“Be open-minded and challenge what you think you want, what you think you know, and what you think you don’t know; particularly when it comes to yourself, your career, and your strengths and weaknesses. Never be afraid to ask for advice, but if you get an opportunity, go for it.” – David Bowes, Chief People Officer at Phlexglobal, 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 David Bowes at Phlexglobal, who started his HR Leadership career as Business Development Director at Lattelekom—an acquisition of Cable & Wireless—before moving to Cable & Wireless to act as Business Development Manager for the Asia Pacific region. In August 2000, David became COO at Riot Entertainment, later joining the team at WDS as Regional Manager for Europe before ascending the ranks by taking on the roles of VP for Organisation Development and Chief People Officer respectively.
In June 2016, David became Director of TalentFit Ltd, going on to join the team at Phlexglobal as Global HR Director in June 2018 before transitioning to his current role in March 2020.
Can you tell us how you got into HR and why?
From very early on in my career, even before taking on an HR role, I always felt that I worked well with people—I understood and could relate to them very easily. I always preferred working with people to working with things, but interestingly, I didn’t always follow my heart in that regard; there were a couple of pivotal points in my career where I ended up following money instead.
I worked as a software developer at one point because that was where the money was, but I fairly quickly tuned into the fact that I had a real inclination and strength of mind when it came to working with people within the Technology sector. As a result, I ended up getting more and more involved in implementing rather than developing systems, and working with users exposed me to more of their requirements and what businesses were trying to achieve. I started to get a real understanding of people, of technology, and of business all at once.
As well as wanting to develop around those themes, I also wanted to work abroad, so I joined a big company called Cable & Wireless to do some project management in technology change. When they bought a former national telephone company in Eastern Europe, I took the opportunity to go and manage the change programme over there. There was a lot of technology change that needed to take place, but the culture and workflows also needed modernising to allow them to take advantage of the new technology when it came in.
After about six months, my job changed quite considerably. The company appointed a new CEO, and I went to him to express my concern that the 10-year change programme I was supposed to be managing was no longer relevant. After that conversation, he asked me to work with him to filter, understand, and advise him on everything that came across his desk. I agreed, and the two years I was in that role were probably the biggest learning curve of my life!
It was fascinating to be at the senior level of a business, and the CEO was terrific. As a former Finance Director, he taught me to understand the mechanics and economics of the company, so I started to build my knowledge of its inner workings and how and where we made money. That meant I could contextualise all of the changes we were making and prioritise our actions based on the financial outcome and the impact on our vision for the future direction of the business.
The role really helped me to be able to not only look at statements and reports and understand them, but also understand where we needed to dig deeper into what was behind the data. In business, everything leads back to people—whether that’s our teams or our customers. I learned that successful financial outcomes depend not only on how you do in the marketplace in front of customers, but how well the people within the organisation are able to perform and sell based on your working practices, culture, and talent development. If you want to deliver great outcomes, you have to get your People agenda right.
After two years in that role, I found that I wanted to learn more about business, so I took on a role managing mergers and acquisitions for Cable & Wireless in Asia, then came back to the UK and went into a role managing the European part of Wireless Data Services, or WDS. There, I owned the resources, the P&L, and we achieved good growth by getting the People agenda right. I did that for two years, and then the CEO came to me and said that while the business had been generating a lot of profit in Europe, the international branches felt more like seven different businesses than one organisation. I explained that that was a People challenge on the organisational and cultural levels, and he asked whether I would take the position of HR Director to be able to address it and make the function less transactional.
That was my official entrance into HR. All of a sudden, I’d got my dream job, because I understood business and I could understand the impact of getting the People side of things right. I started to build a team of HR professionals who could educate me about the elements of HR I was less familiar with, and we became far more strategic about our organisational capability to leverage talent and remain agile. That allowed the business to grow to the level that it caught the attention of Xerox, who ultimately bought the business because of our organisational effectiveness, our people, and the way we were able to use those to take advantage of the market.
The management team at WDS enacted the change process when WDS became part of Xerox, but suddenly being focused internally within a big American organisation wasn’t at all what we were used to. While we did the best we could, we ended up going in different directions within about three years. I was fascinated by the work that was happening around how behavioural science impacts the workplace and how it could be used to tailor elements like reward and performance management, so I spent some time exploring it further.
Afterwards, I wanted to see if I could take everything I had learnt over the course of my career and apply it to the challenges and pressures of a private equity environment. I found that opportunity in Phlexglobal, who had tremendous potential, but significant People challenges and a very siloed, transactional HR function holding them back. We’ve been on a real journey to change the culture and build the HR capability to enable it to support the business in a very different way ever since.
I think that you’re working in HR whenever you’re leading teams or dealing with people, really. You’re always trying to motivate and reward people to encourage the right behaviours and manage performance.
Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector?
I think a continual challenge for HR professionals is to ask ourselves how we can keep our organisations going, maintain the capability to keep people engaged and motivated, and monitor the health and wellbeing of our staff; all while being able to pivot on a sixpence as we did last March.
When it comes to continuing to grow from the COVID pandemic, we need to ask ourselves what we can do to tap into what we’ve learnt, leverage it, and connect it to our existing good practices. We need to bring people together safely, allow them to collaborate, and give them a sense of belonging while also empowering and trusting them to get on with things independently. I think the pandemic has given us the opportunity to enact things around remote working that we’ve known instinctively were right for years, but we didn’t implement until we had to.
For Phlexglobal specifically, we’re also seeing a lot of growth, both organically and through acquisition, and that’s difficult to do without meeting people face-to-face, especially internationally in places like India. Going out to meet people and companies to get them integrated into the business quickly and effectively is something we’d always done pre-pandemic, so having to depart from that is a big ongoing challenge in terms of our ability to grow and scale.
Another important element of integrating businesses into ours is making sure that we align cultures in a way that preserves the best bits of the other business’ culture. At the same time, we have a clear view as to what our central culture and organisational design are, and they are very much geared towards delivering on our business strategy. Knowing what journey we’re going to go on and the speed we’re aiming to get there at enables us to make sure that our organisational capabilities are robust and agile enough to support that. The agility and flexibility of an organisation is crucial, as is implementing foundational systems, processes, and strategies that will enable you to pivot quickly if you do need to shift your focus.
What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career?
If you’re in the commercial world, it’s really important to get some commercial experience and follow the numbers. Understand what drives the business, the link between finance and people and customers, and how you can develop and upskill your people to maximise the financial reward from those relationships.
That understanding can come in part from pursuing qualifications and collaborating with your course-mates, but another really good way to do it is by getting out of HR, getting operational experience in a line management role, and then coming back in. That will allow you to understand the market, customers, and dynamics, as well as lead teams of people to gain the skills you need for senior HR Leadership. You can go on courses and speak to people, but nothing will prepare you like taking on practical experience within the business will. When you do, you end up deploying your people skills, communication skills, and collaboration skills in a commercial context that will only serve to better your HR practice and enable you to do a really good job.
Be open-minded and challenge what you think you want, what you think you know, and what you think you don’t know; particularly when it comes to yourself, your career, and your strengths and weaknesses. Never be afraid to ask for advice, but if you get an opportunity, go for it.
David has been working as Chief People Officer since March 2020, and leads Phlexglobal’s HR function, overseeing its continued evolution and adaptation to support the ongoing growth of the organisation internationally.