[S]etbacks will happen, and you will face challenges and adversity over the course of your career, but it’s important to pick yourself back up and carry on when they happen. Just be resilient and focus on what you can deliver, and it will get you through.” – Sarnjit Kaur, HR Director for Commercial Businesses at Cox Automotive UK, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.
As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, we’ve invited some HR Leaders to share the secrets of their success.
This week, we had a great conversation with Sarnjit Kaur at Cox Automotive UK, who started her career in Finance by taking on roles including Customer Service Adviser, Customer Service Banking Team Manager, and Banking Marketing Manager at Abbey National PLC. In February 2002, Sarnjit became Diversity Manager for the company, later taking on the role of HR Business Partner.
In January 2009, Sarnjit took on the role of Interim Organisation Development Consultant for Sheffield City Council, later returning to the Finance sector as Senior HR Business Partner for Santander UK before ascending the ranks to Divisional People Projects and Performance Manager.
In June 2017, Sarnjit turned her HR talents to the automotive industry, becoming Head of HR for Manheim UK—part of the Cox Automotive UK group – and moved into her current role in January 2019.
Can you tell us how you got into HR and why?
I actually stumbled into HR. After I graduated from university, I first fell into banking because I lived in Bradford, where Abbey National had a big network of branches. At first, the aim was just to pay off my overdraft; I never envisaged staying, but I did.
Starting off as a Customer Service Advisor, it became apparent very quickly that that there were many opportunities for growth I could take up, and I progressed to Team Leader, followed by projects, and then marketing. At the time, the banking world was going from strength to strength, and as long as you were mobile, the world was your oyster.
Although I enjoyed those operational roles, my dream job came up in the form of a Diversity Manager role that sat in the HR function. If I’m being honest, I didn’t know anything about HR at that point, I just saw the job role and knew that was where I needed to be. It was a big move, though, and at first, I kept talking myself out of it as a lot of women do. I even withdrew my application at one point because I knew other people who had HR experience had applied. The Imposter Syndrome kicked in, but I remained true to my instinct and realised I was being silly and re-submitted my application. The rest is history: I travelled to Milton Keynes, successfully landed the role and that’s how my HR career started. I’ve never looked back.
I loved my Diversity role—it was a blank canvas that allowed me to tackle many issues that are still rife today. Educating colleagues, leaders and customers on inclusion and diversity matters was a real privilege as I realised it was a quite a taboo and often scary subject for people. My strategy was very simple and one which was focused on the strap line “Value People As Individuals“.
After a few years, Abbey National wanted to amalgamate the role into a more generalist HR Business Partner role. At the same time, the business structure transformed and the Business Partner roles available had more opportunity than ever. I therefore made the decision to put myself forward for one despite knowing that I’d never done generalist HR beyond a bit of recruiting. While my technical perspective on things perhaps wasn’t as developed as it could have been, my results orientation, communication and influencing skills made me stand out, and the organisation decided to give me the role despite my technical shortcomings.
I really enjoyed the Business Partner role, and went onto become business partner for the UK contact centres where I had started my career. Knowing how the contact centres operated, their KPIs and the people priorities as I had experienced as a team leader, enabled me to achieve several successful achievements in my role as HRBP.
During that time, Abbey National started outsourcing many of their contact centres. By that time, I’d been there 12 years, gained my CIPD qualification and gained diverse experience across the bank. I made the decision to take advantage of a restructuring programme and sign on the dotted line in November 2008 and left Abbey National.
I didn’t have much of a break as I started work as an Organisation Development Consultant at Sheffield City Council in December 2008. That was an interim role, but an interesting experience. In that time, I learned that the public and private sectors were like chalk and cheese, and how much the public sector was held back by bureaucracy. I learned a great deal there, but by the end of my contract, I was ready for a change.
That summer, Abbey National—who had rebranded to Santander — announced the acquisition of Alliance & Leicester. As with all acquisitions, there was plenty to do from a HR and people integration point, so I welcomed a call from my HRD at Santander, asking me to return and support the business harmonisation, integration and optimisation plans.
Progressing into a Senior HR Business Partner, I did nearly five years of transformation to streamline contact centres and tackle duplication after the acquisition, as well as closures and business optimisation, and of course, standard HR Business Partnering.
Returning at this point in my career was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me: I progressed greatly in that role and became more involved with our global functions and senior leadership team. Santander was such a large organisation that I didn’t have to move out of the business to take new opportunities or move between teams either—I could do it internally between divisions and really started to understand the fabric of the business. By this time, I had partnered across most of the divisions including Santander Global markets and the CEO office.
