Living with Uncertainty: The Importance of Transformation, Culture, and Talent

In recent years, transformation skills have become increasingly important at the board level, with culture and talent rising high on the agenda. Yet, there’s still a noticeable absence of HR professionals in the boardroom. Why?

In this episode of the Better Boards Podcast Series, Dr. Sabine Dembkowski speaks with Devyani P. Vaishampayan, Remco Chair and NED at Norman Broadbent Plc and Supply Chain Coordination Limited, and Independent NED on the Audit Board of ForvisMazars. Devyani is a Fellow at Chapter Zero and a Board Mentor with Critical Eye. She recently exited her AI Innovation Hub, having spent seven years advising corporates on AI, leadership, and the future of work. Before that, she was a global FTSE 30 CHRO with a 30-year career leading complex, multi-billion-dollar organisations.

“It’s still quite rare to find HR professionals on the board… There’s a perception that HR lacks commercial acumen.”

Devyani argues that HR leaders can earn their place at the board table by showing strong business insight—understanding financials, customer impact, and strategic goals. This may involve gaining broader experience outside HR or pursuing entrepreneurial ventures to deepen their perspective.

“Everyone’s talking about AI, but very few realise how fast the change is happening.”

Boards have always dealt with change, but today’s pace, especially with AI and geopolitical shifts, is unprecedented. AI adds speed to transformation and presents both opportunity and risk. Boards must understand their potential while managing risks like bias, data privacy, and employee trust. Devyani warns against overregulation and urges boards to take a more informed, proactive approach.

“Boards need to lead more in culture and talent—and be hands-on.”

According to Devyani, high-performing boards do three things well:

1. Engage specialists in culture and transformation to support the executive team.
2. Stay connected by engaging directly with employees—some boards spend two days in open forums to better understand workforce sentiment.
3. Lead by example, especially board chairs, who should champion values and culture, not just delegate to the executive team.

“Boards need to act as mentors to the executive team.”

While some executives prefer boards to be hands-off, Devyani believes informed boards should act as sounding boards. Chairs can match board members with executives for mentoring, creating deeper support systems without overwhelming either side. Cross-committee conversations and subcommittees can also foster this dynamic.

Top 3 Takeaways for effective boards:

1. HR leaders—like CFOs—interact closely with boards and should use that access to build trust and position themselves for future board roles.
2. Broaden your skill set. Go beyond your core function to become more valuable and board-ready.
3. Get hands-on with AI. Understand its real-world implications for making informed decisions as a board member.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Living with uncertainty, the importance of transformation, culture and talent. Welcome to the BetterBots podcast series. The podcast for chairs, CEOs, non-executive directors, company secretaries, and their advisors. Every episode is filled with practical insights and learnings from those inside the boardrooms. We discuss what really matters and highlight actionable steps you can take to enhance the performance of your board. Frequent listeners know that we conduct board evaluations. In almost every board evaluation we conducted in the last two years, we hear about the importance of trying transformation, culture and talent. And yet, These exact skills are very often lacking in boardrooms. So I'm absolutely delighted to talk with Devyani Vaishampayan. I hope I pronounced this correctly. Devyani is REMCO chair and NED at Norman Broadband PLC and Supply Chain Coordination Limited and an independent non-executive director on the audit board of Forrest Mazars. She's a fellow at Chapter Zero, an organization focused on climate and board directors and a board mentor with Critical Eye. Devyani, thank you so, so much for making time and contributing to the BetterBots podcast series.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22

And thank you so much, Sabine, for the invite. I'm really looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_00: 1:26

Devyani, you have served on so many large, really complex organizations for over 30 years as a chief HR officer. And I frequently see in our board evaluations that there is a gap between the perceived importance of HR and the state of development of real HR knowledge on boards. First question, why are so few HR professionals taking a seat at the top table?

