“Wherever you are in your career you need to understand the language of your business. You need to understand finance, profit and loss and communications.” – Kristine Pollock, Group People Director at Eurovia UK Ltd, 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 Kristine Pollock at Eurovia UK Ltd, who began her HR career as a HR Officer at Mark One (Oxford St) Plc, before transitioning to the role of Assistant Office Manager with Vizards. After two years, she became HR Manager at The Hanover Park Group. In 2000, Kristine joined Eurovia UK Ltd where she has continued to build her HR leadership career for the last two decades. From 2000 to 2009 she held the role of Group Head of Human Resources, before being promoted to her current position of Group HR Director in June 2009. In August 2019 Kristine became Group People Director.
Can you tell us how you got into HR and why?
I’d love to say I had a grand plan to get into HR, but that’s not quite what happened. I studied Law and French at University with a view of doing international law. During my course, I was particularly intrigued by the employment law side of things. After graduating I began a role in finance, which was enjoyable enough but it wasn’t long before I saw a vacancy in HR and moved across. I thought dealing with people would have an unpredictable element that appealed to me.
After a few years I decided to obtain my professional qualifications and began with CIPD before a master’s in strategic human resources. There’s always something you can learn and even now, at this stage in my career, I’m halfway through my second master’s in People and Organisational Development.
The opportunity to make a difference is what keeps me engaged in HR. Sometimes that’s in a human and personal way, other times it’s about strategic, companywide decisions. Nowadays in HR, you need to talk the language of the business and understand the figures, plus have a forward-looking view where you can see the impact of what you’re doing. I enjoy feeling that I’m part of an organisation that’s moving forwards and my role is to ensure that the people aspects are taken into account.
HR has very important soft elements to it, but it’s no longer a traditional, fluffy, tea and sympathy role. It’s about how you achieve the best in your business through the people that work there. Of course, to achieve the best you need a People focused approach, ensuring your employees are fulfilled and feel they belong.
I’ve been with Eurovia for 21 years. When I joined the business, they had 1,700 people and no one in HR. Everything has been built from that point onwards, but what we build changes all the time. Our organisation provides highways services, and a lot of people assume that because someone may work on the side of the road for a living that they’re low skilled or can’t do anything else. Actually, the opposite is true. Our employees are highly skilled and we are an organisation that is always looking to use innovation to improve and move forwards.
As a business we change all the time. I am not People Director of the same business I joined twenty one years ago. It has changed, evolved, and grown and our HR priorities have as well. In addition to innovation, our business is so attractive to me because you’re not just allowed to use your initiative, you’re expected to. I feel a genuine ownership and connection to what I’m doing in a business with a good heart, we try to do the right thing.
Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector?
Remote working is a challenge in some parts of our business. Two thirds of our employees work on the highways network and you physically cannot do that work from anywhere else. They are key workers and we have to take that into account.
We don’t want to have a one-size-fits all approach. We’re trying to balance the needs of those who want to work remotely with the need for face to face connection so we’re beginning slowly. In a mixed workforce with different professions, you have to find an approach that gives something to everybody. I like to think that one day we might get to a place where our roadside workers can have some form of flexible working, but because of the high mobility and complex logistics – such as required response times on the network – it’s difficult. Like any employer, we have to look to the future and consider where we can bring in flexibility in a way that benefits both the employee and the business.
A challenge I see for HR in general is systems, data and metrics and the meaning we apply to those. At Eurovia we’re in the process of moving to a new HR system. Part of that is asking, what data do we store? How do we use it? What data do we measure? What does it tell us and is it meaningful? Does it enable us to manage our business better? Data and metrics in the HR arena are increasingly important but there’s no point in reporting on things for the sake of it. We need to ask, what does it tell us? And how can it help us drive the business forward? I talk about What, So What, and Now What with my team – what do we measure, so what does it mean, and now what do we do with that?
What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career?
Early in your career, try and get experience in as many different aspects of HR as possible. It gives you a wider picture and then you can decide whether to specialise or not. My personal view is that generalisation is a good thing and I’ve been fortunate that most of my roles have been generalist. Experience across different companies and industries is also beneficial, and HR skills are very transferable.
As you’re growing in your career, develop your networks. Particularly over the last 18 months I’ve seen an expansion in sharing among the HR community. Whereas in the past it may have been sharing a policy or some advice, now it’s become more than that, it’s moved towards mutual support. Sometimes ‘HR’ gets bandied around as a label, almost as a robotic function, but HR professionals are people too, with the same stresses, worries and concerns as the rest of the workforce. Having a wide network is a great help. You can share what’s going on in a safe space, see how other people are handling things and obtain a sense of community; you’re unlikely to be the only one struggling with a particular issue.
Wherever you are in your career you need to understand the language of your business. You need to understand finance, profit and loss and communications. Gone are the days where being an expert only in HR was enough, now you need to understand where HR sits within the context of your organisation, as well as the wider industry and economy context, and be able to talk to your managers in their language.
Kristine has been working at Eurovia UK Ltd for the last 21 years. She holds the positions of Group People Director.
If you are interested in having a confidential conversation about your career or would like support growing your team, please get in touch today.