After almost five years in that Senior HRBP role, I was approached to work directly for the business in 2013 to develop the operating and organisation design projects for UK contact sites. By this time, the contact centres made up a quarter of the bank so stepping back into a business role was really enriching. As I knew all the processes involved in a contact centre thanks to my HRBP role, I supported organisational People projects for about 18 months.
At this point, I was ready to consolidate my experience and transition to somewhere totally different – hence I left Santander and decided to take some time out to spend with my family. Again, the break wasn’t as long as I had originally anticipated, as through networking with my HRD at Santander, I was introduced to a head-hunter who was recruiting for Cox Automotive and Manheim.
It really was an opportune meeting in that I just happened to be in Leeds when my HRD was having lunch this particular head-hunter and I had literally dropped by to say “hi”.
After an informal chat, the head-hunter thought I would be perfect for the job she was recruiting for and asked for my CV, and that’s how I ended up where I am today.
I have never looked back and really enjoyed consolidating my HR experience in a totally different industry. Whist my automotive industry knowledge wasn’t strong initially, I spent a considerable amount of time across our auctions business to understand processes as well as people. I think this is key to support people in their day to day roles and understanding how we can improve team member engagement around the themes that are important to them.
Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector?
COVID has been a huge challenge, but at the same time, I don’t think that all our challenges are COVID-related now.
HR functions like ours at Cox Automotive have made more conscious decisions on where to prioritise their support and expertise. This has focused on more consistent communications and engagement across all parts of the business.
As an organisation, we have really ramped-up our leadership communications, wellbeing initiatives and supporting our leaders and team members through the new normal. Like many organisations, the health and safety of our team members has and will always be our top priority so engaging and listening to our team members is something we have really invested our time in.
While the pandemic presented us with multiple challenges in terms of working with new concepts like furlough and social distancing, now things have been put in place, our biggest challenge is around defining the new normal and what our leadership agenda looks like in light of it.
In my current role, I’m driving the leadership agenda and working to develop the new behaviours we want from leaders moving forwards. How you do things is just as important as what you do, so that’s definitely a strategic priority for us at the moment.
Whilst the pandemic will present different challenges for different sectors and businesses, one thing all organisations have in common is how they support and engage their people. Remote working has meant that people are working together and communicating more than ever since COVID. Our work-life balance, new leadership, new ways of working, and a newfound sense of trust and empowerment in people are all good things to come out of COVID. Mental health and wellbeing have clearly been on everybody’s agenda as well—at Cox Automotive, we’ve really ramped up the spotlight in terms of support and increased the number of Mental Health First Aiders to support our team members.
I think a non-COVID theme for me is that there is more to do in terms of the diversity and inclusion piece which is something I’m passionate about. As an Asian woman, I’ve been lucky never to really have experienced any bias or discrimination during my career, but that’s not the case for everyone, and it needs to be addressed. Again, my motto – “Value People As Individuals”.
What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career?
I’m a firm believer that if you don’t ask, you don’t get. I’ve always put myself forward for opportunities and put my head above the parapet to access them. I think the depth and breadth of experience in different business areas I’ve had as a result of that has really helped me progress. That said, if you’ve got a good mindset, everything else will fall into place; you can always have a plan for broadening your functional skills if they aren’t quite right.
Know your business, know your operating environment, know your landscape, and understand the business inside out in terms of not just people, but process. Understanding process has helped me join-up the dots of how we can be more effective and efficient in order to make everyday life easier for our people.
Don’t make any apologies for being inquisitive, because questioning helps you join up the dots. In the same vein, it’s important to recognise that it’s very easy to face a problem and jump straight into solution mode. However, to tackle it effectively, you need to identify what the current process is, where it might be going wrong, and what you can do to fix it, while also being mindful of stakeholders and the business context.
Once you’re established in your career, don’t discount moving into new sectors or smaller organisations to consolidate your experience, as you can often have more of an impact there than in larger organisations. When you push yourself in a more close-knit environment without the inbuilt infrastructure that large organisations have, you do a bit of everything and master being an end-to-end generalist.
I would also say that it’s important to have good mentors behind you who can drive your success—as I’ve said, one mentor in particular who has supported me throughout my career is Rob Smith, who is currently Group HR Director at NG Bailey. His support has been invaluable, and he remains a very good friend of mine today.
The last thing is to be aware of is that setbacks will happen, and you will face challenges and adversity over the course of your career. It’s important, however, to pick yourself up and carry on when they happen. Just be resilient and focus on what you can deliver, and it will get you through.
Sarnjit has been working as HR Director for Commercial Businesses since January 2019, and is responsible for delivering and connecting the People strategy across Cox Automotive businesses, as well as continuing to develop the organisation’s leadership strategy and the group-wide approach to diversity and inclusion.