To mark International HR Day, AHRI spoke with business and people leaders to reflect on the role HR plays in helping organisations navigate change, strengthen culture and support long-term performance.

From restructuring teams and managing change to improving performance and shaping workplace culture, HR practitioners are often involved in some of their organisations’ most complex decisions.

To mark this year’s International HR Day, we asked C-suite executives from different business units how they work with HR to manage change and support organisational goals.

Their responses reveal the breadth of challenges modern HR teams are helping organisations manage – from large-scale restructures and mergers to gender equity and increasingly complex compliance obligations.

1. HR as a “strategic anchor” at TelstraSuper

By Chris Davies, Former Chief Executive Officer, TelstraSuper

Over the past year, our People & Culture (P&C) team has had a profound impact on our organisation as we navigated a major successor fund transfer and an extended merger process. 

Despite the scale of change – where a high percentage of roles were made redundant and the remaining employees transitioned to a much larger fund – our P&C team ensured that every person felt supported, respected and genuinely cared for.

They built a thoughtful and human‑centred change program that offered coaching, development opportunities and outplacement support to all employees. This commitment to people was reflected in an engagement score above 70 per cent and the retention of 100 per cent of our key talent – remarkable outcomes in a period of such uncertainty.

P&C also led the people workstream for the merger, safeguarding the culture that has long defined us. The feedback we received, that this was the best place many had ever worked, speaks volumes about their impact.

This experience reinforced for me that P&C is not just a function – it is a strategic anchor. When organisations face disruption, P&C ensures stability, clarity and compassion. Their leadership over the past 12 months has been central to our ability to navigate change with integrity and strength.

Read AHRI’s article on how TelstraSuper evolved its DEI strategy beyond the business case.

2. HR as the driving force of performance and growth at Australian Red Cross Lifeblood

By Shelley Abrams, Executive Director People and Culture, Australian Red Cross Lifeblood

Over the past 12 months, our People & Culture team has played a critical role in helping Lifeblood strengthen both our performance and our culture. 

One example I’m particularly proud of is the introduction of Thrive, our new performance and growth framework. Thrive has fundamentally shifted the way we think about performance – moving beyond a once-a-year process to a more meaningful approach centred on clear expectations, regular conversations, growth and accountability. 

Importantly, it has helped create a stronger foundation for recognising and rewarding impact in a fair and transparent way. 

More broadly, our People & Culture team has been instrumental in shaping leadership capability, employee experience and workforce planning, ensuring we have the right culture and talent to deliver on our purpose.

HR is vital to business success because organisations only achieve extraordinary outcomes through their people. At its best, HR helps create the conditions for people to thrive, leaders to lead well and organisations to perform at their best. 

At Lifeblood, that ultimately means ensuring we have the capability, culture and leadership needed to continue delivering life-giving donations for life-changing outcomes.

Read AHRI’s article on how Australian Red Cross Lifeblood is destigmatising menopause at work.

3. How HR supports gender equity at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners

By Sally Byrne, Vice President – People & Culture, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners

Over the past year, our People & Culture team has played a pivotal role in advancing gender equality at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), demonstrating how a strategic people agenda directly contributes to business performance. 

We’ve remained focused on creating an inclusive and equitable workplace, because we know this is key in representing the broader Australian communities we serve and enabling sustainable growth.

As part of our annual Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) reporting, our 2024–2025 results highlighted the progress we are making toward pay parity. CCEP Australia achieved an average total remuneration gender pay gap of just one per cent in favour of women, improving by 0.5 per cent year-on-year. 

This compares favourably to both the manufacturing industry which has a median gap of 14.3 per cent and national average of 21.1 per cent. This progress reflects deliberate action, from embedding equitable pay practices to strengthening transparency and accountability.

Here at CCEP, we are shaping a more inclusive future through targeted hiring in traditionally male-dominated roles, specifically across our manufacturing, engineering and supply chain and investing in the progression of women across all levels – as well as working toward our goal of 45 per cent of women in management roles by 2030. 

This work underscores why HR is vital to business success, and demonstrates that when organisations prioritise equity and inclusion, they unlock the full potential of their people and that drives stronger, more resilient performance.

4. How HR bridges the gap between compliance obligations and employee expectations at Safetrac

By Deborah Coram, founder and CEO of compliance management platform Safetrac

This International HR Day, it’s important to recognise just how significantly the role of HR professionals has evolved in recent years. 

In the post-#MeToo and post-COVID environment, expectations around workplace conduct, psychosocial safety and organisational accountability have intensified considerably. 

Reforms arising from Respect@Work, positive duty obligations and increased psychosocial risk regulation have placed HR teams at the centre of increasingly complex legal, cultural and operational responsibilities.

Across organisations of all sizes, HR leaders are working under genuine pressure to balance compliance obligations, employee expectations, leadership demands and day-to-day workforce challenges, often simultaneously and with limited time or resources.

The burden on HR leaders can be lessened where there is an effective compliance framework built on policy consistency, governance and reporting structures and workforce training. There is growing awareness that poorly designed organisational training may give the illusion of a compliance control without materially reducing compliance risks.

Australian HR teams are navigating increasingly demanding and rapidly evolving workplace regulatory environments while also trying to protect culture, trust, psychological safety and employee experience. That balancing act deserves far more recognition and organisational support. 

International HR Day is a timely opportunity to acknowledge the professionalism, resilience and judgement HR practitioners bring to organisations every day, particularly as expectations for the function continue to grow.

5. Why a strong HR–Finance partnership is key to strategy at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

By Donna Degen, Chief Financial Officer, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)

Throughout my career, I’ve always worked closely with HR and really value the role it plays in building capability, shaping culture and helping the organisation deliver on its priorities.

In my current role as CFO at DFAT, that partnership is especially important. While the CFO role is often seen through the lens of financial stewardship, it’s really about managing the organisation’s resources well – and our most important resource is our people.

That’s why a strong working relationship between the CFO and CPO matters. When Finance and HR are working closely together, we’re in a much better position to link workforce planning with business strategy, make sound decisions about capability and investment, and give joined-up advice to the executive.