AI, Employment Law, and the Entry-Level Squeeze with Craig McCoy

AI is no longer a future concept—it’s embedded in day-to-day HR operations. But with adoption comes pressure: to prove ROI, manage new risks, and rethink workforce strategies.

In this episode of the HRchat Podcast, Bill Banham speaks with Craig McCoy, Chair of the HR Connection Group and a trusted advisor to boards and C-suite leaders across the UK. With leadership experience at Sky, BT, BUPA, and The Crown Estate, Craig brings a front-row view into what senior HR leaders are really discussing behind closed doors.

Together, they unpack the realities of AI in HR, from automation wins to unexpected workload increases, and explore how shifting employment laws and economic pressures are reshaping workforce planning.

They also tackle one of the biggest emerging challenges: what happens to entry-level roles when AI begins to replace the work that traditionally starts careers?

Key Topics Covered:

•  AI in HR: From hype to real-world deployment 
•  Proving ROI on AI investments 
•  Automation vs. new workload: the hidden trade-off 
•  Employees using AI for grievances and complaints 
•  UK Employment Rights Act: risks and implications 
•  Rising employment costs and cautious hiring strategies 
•  Strategic workforce planning and skills prioritisation 
•  Recruitment challenges in a volatile labour market 
•  The growing threat to entry-level roles 
•  Apprenticeships, work experience, and future talent pipelines 

Why This Episode Matters:

 HR leaders are navigating a perfect storm of AI disruption, regulatory change, and economic pressure. This conversation offers grounded insights into what’s working, what’s not, and what needs urgent attention.

About Craig McCoy:

 Craig is Chair of the HR Connection Group and London HR Connection, a thriving community of senior HR professionals across the UK. A former Chief People Officer and experienced NED, Craig has held leadership roles at organisations including Sky, BT, BUPA, and The Crown Estate.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_04 0:02

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talented, tech enthusiasts, and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media, and visit hrgazette.com.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello, listeners. This is your host today, Bill Bannham. And joining me on the show for the first time is Craig McCoy, chair of the HR Connection Group and London HR Connection, and a trusted advisor to boards and C-suite leaders across the UK. Craig brings a wealth of experience as a former Chief People Officer across major organizations, including Sky BT, Booper, and the Crown Estate. And today he leads one of the UK's most influential HR communities, connecting over 6,000 senior HR professionals through private dinners, roundtables, and large-scale events across cities such as London, Manchester, and Birmingham. And in this conversation, we're going to explore how the HR function is evolving, what's really keeping chief people officers up at night, and how HR leaders can step up as a strategic driver of business performance in an increasingly complex world of work. Craig, how are you doing? Welcome to the show today.

Craig’s HR Career Turning Points

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Thank you very much, Bill. It's uh pleased to see you again and uh thank you very much for the opportunity. Uh looking forward to our conversation.

SPEAKER_03 1:37

Me too, me too. Let's start by getting to know a bit about you, as we often like to do on this show, a bit of background. Uh tell us a bit about your story. Could you maybe talk to us a bit about yourself and your background and what's been what's been the key transition points and memorable moments along the way, Craig?

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah, so uh basically a career HR guy. Uh my career and HR spans uh around 40 years. Uh initially uh in the learning development profession, and then um moving through management consultancy into mainstream HR. I've worked for many large corporates, initially in the technology and media sector for companies like uh BT and Sky, Aegis Media and Advertising, uh through into healthcare, uh, companies like BUPA, and then uh latterly by choice into the interim markets. Um I've now done uh 16 interim uh assignments as uh HR director uh across various industries, primarily uh healthcare in uh the latter part of my career. Uh so it's been it's been a great uh uh career in the in the HR profession over many years. Um some of the sort of main turning points were the decision to move out of learning development into uh mainstream HR uh through the through the vehicle of uh management consultancy with Accenture for a couple of years. Uh and then um through into healthcare and then the choice to become uh an interim uh to give me the the variety and the uh the breadth of assignments as well as different locations and sectors and challenges. Um that that that's been something which has really appealed to me over recent years and uh has given me a huge uh breadth and scope in terms of the uh the HR situations I've found myself in.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazette.com. And now back to the show.

