Real-Time HR in Practice, Lessons from TomTom CHRO
Real-Time HR is a shift away from predictive, long-term planning toward a more adaptive and responsive way of operating.
Introduction
Real-time HR is not about reactivity, it’s about staying close to the problem, building the discipline to prioritise what matters most, and designing an operating model that can move at the pace of the “now of work”. In this episode, Emily Firth sits down with Arne-Christian van der Tang, CHRO of TomTom, to unpack what “Real-Time HR” actually means in practice and why TomTom created Real-Time HR 2026, a gathering for brightest minds in the HR space to speak openly about the realities they’re navigating and the solutions that actually hold up under pressure.
In this conversation, we discuss:
- Why HR keeps “falling in love with the solution” (and how to fall in love with the problem instead)
- Moving from siloed projects to one shared backlog of problems
- What a product mindset looks like inside a People team (MVPs, prioritisation, adaptability)
- The trade-offs of changing your operating model (including unlearning, reskilling, and losing people along the way)
- Why community matters more than ever: shared challenges, shared learning, higher standards
The world of work is not the same today as it was 6 months ago. And it's not the same as it was 6 years ago, but also not what it will be 3 months from now. There's no point talking about the future of work - it's all happening now.
Chapters
00:00 - Arne-Christian background: 17 years at TomTom, 12 as CHRO
01:13 - How to keep innovating at the same company
02:08 - What Real Time HR is and where the name came from
04:43 - The problem with waterfall HR - falling in love with solutions
07:26 - Falling in love with the problem instead
08:12 - Why the future of work is irrelevant - it's all happening now
10:31 - How to put real time HR into practice
12:12 - The problem backlog - one list for the whole people team
15:35 - Killing the silos in HR
17:29 - The T-shaped HR professional and the skills shift
20:06 - What's gone well -and what hasn't
21:39 - Losing people through structural change
24:29 - When everything is a priority - and how to cope
27:40 - Building a collective mindset through one shared backlog
29:52 - It takes a village - why community matters
33:08 - The origin of the Real Time HR event
37:29 - What to expect at Real Time HR - speakers, format, and rules
43:15 - How TruthWorks and TomTom found their alignment
44:48 - TruthWorks' own real time shift - from agency to platform
47:11 - How to register for Real Time HR on March 11th
Key Take-aways
- Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Every HR leader's brain jumps to answers. The discipline - and the real skill - is staying with the problem long enough to actually understand it.
- One backlog changes everything. When the whole people team works from a single prioritised list, you stop defending silos and start making decisions that actually serve the company.
- The future of work is a distraction. Nobody predicted AI, nobody predicted geopolitics. Stop forecasting and get sharper at responding to what's happening right now.
- 97% compliance means nothing if the culture didn't shift. Completion rates are vanity metrics. The only question that matters is whether you moved closer to solving the real problem.
- You will lose people through change and that's okay. Some HR professionals have built their identity around a specialism. A flat, collective model isn't for everyone - make peace with that.
- Community isn't networking, it's how you stay sane. The most valuable thing Arne-Christian gets from peers isn't best practice, it's the reassurance that everyone is navigating the same mess.
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