SPEAKER_01: 1:53

Well, your rights have been that it's still quite rare to find HR professionals on the board. And I think because there's a perception that HR is a support function, that HR professionals lack business acumen, and therefore they can't be a strong partner to the board. But I personally think a little differently. However, it also depends, I think, if HR professionals actually demonstrate a few things that are different. The first is it's really important that you demonstrate a commercial mindset now it's easy to say that and there is an opportunity but there are still some HR heads who are not part of the group exec team so I think it's really important not just to be a part of the team but to think of any business conversations within the context of commercials financials business case impact on the customer rather than just having an internal view and I think one way to do that is is often to take up a role outside of HR, which again, probably few HR professionals have done. But even, for example, I did a market strategy role, a market planning role. You could do a customer facing role. And I think that makes you a little more rounded. I think what also helped me personally is I was an entrepreneur for eight years. So I had to raise money. I had to run a business. And then I completed a successful exit. So I think if you keep an eye out for ways to develop your commercial acumen, I think HR professionals can become more valuable.

SPEAKER_00: 3:24

Absolutely. I mean, particularly in light of the topic of this podcast and what we are seeing, it's really important that an organization has the ability to transform. Culture has become much, much more important. And as we all know, the war for talent is on. And in light of all these challenges and the sheer speed of change, we really need these abilities to And explain to us why all of this is so crucial now.

SPEAKER_01: 3:54

Well, I think it's getting really crucial. And I'm glad you used the word crucial because it's not just important, it's getting crucial. And that's not because... change and transformation wasn't happening earlier. All organizations have been facing, you know, changes in markets, changing in customers, geographies. But I think the speed of change today is very different, whether it's geopolitical, whether it's the way customer expectations can overnight change. And then, of course, we've seen the last few weeks how tariffs and completely unexpected things, they are big factors and the organization needs to realign and re-pivot very, very, very quickly. And that speed is something that wasn't seen earlier. The second factor, I think, that is contributing to this is the pervasive kind of influence of technology. Now it's no longer about, oh, a technology transformation is your back office or it's a project. I think on all fronts, whether it's your business model, whether it's customers, whether it's employees, whether it's everything, technology is like, you know, not just all-encompassing, but again, the speed, gen AI. So I think what a lot of organizations are grappling with, therefore, is how do you have the right leadership capability to deal with challenges which are beginning to look very different? How do you have skills and capabilities within your workforce which can help you deal again with this? And last but not the least, how do you have a culture that is far more agile, that is where employees still feel engaged, given that levels of trust between employees and management is decreasing very rapidly. So the whole issue of culture and transformation now and the challenges are looking very different, primarily because of the speed of change.

SPEAKER_00: 5:45

And what impact does AI have on all of this? probably make it even faster.

SPEAKER_01: 5:50

Well, I think it's a cliche now, but again, every second person is talking about AI, but very few realize how swift the change is happening. And personally, as someone who's been very involved with AI over the last eight years, I think AI is both an opportunity, but from a board's perspective, it's also a risk. And so you have to understand both. If I look at the workforce, which is really my area of specialization, there is no doubt there is going to be an impact on jobs. Either jobs will disappear or they're going to be restructured and it's happening very quickly. But equally, I think there is an opportunity here in terms of the skills needed and the capabilities which are going to look very different given how organization roles are changing. So jobs are disappearing. Skills and capabilities need to look different. But equally, I think engagement levels, AI can be an opportunity to improve engagement. I mean, some of the AI solutions I've worked with very closely, whether it's capturing culture, whether it's capturing sentiment, but also engagement things such as coaching, mentoring, which earlier needed a lot of investment, was meant only for senior levels. I think you can deploy AI in a very cost-effective manner so that you can give it, almost democratize the use of it across a much larger population there. So there's a huge opportunity in terms of leveraging AI. But equally, I think you need to understand the risks. There's the risk of data privacy. A lot of employee data, increasingly, it's not just about your name and address. There's so much about employees that organizations now hold. So the data risk is definitely a risk. But data privacy, then you also have the risk of bias because the more AI solutions you do use, whether it's for recruitment, whether it's internally for performance, you are going to have to make sure that bias is not there. And currently, there is certainly a level of fear amongst employees about how AI is going to impact the jobs. So I think, again, as boards, and I'm really talking as someone who's a board member here, Boards also have to get far more cognizant about this. And let me give you a very simple example. Just last month, a large international law firm did for one week, they kind of monitored employees, how employees were using chat GPT. And they found for a workforce of 1,000 employees, they found there were 50,000 hits to Grammarly, which is a very basic AI tool. There were 32,000 hits for a chat GPT, the free one that you get available. And what was the response? They promptly turned everything off. They put in a rule saying anybody who wants to use any kind of chat GPT or AI has to get formal permission from the IT function. Now, This simple example illustrates how most senior management and boards don't understand how a response like this is going to alienate employees. Rather than acknowledging this is something that can be useful, productive, But you have to manage the risks of making sure that information doesn't leak out or access to it is done in the right way. I think their response is to clamp down. And this is a very fast changing environment. And so boards have to get far more cognizant about how AI needs to be used and deployed and what its impact is.

