Pioneer Profile: Michael Morgan
Meet Michael Morgan, Senior People Experience Partner at Y TREE. Michael shares insights from his career journey and his passion for the future of work.
12th Nov 2024
• 5 minutes
It’s time that we recognise the people behind the evolving world of work. Our working lives have shifted to being more inclusive, more people-centric, more flexible, and just plain better for both employees and companies.
These changes didn’t just happen: they were put into place and upheld by individuals and teams working to create a better working future for everyone.
So we’re finally putting the spotlight on the people who make great companies great: the people-people.
People-people are crucial to the success of every company. They find you the talent that drives you forwards, and they’ve taken on an increasingly strategic role in the past few years – often taking on responsibility for mental health, diversity and inclusion, culture, EVPs, Employer Branding and team happiness.
Read more about the Pioneers List and go behind the scenes to understand how and why we’ve selected our Pioneers.
We were lucky enough to speak with Michael Morgan, Senior Experience Partner at Y TREE.Tell us a little bit about your career history, and how you got to where you are now. What were the key milestones?
Hello, my name is Michael Morgan and I'm a Senior Experience Partner 👋 I'm originally from Edinburgh but I've been based in London for the past year and I have a background in retail, technology and financial services which has seen me work in fully remote, hybrid and full-time office-based positions.
I honestly didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, I studied Events & Marketing Management at university alongside working as a personal shopper in Harvey Nichols and House of Fraser with dreams of becoming a wedding planner. After watching one too many 'Don't Tell The Bride' episodes I decided that wasn't the career for me, and focused on building a career in retail management where I went on to be assistant store manager for Whistles, womenswear department manager for Zara and then department manager of luxury skincare and fragrance at Selfridges. This is where my passion for all things people experience was fully realised!
Working in retail I always dreamed of working for the best of the best in customer and people experience, and to me that was Selfridges, so when I moved from Edinburgh to Manchester I knew where I wanted to go. I applied and interviewed for three different department manager roles over two years before I was successful and got my yellow badge (which I still have as a reminder that if at first you don't succeed to try, try, try again 😄)
Working at Selfridges opened my eyes to what exceeding expectations and workplace excellence truly meant, and it was there that my passion for creating an exceptional people experience—not just within my team and department, but across the store—was recognized by a member of the People team, who suggested that HR might be my true calling and encouraged me to consider a CIPD course. (Big shoutout and thank you to Claire!)
6 years, 4 different HR roles, 2 CIPD qualifications and one Chartered Member status later it's been quite the journey, and with it so much has changed and continues to evolve within the people space so I still feel like I'm only just getting started!When did you become interested in the future of work?
I became interested when I started to become aware of how incredibly limiting the traditional work environment of 9-5 Monday-Friday in the office was and how excluded extremely talented groups of people were (and still are). I have close family members who have been unable to continue working due to a lack of flexibility or any desire from the organisation to offer alternative working patterns, reasonable adjustments or any substantial support for their situation. I want to be part of the change that will see us move towards a much more flexible, supportive and inclusive future of work and will do everything in my power to make that happen 🙌What is the most impactful change that you’ve implemented?
In each role that I have moved into within the people space there is one subject that I feel most strongly about and look to improve and/or change, and that is an open feedback and transparent follow-up strategy.
To me, there is nothing more detrimental within your business than poor feedback and communication channels that diminish the employee voice. There is so much value from the data that you can gather from employee feedback but the channels, the cadence, the questions, the psychological safety and all other groundwork have to be laid beforehand and constantly worked on for it to be effective.
Each organisation is different so I believe there is no one-size-fits all approach, but the one non-negotiable for me is that with any feedback in an engagement survey, during an all-hands etc that it should be acknowledged, discussed and there is some form of follow-up because there is no greater waste of time and resource than asking for feedback and doing absolutely nothing with it.What’s the biggest challenge of being in your role/industry right now?
There has been a huge shift in the way People/HR teams are structured moving from a centralised function to being more embedded into each different department and utilising roles such as HRBPs. This has further evolved with HR teams now being called People teams, the introduction of more People Operations roles and there currently being such a backlash against the word culture being used within job titles in the people space as "culture is everyone's responsibility".
The challenge here is that hiring or looking for your next role within HR has become somewhat of a minefield where all these different disciplines are being introduced into the remit of these new job titles. This means super talented HR professionals are being overlooked due to so much confusion and contradiction with the new naming conventions and over generalised job descriptions. To me, the people team is the heart of any organisation so the hiring and development of these individuals is key, so you shouldn't be making it any harder than it needs to be, simplicity over complexity always.What do you think the next big trend is in working culture?
I feel we are just scratching the surface of how AI can transform our working culture, there is so much to learn on this topic from how workplaces should ethically use AI to how it can reshape roles and enhance productivity.
I believe that AI will be able to help produce ways to provide a much more personalised work experience with customised learning and development pathways, increased automation to allow work on high-value tasks, reduce workloads and enable better remote and hybrid working environments with enhanced collaboration tools.
As it becomes more integrated into our work culture, the biggest factor for us to consider will be finding that balance between utilising technology and having a human-centred approach.