By Giulianna Boscardin
for the 2025 Risky Women Writing Competition, presented in partnership with Ocorian
Governance isn’t merely about rules; it’s about empowering people to embody those standards—and, let’s be honest, helping them stay upright in high heels along the way.
When most people hear the word governance, their eyes glaze over. It sounds like a dusty corporate policy binder, something you only pull out during an audit or to prop up a wobbly desk. I also used to think that was the truth, but my perception has changed over time.
Here is what I know about HR & governance after 18 years in HR, 10 countries, 1 start-up and 3 global organizations. Governance is not only about setting standards, but making sure everyone rises to meet them. It’s not about rules for rules’ sake. It’s about making sure an organization can stand tall, walk confidently, and not twist an ankle on the way to success. (Yes, I said ankle. This is HR with high heels and we know what it means to balance under pressure).
Governance Isn’t Just for Boardrooms
Too often, governance gets locked up in boardrooms and risk committees, far away from the everyday reality of employees. But standards don’t live in fancy presentations, they live in people.
- The CEO might sign off on a shiny new code of conduct,
- The compliance team might translate it into bullet points,
- But it’s HR who has to make sure those standards are lived out in meetings, promotions, and Monday-morning Slack threads.
Governance without people is just paperwork. HR makes governance human.
The year was 2015 when I joined P&G team, in the UK, the company was going through a major transformation. Several brands had been sold, and the strategy was shifting to a premium-focused portfolio. But selling “premium” wasn’t just about product packaging or price points. Premium meant trust, and trust had to start inside the company before it could be projected to consumers.
That’s where governance came in. At P&G, the new standard wasn’t just operational excellence, it was being trustworthy at every level: in decisions, in communication, in the way teams showed up for each other.
Learning played the translator role, turning governance into lived behaviors:
- Internal voice before external promise: We shifted the tone of leadership communication, training, and recognition so employees consistently embodied a “trust” mindset.
- Embedding standards in systems: Performance frameworks and promotion criteria were adjusted, rising in the company meant demonstrating behaviors that built trust.
- Consistency across regions: Through governance, we ensured that whether an employee was in Germany or the UK, the culture projected the same reliability and integrity the customer would later experience.
The result was a true cultural pivot: employees didn’t just talk about a voice, they lived it. And because they lived it, consumers felt it. It became a governance-backed standard of trust.
And Then Come the R and the C
If governance is about setting standards, risk management is about spotting the cracks before someone twists an ankle. In HR, risks don’t always look like financial forecasts or cyber breaches. They look like:
- A culture drifting back to “how things used to be” after a big change.
- A manager promoting speed over integrity because “the numbers look good.”
- Employees losing trust because leaders’ words and actions don’t align.
At P&G, part of the pivot was risk management in disguise, keeping an eye on early signals that the “trust” mindset wasn’t taking hold. Pulse surveys, skip-level conversations, I was a part of the Learning team but there were other people on that chain ensuring success. All a way to scan for cultural risks before they undermined the business strategy.
And finally, there’s compliance. The unglamorous sibling of governance and risk. But without it, standards slip and risks multiply. Compliance is what takes the trust promise and nails it down so it’s not optional:
- Policies rewritten to reflect new expectations.
- Training tracked, not just offered.
- Knowledge base adjusted to reflect the new standards.
Done badly, compliance feels like bureaucracy. Done well, it feels like fairness. At P&G, tying trust to systems meant every employee knew the rules were the same, no matter their role or region. That consistency built confidence both internally and externally.
High Heels & Higher Standards
So yes, governance set the new bar. Risk management kept us from tripping. Compliance made sure we didn’t forget what we’d promised.
That’s the rhythm of GRC in HR:
- Governance = setting standards people rise to.
- Risk = balancing ahead of time so culture doesn’t stumble.
- Compliance = fastening the strap on the high heel, quiet, practical, but the only reason the whole thing stays on.
In the end, HR makes GRC human. We don’t just manage systems; we help people rise, balance, and walk the runway of organizational success, confidently, and without twisting an ankle. The influence HR has to make it successful is absolutely great, and partnering with the right experts from cross functional areas turns it into a perfectly well oiled machine.
High heels optional. Higher standards, non-negotiable.