The final day of the CANTO HR Conference did not disappoint.

After two days of panels, keynotes, hallway conversations and a lot of earnest talk about “people first,” Liberty Caribbean took the stage and did something refreshingly simple…

They talked about what they are actually doing.

• No glossy hero story.
• No inflated claims about culture.
• No pretending they have it all solved.

Just a clear walk through policies they’ve tried, decisions they’ve made, and lessons they’re still learning.

Listening to them, I kept thinking how rare it is to hear an organization speak about HR without slipping into performance mode.

Most companies perform HR. This one sounded like they were practicing it.

One of the first things they shared was their decision, years ago, to eliminate performance ratings altogether. No more numbers. No more annual rituals where people sit across a desk arguing about whether they are a 3 or a 4. Instead, regular conversations. Real feedback. Goals that shift when the business shifts.

It struck me how much courage that takes.

Ratings are convenient. They give managers somewhere to hide. They turn complicated human growth into tidy arithmetic. Remove them, and suddenly leadership requires actual presence.

You can’t outsource accountability to a
spreadsheet anymore.

• You have to talk.
• You have to explain.
• You have to coach.
• You have to listen.

In other words, you have to manage.

Then they spoke about parental leave…

Sixteen weeks maternity leave. Eight weeks paid parental leave for partners.
And most surprisingly, this is available from the very first day of employment.

No probationary waiting period. No proving-yourself-first clause. No assumption that a new mother is a risk to be managed instead of a human being to be supported.

That tiny policy tweak carries a worldview inside it.

It says: your life does not begin after the company has extracted enough value from you. It says: family is not an inconvenience we reluctantly accommodate. It says: we trust the people we hire.

In the Caribbean, where policy often lags decades behind reality, this is an important reminder that progress doesn’t wait for permission.

What followed, made half the room shift uncomfortably in their seats: unlimited vacation…Flex PTO.

As much time as you need, whenever you need it, once the work gets done.

I could almost hear the silent objections floating around the conference hall. “Not here.” “Not with our culture.” “People will take advantage.” “This would never work in Trinidad.”

And yet the story they told was the opposite.

When treated like adults, most people behave like adults. Teams plan better. Colleagues coordinate with each other. People rest more intentionally instead of hoarding days like scarce currency.

It turns out that responsibility grows when you give it room to breathe.

That idea threaded through everything they shared.

Gender-based violence support policies. Counselling services. Disaster response systems designed to locate employees first, before worrying about infrastructure. Technology used to remove friction from everyday HR processes so managers can spend less time pushing paper and more time paying attention to people.

None of it sounded glamorous. All of it sounded practical.

But what really stayed with me wasn’t the policies themselves. It was the way the managers and employees spoke about them.

On the panel, leaders talked about color-coding their calendars to protect time for people, not just tasks. A mother described what it meant to have extended leave to actually bond with her child instead of rushing back to work exhausted and anxious. A finance manager admitted that removing ratings changed the entire emotional temperature of performance conversations.

There was even a candid discussion about Caribbean talent mobility… how boldness is not just about ambition, but about visas, families, roots, and the emotional weight of leaving home.

It was all refreshingly real.

Not HR as theory. HR as lived experience.

Listening to them, I kept circling back to a simple thought: most organizations don’t fail at people because they lack ideas. They fail because they lack nerve.

They are terrified of being taken advantage of. Terrified of losing control.
Terrified of trusting employees more than they trust systems.

So they build policies around the worst possible behavior instead of the best possible intentions.

What Liberty Caribbean demonstrated, intentionally or not, is a different posture.

A willingness to design an organization around maturity rather than suspicion. Around conversation rather than control. Around the messy belief that if you treat people with dignity, most of them will rise to meet it.

This doesn’t make them a perfect company.

It doesn’t mean every manager gets it right. It doesn’t mean there aren’t hard days and policy headaches and moments of regret.

It simply means they have chosen a direction.

And in a corporate culture that often mistakes rigidity for professionalism, that choice feels quietly radical.

I left the session thinking less about Liberty Caribbean and more about every organization I’ve ever worked with.

• About how many of them say “people first” while behaving “policy first.”
• About how often HR is asked to be both the conscience and the cop.
• About how much easier leadership would be if more companies trusted their people enough to grow up alongside them.

Maybe that’s the real lesson.

Modern HR isn’t about better perks or smarter platforms. It’s about deciding whether you want to run a workplace full of adults… and then having the courage to actually let them be.

Strategic Reflection Prompt

If your organization removed the guardrails of control tomorrow, would your current culture rise in responsibility… or collapse from lack of trust?

About Giselle

I’m Giselle Hudson — Organization & People Development Sensemaker™, MCODE® Legacy Coach, writer and musician. I help leaders and independent professionals close the gap between strategy and execution by making invisible friction visible, so direction can finally translate into results.

If execution isn’t matching intent and you can’t quite see why, message me on WhatsApp. We’ll start with a brief Clarity Conversation to understand what you’re facing and decide together whether a focused Sensemaking Session is the right next step.