“At any stage in your HR career, I would challenge you to work for leaders who respond to your ideas by saying, ‘Yes, and…’ rather than, ‘That’s a good idea, but…’. The ‘Yes, and…’ people in the world will get you excited about and loving what you do, whereas the ‘Good idea, but…’ people are more likely to leave you feeling discouraged and kill your buzz.” – Nick Holmes, Head of HR/People and Culture at Distrelec Group, 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 Nick Holmes at Distrelec, who began his People career as Senior Site Manager at Magic Memories, later ascending the ranks within the business as Regional Training Manager for Europe & the Middle East and Global Head of Learning & Development respectively. In February 2019, Nick transitioned to his current role at Distrelec.
Can you tell us how you got into HR and why?
I actually started my working life as an actor, as that was what my degree was in, but I also sold photographs for Magic Memories at London Aquarium while searching for roles. I found that not only was I quite good at it, but I enjoyed making money and building teams while doing it. By the age of 22, I had my own team of 25 people at London Aquarium.
Once I reached that point, I approached the UK Operations Director about teaching other people to do what I had done so we could make more money. He agreed, and without having any prior background in Learning & Development to draw on, I built a training programme and delivered it across our UK sites.
The business eventually asked me to go and open a new store in San Francisco and train the staff there, which I loved. I was still pursuing my acting career at the time, and not long afterwards, my agent told me they’d secured me an audition. As I was travelling abroad so much with Magic Memories, I knew I needed to make a decision about which path to take. I loved both careers, but ultimately decided to pursue my Training career more seriously and see where it went.
I then approached the business about becoming the Regional Training Manager for Europe & the Middle East. I’d built up my credibility and their trust by that point, so they agreed, and I went into the role. I knew I needed some formal education to inform it, so I went and got my CIPD qualification and tried to build up my understanding of some fundamental HR stuff. I also spent every evening and weekend reading and learning things around L&D, which was incredibly useful.
After two years, I progressed to Head of Learning & Development, which was a widespread role covering about 200,000 employees across 12 countries. It made me realise that although I loved L&D, I could have more impact in a wider generalist HR role where I was not just taking on learning, but the entire People life cycle.
I was lucky enough to land a role with Distrelec that did just that, and moved there in February 2019 to take on the entire HR function. In March 2020, Distrelec were bought by a private equity firm, which has allowed us to start our HR operations from scratch, taking action much more freely than before. It’s been a wonderful change.
I’m also currently doing a Masters in Employment Law at the University of Leicester in order to bridge a skills gap and follow an interest that I uncovered during my CIPD. It’s challenging me intellectually, aiding my self-improvement, and I’m having a lot of fun with it as well.
A lot of people fall into HR, but I definitely chose this path. For me, it’s the only role aside from CEO or COO where you can actually impact the entire organisation, as well as all your customers, everyone who they serve, and the families that your people go home to every day. The interventions and practices we put in place directly impact how everyone feels about what we do, and as Head of HR or Head of People, you can really influence how people live their lives on a daily basis—how they feel when they come to work, when they leave work, and when they leave the business altogether. The HR sector fixates on retention, but I think that as long as people leave loving what they’ve seen and been experienced—whether that’s after four days, four weeks, or four years—I’ve done my job.
It’s not always easy, but I’m really lucky to be doing what I’m doing at the moment. Very rarely do you get the opportunity in HR to reset and rebuild everything, from designing brand new organisational values to revamping culture and removing old systems to replace them with something faster and sleeker.
Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector?
As I mentioned previously, a key theme for Distrelec since the private equity acquisition has been resetting our expectations and processes. We’re redesigning the tools we use, removing our old legacy systems and implementing new ones, and working out how to boost our employee brand and find a way of attracting talent that overcomes the fact that we’re a European distributor with limited prevalence in the UK. In order to do that, we’re on a journey to reinvent our employee experience from head to toe as we move forward into 2021.