SPEAKER_00: 9:22

Let's come back. I mean, we could talk for hours also on AI, but let's come back to our topic of transformation, culture and talent. What are effective boards really doing to tackle these issues? What have you seen working?

SPEAKER_01: 9:38

So I think three things that I've seen the boards I'm working on who are handling this well do. The first is every board I'm on, they brought me in because... are considered to be a specialist around culture and talent. So I think there is an element of now understanding that not every CFO or CEO can really have the kind of in-depth understanding of how to manage this change, but also make sure that the exec team is putting into place the right systems, the processes that they all joined up and you're therefore effectively leveraging your resources in a very focused manner. So I think getting more specialist skills is good boards are doing more of that. I think the second thing is Boards are getting far more hands-on in this area. So, for example, the board of bazaars that I sit on, the entire board gets involved in doing two days of employee meetings. This is cross-employee. It's an open forum. There's no execs person available. So it's completely open. And there's a lot of feedback you can get from employees on how they're thinking, how they're feeling, their concerns, issues, etc. The leadership conference every year, we had the audit quality conference every year. But even strategy, it's not about the final strategy that often gets presented to us. Last year, we attended a two-day meeting of the exec team. And so in a way, it was really you're a very hands-on feel of how are execs really developing the strategy. So I think a lot of different touch points to get information around culture, talent, leadership capability, not just relying on the annual survey results which get presented to the board. A third example is I'm on the board of NHS Supply Chain. And there again, the chair has taken the lead around values. So the business is going through a lot of change, transformation, new set of values, rather than just leaving it to the exec team. I think the chair has said this is fundamental, given the change the organization is going through. And so I think In summary, the board needs to lead more on this area, provide more engagement, but also be more hands-on in understanding what's happening on the ground.

SPEAKER_00: 11:57

That's an interesting point because you said hands-on at board level. I know quite some executives from the interviews we do as part of board effectiveness evaluations say, that have a real problem if the board becomes too hands-on and they feel that they are overstepping their role. How do you make sure that this isn't perceived like this?

SPEAKER_01: 12:22

I think a big difference is, you know, what are you using that information for and how are you using it? Are you using it to support the executives? Are you using it to inform them better? Are you using it to help them guide into what's next given the Most exec teams are no longer in a situation where they have complete clarity on what they should be doing. So you've heard of the very famous saying, nose in, hands out. So when I meant hands on, what I really meant is having more access to what's happening on the ground, but using that then to help the execs. And personally, I think one of the roles now that boards need to do better is to be a mentor to the exec team. So it's not just about governance. It's not just about performance, you know, kind of being, keeping a track on how the organization, the exec performances, but it's also about being available as a mentor to them and being available as a sounding board to them. So that's one of the things I think I do, but I've also seen good boards do very well. And a good chair will always understand what are the strengths of each board members and almost see whom they could mentor. It doesn't necessarily have to be because I'm HR, ex-HR, I have to mentor the HRD It could be on one of my boards. It's the commercial function that's going through a lot of change and transformation. So I'm mentoring the commercial exec person on the board rather than HR, for example. So mentoring, I think, is going to be increasingly a big part of a board director's role.

SPEAKER_00: 13:57

And how do you do this well, Devyani? I mean, how can this be done really well? So I assume you do most of this, of course, in between the board meetings. And how do you develop these relationships that executives actually want to be mentored?