SPEAKER_03 3:48

Very good, thank you very much. Uh let's let's talk a bit about how you became a pretty famous community builder in the HR space, I'd say. Um, as you mentioned a moment ago, you've held senior HR roles at organizations such as Bupa. Um what inspired you to move into building and leading communities such as the HR Connection Group?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

So I've always enjoyed the networking side of things and I've always been really uh engaged with with many communities in the HR space. I got the opportunity when I was at BUPA actually to uh participate in what was then called London HR Connection. And uh I became chair after about six months, uh but I was very much on the side, it was a voluntary position, and uh I was doing it alongside my uh my full-time roles. And uh I continued in that mode for about 10 years until the opportunity came for me to uh make it my own and to become my organization. Uh it was previously a branch of the CIPD, the professional association in the UK. And uh I took it on as my business, and um since then we've we've really um uh mushroomed. We've we've taken on uh many more locations, we're now six locations in the UK uh developing from London. Uh we run um roughly 30 to 40 events a year. Um many of them are invitation-only, private uh dinners, breakfasts, uh round tables, larger conferences as well. We have a community of about 6,000 people. Uh increasingly uh the focus is on the senior end of the community, so it's chief people officers and HR directors. Um is always free of charge for the group. Uh our events are commercially sponsored, and we have a range of sponsors across um providers to the HR industry. And uh yeah, they're they're a great combination of uh strong content and the latest learnings in the world of HR, combined with some great networking opportunities and um good fun to network and meet with your peers. So uh it's now become more or less my full-time role, uh having been a hobby. So I've turned my passion project into a job. Um, but it's something which I really much uh very much enjoy and um will continue doing it, I'm sure, for some years for some years to come.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

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SPEAKER_03 7:05

So you're you uh you're very much getting the inside track in terms of what's going on, what are the key priorities, what are the key opportunities and challenges for senior HR leaders in the UK at the moment because you're having these deep conversations, two, three, four hours over lunch and whatnot. Um I'm sure you you all adhere to uh uh Chatham House rules and all the rest of it. Um, but perhaps you can share at a high level without mentioning any names. Um what are some of those? What are you hearing? What are some of those key opportunities and some of those key challenges in 2026?

AI ROI And The Real Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Sure. Yeah, well, as you can imagine, I uh regularly uh poll my my membership and ask them, you know, what's top of their mind, and that helps to shape our forward agenda in terms of the key priorities of the profession. Uh and uh yeah, I mean the biggest one um by far at the moment uh is the world of AI, and uh I guess everyone is grappling with it in terms of trying to understand what they should be doing, both as a business but also as an HR function. But uh what I've found over the last year is the conversations have kind of deepened and moved on. So it's now talking in earnest about how to actively deploy AI rather than a year ago, it was very hypothetical about you know what is this thing called AI, how it's going to affect us. So many organizations are now in the middle of implementation uh across a broad range of um uh applications for AI, uh, not just process automation, uh, whereas obviously that's that that's a key enabling one, but um helping to um produce new uh new documents, new input policies, um drafting documents, um it just it's a real time saver to to really uh speed things up. So I think um AI is definitely a big one. Another big one is the in the UK the Employment Rights Act, uh, which uh is coming into force, um parts of it coming into force from next month, um, which is giving uh many more rights to uh individuals um to claim things like unfair dismissal at an earlier stage, um, but it's also giving um uh uh early access to benefits such as uh SIPPAY, uh parental leave, uh, and a number of other things. It's quite wide-ranging uh legislation, and so um HR people are really um uh thinking about how to best implement that for the for the benefit of their businesses um uh without um uh you know sort of um making the balance too much in favour of employees and against the benefits of employers because that might have the uh uh the perverse consequence of reducing job opportunities. So um it it's always a balance in these things. And related to that, another one which is top of mind is very much the economic situation in the UK uh and uh measures that the government has taken, such as the uh increase in um employers' national insurance contributions, uh the significant increase in uh the national living wage, um, and a number of other factors which are really uh increasing the employment costs, uh, which is something which uh obviously businesses are concerned about combined with the economic and global political situation we find ourselves in, um, it's made employers a bit more reluctant to invest in growth and to and to take on uh additional headcan. Um so all of these things are uh also top of mind with um HR people, um and equally things like strategic workforce planning, which uh has seen um uh a resurgence. I mean strategic workforce planning has been around for many years, um, but it's been treated somewhat as uh sort of theoretical, hypothetical um planning. Uh it's now becoming more real. I think possibly and helped by the advent of AI, you start to think about the longer term, the the critical skills planning for your organization, gives you more data and tools at your fingertips to think about um uh the future of uh uh of your business. So I think strategic workforce planning, um, recruitment and retention in many sectors is still a big one. I mean, uh uh many businesses are struggling to recruit, even though the unemployment statistics are going up. Uh the number of young people out of work is is getting uh close to a million now. But uh uh yeah, some some industries, particularly front-facing industries, um uh are really struggling to recruit and retain people. Uh so again, these these these are all kind of examples of things which are top of mind, and we uh uh we're always looking to put on events which help to share the ladies' thinking on these topics.

