Employee Experience Design

6A Conversation with Kirsty Lloyd How Empathy and Feedback Became Cultural Anchors at Scale

Background

I (Samantha) met Kirsty when she joined EX Design School, and I was immediately impressed by her pragmatism and deep commitment to people. With a strong commercial and operations background, Kirsty brought a grounded perspective, and when her company, Haka House, faced major disruption, she leaned into the challenge with openness and grit.

What really stood out was how closely she listened to her team at Haka, and the impact of that was evident. Kirsty, as Head of People, needed to generate buy‐in and influence across the leadership group. She was genuinely surprised by how powerful this design‐led approach could be, both in how it felt to work this way and the results it created. Kirsty shares her experience with honesty and vulnerability, and I know you'll take a lot from hearing her story.

Please tell us a little about your background, the main roles you've had, and where you are now.

I've had a fairly varied career, but most of my leadership roles have been in hospitality and tourism. I was head of the commercial side at Jucy Rentals, which is a large tourism business here in New Zealand. We were also in the US, Canada, and Australia at the time. We booked cars, campervans, hotels, and cruises.

Then COVID came along. It was pretty rocky and I wasn't made redundant, but I did decide halfway through that it was time for me to move to a different business. I'd been through ...