SPEAKER_01: 14:15

Yes, I think, again, the tone is set by the chair. That's really important. But also the CEO's role is very important. So NHS supply chain, the CEO is so open and it's almost as if because he's hungry, The rest of the exec team pick up the same aptitude. But equally, I'm very conscious that my role is not to be full-time with the organization. So of course, you have the meetings, but because I'm Remco chair, I have the opportunity to use that to shape the agenda and to mentor the HRD through the way we set the agenda for Remcos, with the way papers are done, the kind of information in it. But then equally, technology, what I try and do is We are doing a big rollout of technology at NHS supply chain. And I try and bring two or three functional heads together and use more of a multidisciplinary approach. And this obviously is done in between board meetings, but conscious of the fact that they have a full time job. So whatever you're working with them is something that's really important for the business and important to them. So there's no right or wrong answer. But I think, again, I'm an experienced board mentor, Sabine. I work with CEOs and senior execs. But I think figuring out what is important for the organization to the exec and making sure you pace yourself accordingly is very important.

SPEAKER_00: 15:33

I wholeheartedly agree. I just know from many conversations and from the interviews as part of the board evaluations how difficult it is for some non-executive directors to really find their feet in this role. to find the right tone. They have so much to offer. And sometimes I hear, well, it needs to also be pulled from the executives to really leverage this know-how from the non-executives. And that is quite often somehow not happening.

SPEAKER_01: 16:06

It's often a case of maturity of the organization, maturity of the exec team. The tone set by the chair. I think there's lots of different factors. So you have to first get a sense of where is the exec team and are they ready for this?

SPEAKER_00: 16:21

And then what do you do? Sorry, I'm really interested in this one. Do you proactively offer it? Do you actually pick up the phone or do you schedule some coffee meetings with executives to get to know them? How do you do this?

SPEAKER_01: 16:34

So I think there's a couple of different ways. So a supply chain, for example, as I said, apart from the regular board meeting, and it's very difficult to do it off the board meeting, to be honest, because that's quite a structured process. But the REMCO is a good example. It's more up to me and we decide. And through that, I can pull in some of the right conversations with different people. Equally, I'm part of the performance committee and the change committee. And again, those are two touch points. So I think subcommittees often can be a good way because you're going into diving into more details there, the subcommittee level, you're doing it on areas or topics where the execs are preparing for it. And if you feel that there is something else that needs to be done, or you can almost advise the exec a little more, then that provides you a good outlet to get into that kind of relationship.

SPEAKER_00: 17:25

No, fantastic. Sadly, we have to come to an end. And at the end, always this mean question, what are the three things our listeners should take away from this podcast?

SPEAKER_01: 17:35

I think firstly, for those HRDs who are listening to this, I think there is, HRDs have a great advantage, similar to the CFO, of working with the board, even when they are in an exec position. And I think they should use their role really advantageously to try and shape the agenda, understand how the board works, but also start positioning themselves as sounding boards to the chair around leadership areas. Because apart from the CEO, the chair and the board really have no one else they can rely on. So you need to make sure you're using your role in an exec HR capacity more effectively to prepare yourself for a further board role. But equally, I think, Anyone today can't rely just on the exact skill set. You have to almost upskill yourself to make yourself more interesting to boards. So in my case, for example, why culture talent was my core expertise, AI and climate are two areas where I've spent time, upskilled myself, gained qualifications, and therefore I'm more attractive to boards than I would have been. So I think upskilling yourself in different ways is also important. And I think last but not the least, I think AI is going to have a huge impact on organizations. So both as board member responsible for the organization, as well as as an individual, I think you do need to continuously make sure that you're not attending webinars, but you're actually getting more hands-on skills so that you fully understand the potential, but also the risk of AI.

SPEAKER_00: 19:11

Devyani, thank you so, so much for contributing to the Better Bots podcast series.

SPEAKER_01: 19:16

Thank you. Thank you so much, Sabine.

SPEAKER_00: 19:18

This podcast episode is part of the Better Boards podcast series brought to you by Better Boards, a provider of board evaluation solutions. Get in touch if you would like to hear more about our work or if you would like to see a demo of our innovative board evaluation platform that clients use for the internal or as part of a fully facilitated external evaluation. We at Better Boards are always delighted to hear from you. So if you have a suggestion for a topic for a podcast if you would like to be a podcast partner get in touch as I said we are always delighted to hear from you thank you for listening