Who is Joinrs?
Joinrs is the meeting point for students, junior profiles, and companies. Thanks to our AI model, we help job seekers discover the best job ads aligned with their ambitions. At the same time, over 150 client companies use our platform for employer branding and talent acquisition strategies, aiming to attract candidates who align with their company's values. If you are a company and would like to learn more, click here.
HR conversations with Joinrs 
At Joinrs, we go beyond just matching candidates with opportunities. In addition to facilitating connections, we conduct insightful interviews with professionals from diverse backgrounds and industries. Through these conversations, we provide valuable insights and perspectives to our users, enriching their knowledge and experience on our platform. Join us in exploring the depth and breadth of expertise across various fields to enhance your career journey. Today Chiara is sharing her journey and advice with us!
Chiara Feggi
EMEA HR Business Partner
1) You’ve completed several specialized programs, like the recent one at Luiss Business School aiming on HR Transformation and Leadership focusing on Industrial Relation and Righsizing. How has this additional training impacted your work in HR?
We are experiencing a moment of reckless transformation, not just in our daily lives but also at work, especially after COVID-19. When I was about to decide on the course option at Luiss, I asked some trustful friends' opinions, and they were surprised by this possible choice of mine. Industrial Relations is not associated with the concept of transformation, changes, and AI—so trendy these days—but instead, it's a side of HR that remains conservative—and somehow, the opposite of the person I am.
True.
But this is why I found it fascinating. By choosing this course, I grounded my contemporary Human Resources knowledge and experience in labor law and legislation in a new fashion. It gave me the confidence to approach rightsizing with mindful creativity and elaborate on the cost of personnel. Not just from a budget perspective but in a strategic transformation mode—which still represents my working style and approach.
2) Working across different regions and cultural landscapes can be complex. How do you adapt your HR strategies to address the unique needs of each market within EMEA?
EMEA lies in an oxymoron between globalization, with the trend to be unified, and its country legislations, which are dramatically different depending on the region. If we acknowledge that the final scope of HR BP is to manage conflict resolution and influence stakeholder decision-making, we need to consider that all of this doesn’t come without a deep understanding of what compliance means.
In a nutshell, being in compliance is the primary strategy.
For example, “Is the establishment of a new policy in compliance with the company guidelines?” or “Is the way my manager is behaving in compliance with the code of conduct?” Once you have understood the mechanism, you can apply it to different contest in the work environment, up to asking yourself, “Is the company I am working for in compliance with my ethics and values?” It could end up being a very interesting exercise and self-reflection…
3) What are some emerging HR trends or challenges you see in the EMEA region specifically, and how are you preparing to address them?
After Covid 19, most HR departments no longer wanted to settle for administrative tasks (let alone accounting and how to read a payslip!)
This is the biggest challenge we see overall.
HR Leaders need to coach their existing human capital people to use audacity to solve conflicts and pull resolutions more efficiently. Consequently, it calls into question skill gaps among generations together with an unfortunately vast talent scarcity pool, where continued turnover is considered the right thing to do to decrease the career jump while obtaining some top-up salary. How do we stop this giant Frankenstein from wiping out what was HR emancipation?
I call it the TripleE: Employee Experience & Engagement.
This means basically looking after your people. Building up a solid career progression, focusing on clever benefits to enchant life balance outside work, sharing a flexible working model—which doesn't just mean working from home—acknowledging the gender gap and salary disparity and discussing it, and investing in CSR (Corporate Social Responsibilities) activities to really help the closest and wider community. You want the employee to feel that work, the company, is a safe place to display success and grow.
We see some great possibilities for AI to be implemented in the HR process to reduce the time spent on transactional items and focus on more agility—the biggest HR enemy. To use AI at its best, HR needs to better understand matrix management and the interlocking of each function with the next. So, HR needs to come out from the desk and complete this big jigsaw, which is called business understanding.
4) What advice can you share to a newbie approaching the HR world?
Exploit your fresh enthusiasm to shorten the generation gap, avoid bias, and dive into performance development projects. Learn from a guru, choose your HR mentors, participate in forums and seminars, send a recognition message to your manager, and learn how to exhale in difficult situations. HR is not only recruitment (Talent Acquisition); it is not just having difficult conversations and being a quiet scholar.
Instead, listen to your internal client more carefully and follow where the exception request lies because that request will soon become your rule.
Interview curated by the Joinrs' team