SPEAKER_03 12:14

Okay, Greg, you've done it now because I had a whole bunch of other questions for you, but uh there's so much in that last answer that I just I've just got to dig into it a bit more with you um because I think it's so juicy and I think our listeners will enjoy it. So good, okay. I did mention to you before we hit record today that we might go off on a tangent a little bit. Yeah, no, that's fine. Um, but I just want to pick up a few things that you mentioned in that last answer, if you if that's okay. Um, so you mentioned uh at the top of your answer there that a lot of the conversations that you're having with uh senior people and HR leaders at the moment is about the deployment of AI. I've had a lot of conversations recently with analysts, I guess mainly in more in the US, so maybe that's something to do with it, who are saying actually 2026 is about the year of proving out the R ROI, the deployment that happened last year for AI. Huge huge amounts of investment, um, billions and millions and millions of dollars invested in in um AI infrastructure in larger organizations in the last couple of years. So this year it's like okay, we spent all this money. Um what's it what's it doing? What's it actually doing for us? Are you having those sorts of conversations as well, Craig?

Entry-Level Jobs And Youth Employment

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Yes, definitely. I mean, um uh I think there are some some kind of ready ready benefits and quick wins that are already emerging. So uh process automation, um, the ability to produce new documentation very quickly, um, the the ability to uh even you know note-taking tools and um the ability to uh to draft uh uh letters, uh disciplinary notes, um uh but equally you know the uh the onus is also on uh the HR people to respond to other people. Uh so the employees are uh using AI to generate uh grievances and uh uh uh other kinds of correspondence which uh then have to be um responded to by by the employers. So I think it works both ways. Um but I think um yeah there is there is a big investment in AI, and uh I suppose some of the um obvious tools where it's deployed are you know within core HR systems, within recruitment and recruitment processes. Um and uh yeah there are there are um uh clearly ways in which you know headcount could be saved, although it's it's often going to be repurposed rather than saved. So you know the skills mix is changing for jobs. Um I think it's got some uh implications for uh headcount reduction, particularly at the junior end. So uh I think for new graduates and first jobbers, because a lot of the transactional work is being replaced by uh AI, um, I think it might be harder for people to get their first foot on the career ladder as a result. Um, but um uh that aside, I think employers are seeing the early gains of automation and headcount reduction, um, which in theory should free up people to be um perhaps more creative and and uh uh to to raise the level of their strategic thinking. Uh, I think that's yet to be proven. I think we're still in the early stages of the the early gains from process automation, um, which is which is reducing the uh dependency on uh on people and headcamp.