With that comes making sure we’re able to drive change across the whole organisation. If you walk into our Manchester offices, it feels like you’re walking into a start-up, but we also have a lot of legacy hangover in our culture at the moment. That means that no-one feels empowered to make decisions, and people can be reluctant or resistant towards change. Now we are private equity backed, every penny is scrutinized, so we really need to be able to put cases together for the processes and systems that are integral to the business to justify the cost, as well as rethink those that may not be necessary but have always been in place. Switching the organisation’s mindset from only making changes when they’re perfect to being agile enough to come up with new ideas and work on iterating them until they’re great is a really important challenge for us to tackle.
In practice, we are small and agile enough to implement things without a bureaucracy chain, so it’s just about getting people excited enough to commit to starting small and growing new ventures. A big part of that is building up trust that we will deliver the changes we envision, as those visions weren’t always fully carried out after they were put forward during legacy leadership. We are hopeful that changing our approach will allow us to work at pace, which is where growth happens. When I started, I didn’t have the in-house team of HR Managers to lead that I now do, so we have seen some growth and transformation in the function already. I would like to continue to drive that now we’re under private equity ownership and I’m able to do things under a wider scope and at a faster pace than before.
Our strategy as an organisation is to go back to the digital future, and we are on a really cool path to be able to do that. We recognise that we are in no way perfect and have a lot still to change, but working with this iteration of Distrelec is like joining a start-up without the risk. You have a ball of clay to shape your role from and the autonomy to make it what you want. With employee experience, as with everything else, we are looking to do not just what is great now, but what will be great in the next three to five years. When it comes to remote work, flexible working, and mental health, we’re looking to build new strategies and do some really special things in those spaces in line with the redesign of our internal purpose and mission.
Our mission is to make Distrelec a happy, healthy place to work. When we talk about happiness, that’s about having a sense of purpose in your role and development and growth in your career. Likewise, when we talk about health, that encompasses not only mental health and wellbeing, but also environmental and financial health—and making sure the distribution of profit is fair to aid that financial health.
Since the COVID crisis, it’s been especially important to us to rebrand the People and Culture function to show that people are at the heart of what we do and that we’re committed to creating a great work environment for them. We know we need to bring back the sense of connection that being fully remote has diminished once it’s safe to do so, but as long as someone can either switch off their computer at home or leave the office on a not-so-great day and still feel happy and healthy in themselves and their jobs overall, we’re accomplishing that mission.
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’ve always worked under the mindset of justifying every penny I spend and delivering with accountability, and that approach goes a really long way to securing buy-in with the people you need to sign off a big spend or make sure things get actioned within the deeper organisation.
If you’re looking to advance your HR career by stepping up into a strategic or leadership role, you first and foremost need to have a vision for your organisation and be able to see the value in it. Trust yourself to see the gaps in the organisation, and then have the imagination to see how to fill them and the bravery to tell people that that’s what you’re going to do. Too often, people will point out what’s wrong and then ask what others are going to do about it; you need to take it upon yourself to tell people how you will address the gaps you have identified. If you’re an HRBP and you think of ways to improve your organisation’s onboarding plan, for example, just build it—don’t wait for permission.
Another incredibly beneficial skill is being able to think like a CMO or a COO when you’re thinking about your HR practice. That way, you can always identify how your practice will add value across the business. Going back to my example, you can assert that you’re redesigning the onboarding process not just because it ticks a box for you in HR, but because the new Content Writer in Marketing will know the products two weeks quicker than they would under the old system, speeding up the whole process as a result. Don’t be afraid to learn and speak the language of your business.
At any stage in your HR career, I would challenge you to work for leaders who respond to your ideas by saying, ‘Yes, and…’ rather than, ‘That’s a good idea, but…’. The ‘Yes, and…’ people in the world will get you excited about and loving what you do, whereas the ‘Good idea, but…’ people are more likely to leave you feeling discouraged and kill your buzz.
Nick has been working as Head of HR/People and Culture since February 2019, and provides leadership across all aspects of Distrelec’s HR/People and Culture function, continuing to drive change in and evolve customer experience, employee experience, and talent attraction strategies across the organisation, as well as implement Distrelec’s redefined mission for 2021.
If you are interested in having a confidential conversation about your career or would like support growing your team, please get in touch today.