Real conversations need real business scenarios, real people, and real impact, especially at a time when workplaces are being reshaped by AI, and the very definition of “real” is becoming harder to pin down.
This is one such conversation, where Victoria Edwards, Regional HR Leader, Asia – People & Culture, Lockton, shares her perspective on how culture, leadership, and trust are evolving in this new reality.
From leadership behaviour and building trust through transparency and long-term thinking, to embedding inclusion, agility, and care into everyday leadership, the discussion offers a grounded view of what it takes to build resilient, high-performing, and genuinely people-centric organisations today. This exclusive conversation also explores how data-driven decision-making is redefining the role of HR across Asia.
Edited excerpts below:
The one workplace principle that has stood the test of time
When I look back over the last 20 years, what has stayed the same is that HR is in the people business. What has changed are the systems around us.
The human desire for connection, purpose, and shared trust, the foundation of the employer-employee relationship has remained constant.
Over time, my approach has become more precise in understanding culture and workplace environments.
A one-country approach simply doesn’t work. Therefore, we ensure experiences are hyper-personalised so people feel a real sense of connection and care.
Employees pay attention to their organisation’s investments, so transparency around these investments builds trust.
Burnout can happen, but how leaders respond makes the difference
Even well-intended, well-funded employee wellbeing initiatives can fail if they don’t create a real, positive impact on people.
As a privately held and independent business, Lockton is able to take a long-term view on culture, people investment and client impact. In a world of pressure and targets, relationships can become transactional. There will always be peaks and troughs, but we actively encourage our Associates to take time to rest and recover.
We treat our Associates like our internal clients, and we want to make sure we genuinely care about them and are there for them through life’s ups and downs.
For example, at Lockton, we don’t micromanage teams because we trust our Associates to do what’s needed for our clients.
I fully trust every member of my team, and they trust my leadership.
We all know what we’re aiming for, the part we play, and that each person matters and is deeply cared for in the workplace. People genuinely care about the people they work with, and they go the extra mile for them. This commitment allows us to do our best work for clients.
So yes, burnout exists, and life gets tough. But we come around our people and ensure that when they experience it, the impact is not as great as it would be if they weren’t in such a caring environment.
The key to genuinely inclusive workplace
We’re very specific with our inclusion agenda, and we link the behaviours we want to drive culturally very closely to inclusion because the two go hand in hand.
Diversity and inclusion aren’t standalone initiatives for us; they are at the heart of everything we do, and I witness it every single day.
For example, through our One Asia Roadshows, we took our Asia vision and strategy to every single person across 11 countries, creating space for two-way dialogue and ensuring our initiatives are meaningful and not imposed.
We have a very strong brand identity, and our employee engagement scores are 90+ across Asia. People are delighted to work at Lockton, and there is a deep sense of pride and connection across our teams. What sets us apart is that we’re genuinely interested in who our people are. Our Asia HR team spends a lot of time with both client-facing and internal teams, getting to know their needs and expectations.
The key for us is making sure they have what they need to succeed. If they don’t, we put our time, effort and energy into enabling them.
It’s the old-school management approach: clearing the weeds, making life easier, and keeping reporting requirements robust but light so we can spend maximum time with clients and people solving risk challenges.
What makes it special is celebrating the unique cultures of the communities we’re part of. We blend a global multinational culture with the uniqueness of local communities to create something authentic and meaningful. We actively encourage people to bring their identity to work. You may be a broker, but you’re also a singer, a father, a husband, you have many identities, and it’s okay to bring all of them to Lockton.
Leadership behaviour influencing workplace experiences
For our HR practices, the foundation of everything we do is to be commercially relevant and grounded in the P&L reality of the organisation.
When people see a disconnect between HR and the finance, legal, and risk teams, it creates misunderstandings. If finance is driving cost-efficiency measures while HR is spending heavily, there's a disconnect in the message you're sending to people.
So the first principle is commercial groundedness. We are an incredibly tight, close-knit team across our shared services, and we work hard to stay aligned. Anything we communicate to our Associates has to be appropriately pitched, business relevant, and clearly linked to impact for our clients. That connection sits at the heart of everything we do.
For our leadership practices, it’s about getting to know every single person and remembering to care. It’s an intentional practice of remembering birthdays, anniversaries, or their pets, whatever matters to them. It helps build personal connections.
