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.
How can organisations optimise UK pensions post-budget?
What changed in the UK Budget for pensions and salary sacrifice? From 2029, a £2,000 annual cap will be introduced on National Insurance (NI) savings through pension salary sacrifice. Any pension contributions made via salary sacrifice above this cap will become...
Becoming skills-powered: A blueprint for future-ready organisations
Organisations everywhere are rethinking how work gets done. Traditional job-based structures are struggling to keep pace with rapid change, emerging technologies and evolving workforce expectations. In a skills-based organisation, work is assigned based on what...
SWP Conference 2025: Key insights
What were the main conclusions from the SWP Conference? Strategic workforce planning (SWP) is no longer about spreadsheets and headcount forecasts. It’s about driving real business change. In this episode of the People Agenda podcast, host Chris Howard is joined by...




