Julio Mosquera Stanziola (ANREH): “Effective people management requires understanding what employees actually experience”

Leaders League: What separates organizations that successfully retain talent from those that don’t?

The difference is their understanding of the relationship between how people feel and how they perform.

Organizations that retain talent recognize that personal and professional motivators are directly tied to satisfaction, development and, ultimately, performance. When people feel fulfilled in what they do, they engage more deeply, commit more consistently and sustain performance over time.

On the other hand, environments driven by pressure, fear, or constant threat may produce short-term results, but they are not sustainable.

Retention is not about perks. It’s about designing an environment where people can perform at their best because they actually want to be there.

When people feel fulfilled in what they do, they engage more deeply, commit more consistently and sustain performance over time

What is one assumption about the future of work that you believe is fundamentally wrong ‒ and why?

The assumption that AI will replace humans in the workplace. AI will absolutely transform how we work. It will redefine roles, eliminate certain tasks and create new ways of operating. But that does not mean it will replace the human element.

There will always be a need for judgment, context, relationships and decision-making areas where humans remain critical. The real shift is not replacement. It’s reconfiguration.

Organizations that understand how to integrate AI with human capability will win. Those that think it’s a substitution problem are oversimplifying the future.

What is the most underestimated legal or regulatory risk related to labor right now?

The failure to comply with well-being-related regulations, particularly around time off, vacation and rest. Many organizations still treat these as operational inconveniences rather than legal and strategic obligations ‒ denying leave, postponing it indefinitely, or allowing it to accumulate without structure.

This creates a dual risk: legal exposure, because these rights are protected in most jurisdictions; and performance erosion, because overworked individuals eventually disengage or burn out.

It’s underestimated because it seems minor in the short term ‒ but it compounds into compliance issues, reputational risk and declining performance.

If you could change one thing about how companies manage staff, what would it be?

I would change how decisions are made. From top-down assumptions to informed, reality-based understanding. Many organizations design policies, compensation structures and workloads from the top, without fully understanding the day-to-day realities of the people those decisions impact.

The issue is not intent, it’s distance from reality. Effective people management requires understanding what employees actually experience and designing solutions based on that reality, not executive perception. Without that, even well-intentioned decisions fail.

What advice would you give to a CEO who underestimates HR’s role?

Don’t. HR is often misunderstood as administrative, when in reality it is one of the core drivers of business performance. At its most basic, HR’s hiring and promotion decisions shape an organization’s capability, turning it into a competitive advantage or a structural weakness.

Beyond that, HR defines the systems that guide how work actually happens, how performance is managed, how decisions are made, how policies are applied, and how data is used to understand and improve the workforce. Your company’s culture is the result of all these elements working together, shaping how people show up, collaborate, and sustain results over time.

When this ecosystem is not intentionally designed, organizations become inconsistent.

HR is what brings structure, insight and coherence to how people operate, turning them into a true source of advantage to your organization.