Caitlin Tye and the GSC Executives Team
11 June 2026
39m 34s
Why Certainty Trumps Perfection at TfL - Chief People Officer, Fiona Brunskill
00:00
39:34
The GSC Executives Podcast
"I'm not sure AI will give all of its promised benefits." That's Fiona Brunskill - Chief People Officer of Transport for London (TfL), responsible for a team of 700, infamously supporting an organisation of 70,000 - pushing back on the latest wave of HR technology promises, calmly and without apology.
It's a useful window into how she thinks. Direct, experience-led, and noticeably cautious to jump on bandwagons. Whether she's talking about rebuilding TfL through a pandemic (when their revenue essentially fell off a cliff), navigating government-imposed funding conditions, or explaining why inclusion work can never actually be finished - Fiona doesn't reach for the comfortable answer.
In this episode, she covers:
- Leading through compounding crises - TfL's revenue model collapsed during COVID. Then came government-imposed funding conditions attached to a financial bailout. Then a 2024 cyber attack that required every employee to reset passwords in person. Fiona is honest about what real-time decision-making looks like when there's no playbook, and why giving people certainty matters most precisely when you don't have any yourself.
- Why DEI is not a destination - She addresses the international narrative around rollbacks, names the danger of over-indexing on one protected characteristic (to the exclusion of everyone else), and explains why TfL deliberately avoids any form of DEI "washing."
- The AI question - Refreshingly sceptical about vendor promises, but pragmatic about where genuine change is coming: data-driven people decisions, wellbeing as a shared responsibility, and the challenge of building an employment offer that works across five generations.
- Building a career you didn't plan - From Barclays to nearly 11 years at ASDA specialising in industrial relations, Coca-Cola European Partners to TfL CPO – discussing her incredible career and the advice she'd give anyone trying to elevate themselves in a difficult job market.
Fiona has led a TfL operating model that has delivered £100m in recurring savings and overseen an 8% increase in employee engagement across three years. She is also a Non-Executive Director and keynote speaker, with deep roots in some of the UK's most complex employee and industrial relations environments.
What really stood out with our conversation was how Fiona is unusually candid about the decisions that didn't land, the feedback that stung, and the moments she'd approach differently today. Very refreshing, and that approach has shown clear dividends across her career.
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https://gscexecutives.com/insights/
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