Meaningful gestures like saying ‘Thank you!’ to my incredible team members help us maintain that close connection, even if we don’t meet in-person due to our different locations We celebrate the big and the small.
Sometimes that’s simply acknowledging a leader joining the conversation and advocating for what we’re doing as an HR team, which is just as important as larger initiatives we may launch.
The key is authenticity. Make sure that whatever you do, you put your whole self behind it.
Designing meaningful people strategies with authentic data & insights
We have very consciously mapped out the behaviours required to drive the growth we’re pursuing. We’ve doubled headcount in Asia over the last couple of years and now operate in 11 markets, so we’ve become very specific about what we measure. We track those metrics every quarter as part of a data-driven approach to culture change, using the insights to understand what is happening and where we need to drive change.
One of the critical priorities for us is collaboration. We focus on collaboration above almost everything else because if we get that right, the rest tends to follow. That’s one of the reasons behind our One Asia Roadshows, where we bring regional and local teams together to align on business needs across Asia.
Business needs across diverse markets is complex, so we’re bringing solutions to solve them together. That collaboration is critical for alignment when serving clients. How we lead must all be consistent, and the data underpins that.
Beyond capability and experience, it’s also about understanding what matters to our Associates personally and professionally. We are deeply rooted in every market we serve, and it matters that what we do resonates locally.
In practice, that means we provide frameworks, but there is freedom locally to ensure execution fits the market. We then use the data that comes back to understand what is working and what isn’t, to keep evolving in the right direction and, hopefully, avoid repeating mistakes.
Because culture and systems are constantly evolving, we won’t always get it right. What matters is how we respond when we don’t. And in both good and challenging times, we make sure we are honest with our people, and when we get something wrong, we correct and course-correct quickly.
This is a real challenge for every HR leader managing across cultures and geographies. And things will go wrong, but how you respond and move forward is what matters. Never to assume, but to learn with curiosity, genuinely understanding the flexibility across different cultures.
The real challenge in AI adoption lies beyond the technology itself
One of my key lessons over the past year is that you can never really stay on top of Artificial Intelligence, because the speed of change is phenomenal. The applications we use are constantly shifting, and even technology and digital teams are struggling to keep up.
For me as an HR leader, two things stand out:
First is being commercially grounded: truly understanding the value we create for clients, and what that means for the organisation we need to build for the future, while also supporting today’s business.
The difference this time is speed. The more data I have on how we create client impact, the more levers I have as an HR leader if we need to shift strategy quickly. For example, mapping roles to business. We don’t always see that work clearly, and there can be a gap between what we think teams do and what they actually deliver day to day.
Second is about getting very strong on the data. AI only works efficiently with clean data. That means strong systems, processes, and data governance so that whatever we build on top delivers meaningful insight.
People are understandably nervous because there is a real impact of AI on jobs. We’ve been clear globally that we will evolve with our people, as we have with every major shift previously. Reason being, the most important part of our culture is showing genuine care to our Associates.
We’re helping people understand the AI landscape and providing training. We were early in giving access to tools like Copilot in a regulated environment with the necessary guardrails.
The skills that will define the next generation of leadership
The next generation of leadership begins with leaders who have strong learning agility, people who are open to evolving their roles and embracing technology, AI, or whatever comes next.
It’s about rethinking how work gets done as needs change, staying close to the pace of that change, and shifting approach accordingly. Sometimes that means speeding up or slowing down. Slowing down and taking in more data points often leads to better outcomes.
It’s about leaders who take the time to truly understand their people, build personal connections, stay close to the business, and create environments where performance happens because people are trusted. People know what they need to deliver, but also how to evolve and self-regulate to perform in context.
And equally important, leaders who can look after themselves. There’s no point working 24/7 and burning out, it doesn’t role-model the right behaviour, internally or externally.
There are times of exhaustion during major events, big launches, or important client pitches. But equally important is rest, recovery, and maintaining wellbeing as a leader so we can show up fully for our teams.
It’s about leading by example, for instance, our CEO will quite often say, “Actually, don’t log on so early tomorrow. You need a rest.”
That genuine care really matters. We know we’re delivering great work for our clients, but we also know when we need to switch off, and that’s just as important.