“Employees are the core of a blue collar business. Finance and operations look at money and bums on seats, but from the HR perspective you need to understand what drives employees, and how to recognise and reward them.” – Emily Gardiner, HR Director at T Brown 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 Emily Gardiner, who began her career in hospitality before discovering her love of HR. Emily completed a HNC in Business Management followed by a PGD in Human Resource Management. In 2007 she worked as HR Advisor at Maersk before moving to Balfour Beatty Rail in 2008. After three years, she took a role as Head of Group HR at T Brown Group, where she built the HR Department. Emily has been with T Brown Group since 2011 and transitioned to her current role as HR Director in 2016.
Can you tell us how you got into HR and why?
HR was never my ambition, I wanted to be a restaurant manager. I dropped out of university after the first year and adored bar work and waitressing. A pivotal career moment for me was when my then-partner completed their degree. It motivated me to restart studying, with a view to getting the academic grounding I’d need to run a restaurant.
I started a HNC in Business Management course part-time, and to fund it I moved out of hospitality – temporarily I thought at the time – and took a job at Goldman Sachs. That gave me the ability to concentrate on the HNC and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed working in the corporate environment. After graduation, my tutor recommended a post grad in HR, which I did for another two years part-time.
My interest in HR progressed naturally from my studies. I found employment law fascinating and I decided it would be a good idea to get some practical HR experience, still with a view to opening a restaurant. That’s when I moved into my first HR role where I fell in love with the work.
My HR career really spiralled from there. I never lost the ambition to run a bar and restaurant, in fact I’d still love to do it now, but at the same time I love HR. For me, it’s the fact that you’re dealing with humans. You’re dealing with people who are so complex, there’s never two people the same and the challenges you have on a daily basis are fascinating, there’s never a dull day!
Early in my career I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself. I wanted to understand what HR is like in different industries, so I changed roles roughly every three years and worked in the public sector, private sector, and third sector. That was until I found T Brown Group in 2011, where I’ve been since. It’s a large, family run company, and I had the opportunity to build a HR department from scratch.
In a HR Director role you need quite significant leadership skills. You need to be able to manage not only your employees, but also your peers in terms of what they do and how they do it. For me, one of the joys of HR is how transferable it is. There aren’t many other roles where you can work in any industry and hit the ground running.
Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector?
T Brown Group’s business is around property maintenance. We remained operational during the COVID period because our primary clients are housing associations and local authorities, which are essential services, so everything for us continued, with the only difference being remote working.
What we are facing is a talent shortage shared with the whole gas industry. There’s a real push driven by the government to achieve net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. What that means for us is that gas boilers are going to be replaced with more renewable heating systems in all new builds, and eventually replaced in current builds. While the target is 2050, the impact is happening right now, because there are less people choosing to go into this field of work, thinking that why would I want to get a domestic or commercial gas qualification if everything’s turning to renewable energy? Additionally, many of those who are in this field of work now are choosing to go self-employed.
Our biggest challenge is trying to gear our organisation up to move in the renewable energy direction, whilst also being able to sustain our current contracts for the old gas boilers. The shortage of gas engineers is industry wide, so to tackle this we need to grow our own qualified people internally.
We’ve set up a zero carbon division and we’re training our engineers in the new water powered boilers. We’re setting up a training pathway for ex-forces individuals and we are relooking at our apprenticeship program. We’re also up-skilling internally, giving people who are interested the opportunity to take new qualifications.
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 often get asked for advice so I have a few tips. First, get qualifications as early as you can in your career. If you can, find a company that will invest in you and support you through a qualification or apprenticeship.
Second, there are many different aspects to HR, don’t pigeonhole yourself too early. Experience the variety, move between industries if possible and develop a broad knowledge base. Doing this has served me so well, both in terms of being a better HR manager, and climbing the career ladder.
Third, don’t necessarily do ‘textbook’ HR, initiative is really important. Use your initiative in conjunction with your HR knowledge to work backwards from your desired outcome and see how you can get there.
Fourth, if you work in a blue collar industry like mine, do understand that the employees are the core of that business. Finance and operations look at money and bums on seats, but from the HR perspective you need to understand what drives employees, and how to recognise and reward them. Employee engagement makes a huge difference to the organisation. Financials and delivery are important, but the business needs the right people and longevity of people as well.
Finally, don’t beat yourself up if you get something wrong. Learn from your errors and you’ll become a better HR practitioner because of it.
Emily has been with T Brown Group for 11 years. In addition to her role as Human Resource Director she serves on the leadership team for planning and implementing change.