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 strategic disruptors will define HR in 2026?
HR leaders are being asked to deliver more strategic value at exactly the moment when uncertainty, cost pressure, and technology disruption are accelerating. In this episode of The People Agenda podcast host Chris Howard and fellow LACErs, Marcus Uzubalis, Gemma Ryall...
Rewired HR: Building an ecosystem for continuous change
Is it time to rewire HR? In this episode of The People Agenda podcast host Chris Howard talks to LACErs Kat Bernardes and Alice McCormack who are behind our latest campaign Rewired HR. This campaign explores our new HR operating model built to respond to rapid global...
Connected advisory that delivers HR and Payroll value
In brief Staying close to HR and Payroll technology vendors enables LACE Partners to provide informed, forward-looking advice grounded in real product capability and market direction. Vendor events help bridge the gap between HR ambition and technical reality,...




