“Senior HR leaders are responsible for advocating for our people. We have a responsibility and mandate to shape, mould and maintain the right culture. Peter Drucker’s famous quote, “culture eats strategy for breakfast” has never been truer.” – Rob Wagg, Practice Manager at Atkins, 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 Rob Wagg at Atkins, who joined the Royal Air Force in 1998 and served for over 22 years. In 2013, Rob became the HR and Security Director at the Ministry of Defence St Athan, later transitioning to the role of Chief Operating and People Officer at Royal Air Force Scampton.
In 2017, Rob took on the role of Senior Portfolio Leader, Royal Air Force Portfolio Office, a position he held for three years before leaving the Air Force and joining Atkins in 2020 as a Principal Consultant. In August 2021, Rob was promoted to his current position of Practice Manager.
Can you tell us how you got into HR and why?
When I reflect on the genesis of my career in HR, I look back to my childhood where I played a lot of sport and was captain of my football team. What I realised through that leadership responsibility was that I needed to interact differently with different people, partly to motivate them to turn up so we had enough players to play a game, but also to get the best out of them. I think that really started my love affair with people. People are my passion and I think that naturally flowed into HR.
I decided earlier than most that HR was what I wanted to do and joined the Air Force as a HR specialist aged 19. I enjoyed the interaction and the responsibility and I served for over 20 years. I resigned my commission in 2020 and joined Atkins where I’m truly privileged to lead a practice of over a hundred management consultants. I’ve held a number of different roles including chief operating officer and chair of a charity and I credit my HR background as being the foundation for my success in those roles and my current one.
There is one standout moment that I reflect back on that reaffirms to me that I made the right decision by becoming a HR practitioner. I resolved quite a complex pay issue for one of our Royal Air Force technicians. He was from Scotland and we were based in Norfolk at the time. At the time, computer systems were still binary and it took me ages to calculate the pay issue manually but I was able to show that he was owed quite a lot of money.
I wrote the case up and the correction went through the next month. He came to see me and said, “I was really worried that I wasn’t going to be able to afford to travel home to Scotland to see my family at Christmas, but I can now I’ve got my backpay, so thank you.” That for me, typifies the people and HR leadership role and the influence that we have.
At the time I thought, I’m in the right type of role. The benefit he derived, versus the time I spent working out the calculations, was exponential. So I knew, absolutely, that this is the right thing for me because I felt like I was making a positive difference.
We mustn’t see our work as performing a function, I think we fulfil a moral obligation. We are the custodians of the psychological contract between our organisation and the people that enable it, and we influence at a human level. It’s a real privilege. Just saying that story back to you is giving me goosebumps even though it’s 20-odd years later.
Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector?
From a purely personal perspective, one of the challenges I’m seeing in various sectors that is also prevalent in professional services is the war for talent as we emerge from COVID.
Senior HR leaders are responsible for advocating for our people. We have a responsibility and mandate to shape, mould and maintain the right culture. Peter Drucker’s famous quote, “culture eats strategy for breakfast” has never been truer. Senior HR leaders determine benchmarks and set the package for our talent. If you look at generation Z and Alpha who are next to enter the workforce, their motivators are very different to the generations before. They’re not defined strictly by salary or wanting to stay with an organisation for 20 years. Organisations have to make sure that your social value policy, carbon net zero policy are not just policies but are truths that you live by, because it’s these that attract and retain the brightest talent, and senior people leaders are at the very front of that. I see a shift from the market holding the levers to the people.
The second challenge is around equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) and people asking, why doesn’t the board look like me? Diversity is one of the greatest gifts in enabling creative and innovative solution finding and thinking. It’s so important. Movements like race equality week are essential to raising awareness and melting barriers. The future workforce, quite rightly, doesn’t see diversity as a set of metrics to strive for or benchmark against, they see it as the norm. Organisations that aren’t embracing diversity really stand out and can be perceived to lack credibility and appeal.
People are smart and they can see when companies aren’t being sincere in their efforts. Your culture reflects your policies. If there is any delta between the two, that’s when organisations can fail from the inside-out.
ED&I is right up there in terms of priorities at Atkins – it’s a really important part of how we shape our policies and engage with our clients. The practice I lead is incredibly diverse. We don’t have 100 mini-Rob Waggs, which would be tragic for the whole world. We need people with different experiences, cultures, thinking, views on life, and exposures. In management consulting it’s that blend that helps you to derive the optimum solution because you are far less likely to encounter group thinking and you’re far more likely to deliver something that is for the client’s betterment.
What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career?
Think people first in all that you do and don’t be afraid to challenge the norm. Don’t be restricted by what is written down in policies because policies can be changed. People create policies and people create culture.
Secondly, embrace opportunities to expand your portfolio and experience. Each exposure, role or position will enrich you in ways that surprise you. I’ve been a lecturer, a chief operating officer and a project manager, each of which has made me a better HR leader and each of which, I think, has benefited from my HR experience. Welcome opportunities to broaden your experience.
My last piece of advice for anyone wanting to follow in my footsteps is to remember that people evolve, workspaces evolve, and societal expectations evolve, so stay current and stay relevant. How is the increase in national insurance payments going to affect the welfare of your people? What about the increase in energy bills that’s expected to average £700 per year? What impact is that going to have on your people and their ability to come to work comfortably and focus on the task in hand? What are their expectations in terms of office time versus working from home now that we’ve emerged from Plan B? I say harness evolution and ride it because you can’t prevent it.
Rob holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and a Level 7, Strategic Management and Leadership from the Chartered Management Institute. Before joining Atkins in 2020 he served in the Royal Air Force for 22 years.