{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Human Element | CHRO & HR Leadership Podcast","title":"Real change vs. imagined emergencies: Syntax's approach to HR","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2248,"description":"Summary\nDessalen Wood has led people teams across retail, entertainment, and HR tech, from Disney Stores, Hudson's Bay, Reitmans, and Cineplex to CPO of ThoughtExchange, and now serves as Global Chief People Officer at Syntax, where she leads people strategy for 3,000 employees across 15 countries. On The Human Element, she and host Barb Bidan dig into how CHROs can separate real change from imagined emergencies when the function is constantly told it is about to be reinvented.\nDessalen explains why the fundamentals of autonomy, feeling valued, and development matter more than any perk, why remote work alone never fixed retention, and how she buys time when a leader insists HR is behind. She also walks through the four stage AI maturity map Syntax used on its way to training 90% of employees and building more than 1,000 functional agents, and closes with lightning round views on assertiveness, career paths, and the question every CHRO should be asking.\n\nChapters\n00:47 Meet Dessalen Wood\n01:59 Why she went back into the CHRO seat\n06:27 What the vendor side revealed about HR\n08:43 Autonomy, value and development as the fundamentals\n11:50 Remote work and the perks that stopped working\n13:42 Picking a few things and never rolling them back\n18:58 Handling imagined emergencies\n22:06 The lifeguard chair view of the CHRO role\n25:53 A four stage AI maturity map at Syntax\n32:00 Lightning round and the final word\n\nTakeaways\n- Design every people program around autonomy, feeling valued, and development, and test anything new, including AI enablement, against those three needs.\n- Flexibility or perks that mainly make leaving harder are not a culture; differentiate on a few things and keep them consistent in good years and bad.\n- When an imagined emergency lands, neither defend nor panic and agree; buy time so your executive function comes back online before you respond.\n- Keep your antenna out on the industry and the whole organization so big changes rarely arrive as a...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/wSIM9OmCufT8YpGEujarJtAuPaEl6gUX3MEhrYkOqWs/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS84NzE0/YmEwNTBhMjA4NDk1/NTViOTczNmY3Yjlj/MmVmNS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}