise with behavioural auditing. DeepFathom brings 25+ years of experience and patented technology that reveals how your organisation actually works (not just how you think it works). Their methodologies are academically validated and tested in MBA programmes. Together, we're helping UK organisations move beyond box-ticking to genuine environmental leadership. Because the gap between environmental strategy and execution? That's where real change happens. #Sustainability #ESG #Partnership #EnvironmentalStrategy #BCorp

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"Most recruiters claim to understand culture fit." But 83% of failed hires are due to poor cultural alignment. Here's how we achieved 100% success rate with one of the UK's fastest-growing businesses... 🎯 The Problem: Frontier Agriculture needed to scale rapidly while maintaining their unique culture. Traditional recruiters were flooding them with "qualified" candidates who just weren't clicking. 🛠️ The Approach: We threw out the standard recruitment playbook. Instead of just matching skills, we: • Embedded ourselves in their business for 8 years • Challenged their usual talent pools • Treated cultural alignment as non-negotiable 📊 The Stats (that shocked even us): • 100% CV to interview ratio • 1:2 CV to placement ratio • 100% candidate acceptance rate • Filled EVERY vacancy we touched • Sustained growth support over 8 years The secret? We stopped acting like recruiters. We became their internal talent partners, understanding both technical requirements AND the invisible cultural threads that held their success together. Result: From Transport Managers to Finance Directors, every hire brought new perspectives while strengthening their core culture. 🔑 The real lesson? True recruitment partnership isn't about filling roles. It's about understanding a business deeply enough to protect its culture while driving its evolution. 👉 Wrestling with people problems in your business? Drop us a message. Sometimes the solution isn't what you think it is.

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Earth Set Podcast Season 2. Episode 6. Bridging the Valley of Death: Scaling First-of-a-Kind Climate Tech in the UK “The UK builds climate startups… then loses them.” This week, Amy Rennison is joined by Sarah Mackintosh and Jim Totty to unpack one of the hardest stages in the climate transition: getting from pilot to first commercial project. Because while the UK is strong at early-stage innovation, and has capital available at later stages, something breaks in the middle. Technologies that work struggle to become projects that can actually be built. Drawing on recent research, this conversation explores what’s really happening at that point of failure. The discussion moves from defining what “FOAK” actually means, through the structural gaps in the UK system, to the realities companies face when trying to raise and deploy capital at scale. A few things stood out. 🌍 First, FOAK is a different game entirely. This is not venture scaling, it’s project delivery. Companies move from selling potential to proving bankability, with a completely different set of requirements. 🌍 Second, the shift in mindset is brutal. Founders go from pitching something novel and high-upside to convincing investors it is low-risk, predictable, and financeable, often with little support in making that transition. 🌍 Third, capability gaps are as important as capital. Project finance, contracting, risk allocation, offtakes, these are not native skills in most teams, but they are essential to getting projects over the line. 🌍 Fourth, the system itself is cautious and misaligned. Public capital is constrained, private capital is risk-sensitive, and key actors — investors, insurers, engineers — are not operating a shared model of how FOAKs work. 🌍 And finally, the opportunity is real - and distributed. Hundreds of potential projects across the UK, across sectors and regions, are moving towards this stage. The question is whether they get built here, or elsewhere. The UK doesn’t lack innovation, but it does lacks a consistent way to turn it into infrastructure. 🎧 The full conversation is now live on the Earth Set podcast: https://lnkd.in/eb5h3rr3 #ClimateTech #FOAK #ScaleUp #EnergyTransition #IndustrialStrategy #NetZero #ProjectFinance

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Director Sarah Mackintosh recently joined the Earth Set podcast to discuss Bridging the Valley of Death: Scaling First-of-a-Kind Tech in the UK. As highlighted in Cleantech for UK’s latest annual report (out soon), the UK cleantech sector continues to face a persistent challenge: while we excel at developing innovative technologies, too often we fail to retain and scale them domestically. Tune in to hear Sarah’s insights on how we can close this gap and unlock the UK’s full potential in clean technology 👇

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If you are interested in the UK’s climate transition to reach Net Zero, then we highly recommend reading this House of Commons Library briefing: “The UK’s Plans and Progress to Reach Net Zero by 2050” https://lnkd.in/gyF3sntX Here is a quick breakdown of what it covers and why it might be worth a read, especially if you work in energy, policy, sustainability or business transformation. • Legal and Strategic Framework: it explains the UK’s legally binding Net Zero under the Climate Change Act and how the system of carbon budgets work. • How policy has changed over time: The briefing walks through past strategies (such as the 2021 Net Zero Strategy), court rulings (where previous plans have been judged as insufficient, and the government’s latest plan, the 2025 Carbon Budget & Growth Delivery Plan. • Progress to date: it shows real progress, where emissions have fallen since 1990 and where there are gaps. Not all emissions reductions needed to meet future carbon budgets are backed by what the report calls “credible plans”. • Sector-by-sector analysis: key sectors are analysed, with a clear eye on where the biggest challenges remain. • Governance and risk: the report highlights legal risk (past strategies being struck down) and governance risk, stressing that ambitious targets are not enough without robust delivery frameworks. It is worth a read as it sets out the UK’s current position, explains how progress is measured, and doesn’t shy away from where plans still fall short. It also offers useful context for reflecting on your own net-zero plans and how realistic your delivery pathways and timelines are within your business.

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Transform Your Hiring with AI — Faster, Smarter & More Efficient! In today’s competitive talent market, traditional hiring processes just can’t keep up. That’s where AI-powered recruitment platforms like Ox Hire AI step in — helping employers find, engage, and hire top talent faster than ever before. Oxhire AI Here’s how AI is revolutionising talent acquisition: 🔹 Automated screening & candidate matching to surface best-fit applicants instantly. Oxhire AI 🔹 AI video interviews & assessments that evaluate skills objectively and at scale. Oxhire AI 🔹 Reduced time-to-hire by minimising manual work and accelerating decision cycles. Oxhire AI 🔹 Enhanced candidate experience with smart communication and fast feedback loops. Oxhire AI AI isn’t replacing recruiters — it’s empowering them to focus on what humans do best: building relationships, making strategic decisions, and driving culture-fit hiring. 👉 If you want to stay competitive in 2025 and beyond, adopting AI in your recruitment workflow isn’t optional — it’s essential. #Recruitment #TalentAcquisition #AI #HRTech #FutureOfWork #OxHireAI https://lnkd.in/gWM5yqZB

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Discover how hiring managers view Gen AI in recruitment, the 'trust disconnect' with candidates, and how 'honesty contracts' can restore confidence in assessments. Read the Latest full News - https://lnkd.in/drNkY_FD #HRTechEdge #AIinRecruitment #TalentAcquisition #HiringManagers #TrustInHiring #GenAI #RecruitmentAssessments #HonestyContracts #FutureofWork #HRTechnology Talogy

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What if screening didn’t slow you down? When everything lives in one workflow, you’re not chasing paper trails or switching between five systems. You’re creating a candidate journey that’s automated, compliant, and branded—without the admin overload. Recruitment teams using this approach are seeing time-to-hire drop by as much as 50%, with reference checks that once took weeks now turned around in days. The takeaway? Screening isn’t just a compliance box-tick—it’s a competitive advantage when done right. 👉 Want to dive deeper into why screening matters and how to streamline your process? Read the full blog here: https://ow.ly/x33M50Wr39b

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