Emma Leonis-Hughes, Client Executive Director
Emma specialises in global, large-scale and complex end-to-end HR change programmes. She spent over 10 years at Deloitte before joining LACE Partners in early 2018 as Client Executive Director. Emma works with Chief People Officers and their leadership teams to develop their people strategies and help them drive business value – be that designing the HR operating model around the employee experience, optimising HR service delivery through improved use of digital tools or through building HR’s capability.
She is passionate about HR and challenging, inspiring and motivating HR leaders to achieve more. As part of this, Emma leads LACE’s thought leadership into the future of HR service delivery and operating models. For example, LACE’s bi-annual HR Shared Services trends reports which began in 2020, the ‘HR on the Offensive’ whitepaper and currently LACE’s ‘Demystifying the HR operating model’ campaign.
Skills
- HR operating model assessment and design
- HR operating model implementation
- HR transformation
- Business case development
- Shared services
- Solution design
- Employee experience
- Organisation design
- Change management
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Insights. Our latest thought leadership, including blogs, webinars, podcasts and videos.
What is a CPO? With Danny Harmer
In brief The Chief People Officer (CPO) aligns people strategy with business goals, maximising organisational performance by maximising people performance. Effective CPOs are commercial, expert in HR levers, and future-focused—using data and insight to drive...
The TRUSTED Framework: How to implement AI effectively
Organisations currently find themselves at a crossroads. There has been a burst of energy as businesses rush to take advantage of the opportunities AI solutions offer. Alongside this, macro-economic pressures are pushing more organisations to consider whether AI can...
What is a CPO?
Welcome to the first episode of our new mini-series, What is a CPO? Hosted by Debbie Mitchell, Director at LACE Partners and lead of our CPO Network, this series explores the evolving role of the Chief People Officer (CPO). Through conversations with experienced CPOs,...




