Aaron Mudd: “We don’t have a budget for benefits at all!”

Mudd will be speaking at the conference, ran in partnership with The Learn Centre, next week (June 6 and 7) at The Chelsea Harbour Hotel.

Reward Strategy (RS): What do you think delegates will learn from your session?

Aaron Mudd (AM): “At Lush (I like to think) we work in a different way to a lot of businesses. There is a very flat structure, little hierarchy and decision making is made as a collective of people providing meaningful opinions, as such we can move very quickly on things.

“We don’t have a budget for benefits at all! Of course we do need to make sure we can afford to introduce something but normally if it works for our staff and we can do it, we will. I’m hoping from the session you may hear something you haven’t heard before!”

RS: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing HR is right now?

AM: “We are starting to see lots of cases go through the courts on employment status and rights, especially with the gig economy. If you are working in that field it must be a uneasy time watching those progress.

“GDPR has to be mentioned, I don’t think HR have to worry as much on the actual legislation changes as we have always been good at that but I do wonder if we will start to see many more subject access requests as employees start to become more engaged on what data is held about them.”

RS: What other sessions are you looking forward to at the Payroll & Reward Conference?

AM: “I’m keen to see how Deliveroo manage their workforce in the gig economy, so I am interested to hear from Sola. I saw Henry (Tapper) speak on a panel a month or so ago which was highly entertaining for all the right reasons!”

RS: What do you think has been the most visible change to workplace benefits in the last year?

AM: “That employers need to play a more active role in employee financial wellbeing. There is a large movement of young people who are struggling financially, the current government and systems in place fall far from the mark so it seems this is now spilling into the workplace for employers to support.”

RS: What do you think will be the big issue for pay and reward in 2018?

AM: “All of the above and the change in workforce expectations, greater flexibility, financial struggle and the impending Brexit for good measure restricting the worker skills we require both here and internationally.”

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