DisruptHR with Fabienne Lorenz: How Collaboration Turns HR into a True Business Driver
Launching a new HR initiative often starts with high hopes and polished plans. Yet reality can look different: a programme that seemed perfect on paper suddenly fails to land. In her DisruptHR talk, Fabienne Lorenz cuts right to the heart of why this happens so frequently: Most projects don’t fail because they’re bad ideas; they fail because they weren’t built with people.
With refreshing clarity and a people-centric lens, Lorenz challenges traditional HR habits – particularly the tendency to design solutions for the business instead of with it. Her message is simple but powerful: Collaboration isn’t messy; avoiding it is.
When HR Works in Silos, Impact Gets Lost
Fabienne describes a dynamic familiar to many HR teams: the desire to be seen as strategic partners paired with processes that unintentionally isolate HR from the business. HR teams meet internally, plan internally and later “announce” solutions. The outcome is predictable – low ownership, little engagement and solutions that struggle to gain traction.
Her experience as newly appointed Head of Training in an L&D team illustrates this perfectly. The team designed programmes based on best practices, online research and their own expertise. All valid – yet they rarely involved the business. The result: low adoption rates and a reputation for producing “nice trainings no one really needs”.
The Hidden Cost of Avoiding Collaboration
When asked why collaboration was missing, the L&D team answered with what many HR professionals quietly feel:
“It’s messy. Too many opinions. Too many meetings.”
But as Fabienne points out, the real irony was that avoiding collaboration to save time was actually costing them time, trust and impact. Research backs this: cross-functional teams that involve users early make faster decisions, create higher-quality solutions and reduce costly rework later.
Just as importantly, involvement fuels ownership. People support what they help create.
A People-Centric Turnaround: Redesigning Onboarding
Determined to shift the dynamic, Fabienne Lorenz reimagined the next big project – the redesign of the onboarding training programme. Borrowing from design thinking, she introduced an iterative, user-centric approach:
Interviews with new hires, team leads and key stakeholders
Honest conversations about frustrations and needs
Early testing with user groups and rapid refinement cycles
What they learned was clear: the existing onboarding was too long and not useful enough.
What they created was even clearer: a shorter, sharper and more relevant onboarding experience.
And the payoff? They finished faster than previous projects, completion rates increased and – perhaps most importantly – the business noticed. The team felt pride again.
Three Practical Shifts HR Can Make Today
Fabienne closes with three simple yet transformative shifts HR teams can adopt immediately:
Build with, not for: Invite employees and managers from the start. Treat them as co-designers, not end users.
Ask the Impact Question: Continuously challenge your team: “How does this improve people’s everyday experience?”
Share Success with the Business: Measure results using both people-centric and business-centric metrics – and celebrate the wins together.
Why This Talk Matters
Fabienne’s message resonates far beyond HR. In a world where speed, relevance and employee experience matter more than ever, her reminder is timely: When people are involved in creating a solution, they don’t just use it – they own it.
And ownership is what turns HR initiatives into real business impact.
Key Take-Aways
Projects often fail not because of poor ideas but because people weren’t involved.
Siloed HR processes undermine adoption, ownership and recognition.
Avoiding collaboration slows teams down and erodes trust.
Early cross-functional involvement creates faster decisions and higher-quality solutions.
Design thinking methods help HR build user-centric, relevant programmes.
Testing with small groups accelerates improvement and reduces rework.
Measuring success with both business and people metrics builds shared accountability.
Collaboration is not a burden – it is the key to HR becoming a strategic driver.
About Fabienne Lorenz
Co-Lead Hello 50:50 World
Fabienne Lorenz is an L&D leader, coach, and speaker who loves exploring how people grow—and how organizations can grow with them.
Working at the intersection of people, technology, and change, she cares deeply about creating environments where people can thrive, create meaningful impact, and stay curious.
Her passion for inclusive leadership led her to co-lead Hello 50:50 World, a community focused on fostering equality in the tech industry through allyship and dialogue. She believes learning should empower people not just to do better work—but to shape better futures.
Our Sponsors
A big thank you to our main partner Workday, our partner HR Cosmos, our host Coople and video producer Online Recruiter.
About DisruptHR
Innovative, fresh ideas and opinions that rethink and reshape the working world, presented by around 10 speakers in just 5 minutes each: that’s DisruptHR.
Our speakers are coached by our TEDxLausanne Speaker Coach, Christopher Lübbers, to help them bring out their very best.
SPOT ON has been organizing these events for many years in Zurich. To date, more than 100 speakers have taken the stage at our events.
