Episode 156

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Published on:

17th Jun 2025

LinkedIn’s Ex-CHRO Reveals How to Build a People First Work Culture | Steve Cadigan

This episode is sponsored by ‘Deel: Your Forever People Platform’.

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How LinkedIn Built a Culture That Scaled to 4,000 Employees | Steve Cadigan on HR, AI & the Future of Work


What happens when your product is recruiting… but your biggest challenge is hiring?


In this powerful episode of the HR L&D Podcast, Nick Day sits down with Steve Cadigan, LinkedIn’s first Chief HR Officer, to unpack how he helped scale the company from 400 to 4,000 people by building culture as a competitive advantage.


Steve shares never-before-heard strategies from his time at LinkedIn, including:

  • Why employee loyalty now depends on learning, not tenure
  • How job fluidity is reshaping leadership models
  • Why high turnover might actually be your secret weapon
  • How companies like Tesla and Prudential are using AI in creative, people-first ways
  • What the future of HR really looks like in an AI-accelerated world


Whether you're a CHRO, people leader, or just curious about the shifting world of work, this is a masterclass in modern HR.



Website: http://stevecadigan.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cadigan/


Connect with Nick Day: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickday/


Find your ideal candidate with our job vacancy system: https://jgarecruitment.ck.page/919cf6b9ea


Sign up to the HR L&D Newsletter - https://jgarecruitment.ck.page/23e7b153e7



(00:00) Traditional Retention Strategies Are Broken  

(03:09) Rethinking HR

(03:49) LinkedIn’s Culture as a Strategic Advantage  

(08:21) Talent Hacking & Building Career Mobility  

(12:59) Rethinking Recruitment

(18:46) The New Workforce Psychology 

(24:15) Why Learning Is the Future of Loyalty  

(28:32) The Remote Work Reckoning

(34:12) AI’s Potential in HR

(39:05) Using AI to Empower Career Growth  

(41:15) Value of Human Skills in an AI World

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About the Podcast

The HR L&D Podcast
Leadership, recruitment, culture. Conversations with HR's best
HR gets handed the problems nobody else wants to own. The restructure, the grievance, the engagement survey that came back badly. And then gets asked why people are leaving.

I'm Nick Day. I run an HR recruitment agency, which means I spend most of my week on the phone to HR directors, HR leaders and people leaders talking about what the job is actually like rather than what's written on the job spec. This HR Podcast came out of those calls. I kept hearing things worth repeating, and nobody was repeating them.

Every week I sit down with HR leaders, chief people officers, L&D specialists and the occasional academic who has changed how I think about work and people engagement. We get into leadership, and what happens when someone brilliant at the technical side gets promoted into managing humans.

Employee engagement past the survey score. Diversity, equity and inclusion in a climate where saying those words out loud has become a decision in itself. Pay transparency, talent management, reducing bias in hiring, HR digital transformation and the HCM systems everyone is being sold. And of course we cannot forget HR AI tools and platforms that are flooding the landscape as AI in HR becomes a hot topic every people leader is keen to understand and leverage.

Wellbeing comes up constantly, and it usually turns into the same question. Who looks after the HR team.

I'm not an HR practitioner and I don't pretend to be. I'm the person who hires them, which puts me in a useful position. I get to ask the obvious question that everyone in the room already knows the answer to and nobody says.

No script and no polite version. Mostly it's the conversation you'd have with someone doing your job at a different company, if you ever got the chance to sit down with them.

If you work in HR, people management or L&D, or you're building a career in it, start by subscribing to The HR L&D Podcast. We have had guests including Stephen Covey, Alan Stein Jnr, Andrea Wareham and Dr. Thom Mayer among other HR Leaders who are shaping the future of work and leadership.

Need HR staff? I run JGA Recruitment, an HR and payroll recruitment agency. www.jgarecruitment.com or info@jgarecruitment.com

Want to be on the show? Nick@jgadigital.com

If payroll is closer to your world, I also host The Payroll Podcast, the most listened to payroll show in the world.

Topics include HR leadership, workplace culture, retention, people management, employee engagement, diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI strategy, AI for HR, AI recruitment tools, talent management, HR digital transformation, HCM, staff wellbeing, pay transparency, reducing bias, L&D and HR recruitment.

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Nick Day