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For Lyndsey Denning, Chief People Officer at Reconomy, 2025 has been a busy year.
She oversees more than 4,000 people in over 150 countries, each of whom fuels the circular economy specialist’s mission to prevent waste and recycle materials for 23,000 customers across the globe.
In the last 12 months, Reconomy’s people team have ticked a staggering amount off an ever-growing to-do list – launching a new global engagement survey, enhancing maternity and adoptive leave, and signing the Race at Work Charter, to name a few.
HR Grapevine catches up with Denning to find out how the people leader has prioritised, planned, and delivered twelve months of HR impact.
12 Months of HR at Reconomy
- Scaled a global engagement survey across all brands
- Signed the Race at Work Charter, pledging action on leadership commitment, fair recruitment and data-driven accountability.
- Launched Supporting Women in Reconomy, enhancing maternity and adoption leave, introducing a menopause policy, and piloting a leadership programme with around 50% female participation.
- Enabled dedicated networks for LGBTQ+, menopause and mental health support, and expanded wellbeing resources through its MyPerks platform.
- Supported colleagues to find purpose in their roles and pursue a fulfilling career path, with more than 31% of vacancies filled through internal promotions.
- Achieved level 1 Disability Confident Employer status
Establishing an HR roadmap
It’s no secret that most HR departments are overwhelmed. Faced with mounting workloads, burdensome admin, and pressure from employees and executives alike, half the battle for people leaders is knowing how to cut through the noise and prioritise.
Denning’s team have mastered this art. “Our mantra was simple,” she says. “Do fewer things and deliver them brilliantly. We built the roadmap around clarity, impact, and scalability.”
Every initiative for the past 12 months was anchored to measurable business outcomes, with the people leadership team prioritising projects that would reduce attrition, optimise costs, and future-proof Reconomy’s workforce.
“From launching People First Services to embedding global capability programmes, every decision was about creating sustainable value,” Denning adds.
The starting point was an overhaul of the traditional annual engagement survey into a continuous listening model – pulse checks are known internally as ‘My Voice’ – to provide Reconomy’s people team with real-time insights from employees.
More meaningful feedback, served in a “daily rhythm, has given staff a “direct line of influence into leadership decisions,” the CPO says.
This has helped increase participation from employees who have effectively co-created region-specific action plans – a key step for any employer attempting to drive engagement across numerous geographies, each with a unique cultural, operational, and legal context.