SPEAKER_03 15:35

You mentioned there that um the reality is that it is harder for um entry-level folks to begin their career. Um that ain't going away. That ain't gonna get any better. Let let's let's be honest about it. Okay, let's not downplay uh that. You mentioned also that in in terms of young people, so folks under 25, uh, there there are almost a million young folks in this country who are who are who are actually NEETs at the moment, not in education, training, or employment. Yeah um uh regular listeners to this show will know that I'm on a board of a of a CIC in the UK that that tries to tackle some of this and um I'm quite passionate about it. Um what's the what's the sentiment? So yeah, you you're you're sitting at these lunches with very senior folks. Um what what's the sentiment in terms of their responsibility to the younger generation?

SPEAKER_01 16:20

I think there's a lot a lot of concern because um uh you know in the short term there might be some gains to be um made through through reducing uh dependency on headcount and and numbers of people, but uh um in in the longer term you're really stifling that sort of uh talent pool uh at uh at an early stage in people's careers, which may mean that um you know it's harder to uh to get people to learn to work their way up through the career ladder and take on bigger and more important roles in the organization. So um I think there is more interest in um things like apprenticeships, I mean modern apprenticeships, uh and certainly um skills training. Um and uh you know AI can help in that respect because it can give um more uh efficient access to things like skills profiling uh for the workforce and the candidate work um uh workplace. So I think um that that there's a recognition, that's what the mood is that there's a responsibility towards younger people, uh, which is not just a selfless thing, it's about um uh it's about thinking about the needs of the organization longer term, uh, and and uh I suppose a rekindling of interest in strategic skills programs, um, whilst recognising that um you know perhaps motivations are changing, a lot of talk about you know generational differences in um how to engage uh younger people in the world of work uh and rethinking the proposition. Um, but I think that in itself could be a good thing. So um uh as a corollary, a lot of HR people are thinking actively about um the employer value proposition. You know, why why would people come and join um my uh my workforce? Um so it's making people rethink uh rather than perhaps go through a more traditional sort of um traineeship um where um you know the the the initial work can be fairly basic, but um uh it's almost like a rite of passage to to work through um to to take on more skilled skilled roles. So um I would say people are conscious of it and they're not just fixated on uh short-term headcount reduction.

SPEAKER_03 18:41

Quick follow-up to that, in 30 seconds or less, um, for those young folks uh listening to this episode, to the to those folks who are looking to get into uh a career for the first time, um might be a one-word answer, yes or no, maybe I don't know. Um but in 30 seconds or less, uh is is is it a narrow reality that if they want to get into the labour market, if they want to begin their career, they need the the imperative of uh getting work experience is is more important than ever. Maybe they need maybe they should even think about um networking opportunities. You know, you and I are both in the networking space to help them get there. And not a lot of people are saying, you know what, um something that will make an entry-level person stand out is if they've tried their own thing, started their own little business before they've they've applied to us. Any of those things resonate with you in 30 seconds or less?

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Yeah, definitely. I think uh number of people going to university will will reduce. I think there's an emphasis on um work experience, real world experience, and uh getting out there and trying it uh rather than uh deferring it to the long term. So uh uh I think that's absolutely right.

How To Connect And Closing

SPEAKER_03 19:49

Okay, very good. I had so many more questions for you. Uh I still wanted to unpack more of your previous answer there. I want to go into the uh the the employment rights bill, but uh we we just we just don't have time. Um so last question for you for today, Craig. How can folks connect with you and learn more about all of the cool networks that you're involved with?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Yeah, the easiest thing to do is you know find me on LinkedIn. Uh, I'm very, very willing to accept uh LinkedIn connection invitations. Um have a look at our website www.londonhr.org. Um gives details of all our events. Um you can sign up on the website, it's free of charge, everything's free of charge. So uh uh don't be shy. And uh I hope to uh meet you all at a future event.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

Wonderful. Well, that just leaves me to say for this particular interview, but I suspect that I'll be getting you on again fairly soon. But for now, Craig McCoy, thank you very much for your time.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Thank you very much, Bill. Thanks a lot. All the best.

SPEAKER_03 20:46

And listeners, as always, until next time, happy working.

SPEAKER_04 20:53

Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette? And remember, for what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media, and visit hrgazette.com.