“We need to be transparent. It’s the little things that I think end up causing the biggest issues and often they could have been avoided if we would’ve just explained why in the early days.” – Samantha Theobald, Group People Director at Next 15 emphasises the importance of transparency and open communication with employees.
As part of our commitment to support candidates in developing fulfilling careers, we’ve invited HR Leaders from a wide variety of organisations to share their insights on building a career, the challenges they face and what advice they would share with those hoping to follow their footsteps.
This week, we had a great conversation with Samantha Theobald, Next 15’s Group People Director. Samantha came from a journalism, travel and communications background but unexpectedly found her niche in HR.
With 26 years of HR experience, she honed her skills in people development, engagement, culture, leadership and management, giving her invaluable experience and insights.
Can you share with us the journey that made you decide to pursue an HR career?
I grew up in Brisbane and went to the Queensland University of Technology, where I studied business communications and majored in journalism. While finishing my degree, I worked for Channel 9 as an overnight editor. I would be called out with a cameraman to report on anything that happens overnight and pull together news stories to feed to the news crews for the 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM news bulletins.
There was one time I was sent out to do a death knock in traditional journalism terms. I had to call on a family whose young son had died in a terrible car accident and I couldn’t do it. I went home that night and I said to my dad, this isn’t me. I can’t do this job.
About seven months after graduating, I decided to travel through Asia and Europe while writing a travel journal for the Youth Hostel association. Then I landed in the UK. I had an ancestry visa, so I decided to stay to live and work here which I did for almost five years before my family called me home.
My Dad got really sick and I had to go back to Australia and that’s when I started in the Flight Centre. The year I joined was the year they listed on the stock exchange and it just sort of took off.
Flight Centre is an organisation that sees the potential in people and promotes from within. I started in a traditional retail role, learning the job from the ground up. I was then transferred to the head office to work in training and development, where I was writing and delivering training programs among other things. That is where I started my career in HR. I got moved into what was back then traditional HR but we called PeopleWorks and never looked back.
I think it was because I found a place where I just loved the environment. It was a flat structure, very progressive, and they had an entrepreneurial mindset in a business that was quickly growing. I had 11 years there across multiple countries while moving through multiple jobs. That experience definitely taught me a lot about myself, about business and how to get the best out of people.
We had this model where we were putting something out there, testing it, learning from it and evolving it very quickly to make sure that it was still fit for purpose in a year when we might be three times the size of what we were that day.
While I was on maternity leave, my husband took a transfer back to the UK. I always wanted to come back here as I felt my time was cut short. Fortunately, the Flight Centre in the UK had a job for me. I took on employment-related issues and drove a different stream of HR within the business. I was only working part-time but I was loving it.
A friend then asked me to do some consultancy work, and that’s when I became involved in the restructuring of IncrediBull. Their CEO at the time asked me to drop working part-time and work with him instead. I was back to having that feeling you get when you work with a smaller business; I felt I could make a difference. I could see that IncrediBull was really going places and I could achieve a lot there.
I think I’ve always taken opportunities and never been one to be defined by a job title. IncrediBull was a much smaller business and I did a hybrid role. I was their HR director, but I also did client-side work. I created employee engagement campaigns for clients and built all sorts of advocacy programs. It was really great to understand the business from both what we did for our clients and how I could help to use that to grow the people.
As we were building the business, we knew we were hitting the tipping point and we either needed to be bought by a bigger organisation or to buy an organisation to get us to that next level. That’s when we were acquired by Text100 and moved into the Next15 Group.
I was part of their integration team and was the Deputy MD of the UK operation. But then came an opportunity for me to take on being the HR director. And I thought, I can make a bigger difference in that role and that quickly evolved into the Global director Role. When Text100 rebranded into Archetype and that’s when I took the opportunity to move into a group role.
What are the key challenges you are currently facing and how are you dealing with them?
I use a phrase quite a lot, which is to control the controllable. At the moment, there are so many things outside of our control. We saw it a lot through COVID when people just kept waiting for the lockdown to be over – people put hope in something that we couldn’t control.
AT Next15 I’m trying to get the leaders of the 24 different businesses under our banner to get to a place where they are controlling the things that they can control for their people rather than looking to control outside forces. Because you just can’t control the outside forces. It’s about going back to basics. What are the basic human needs? How do we create an environment where people feel supported, where they feel it’s safe? If we can create that, that’s one less thing for them to worry about.
It’s very difficult to do in practice when you know you are pushing your team to their limits. Most of my HR team has burned out at some point over the last two years – they have given everything they have got to help people get through the pandemic. HR people have this supporting, caring gene that runs through them and when they haven’t been able to fix every situation, it pushes them to their limits.
You have these people who are fixers, who can’t fix anything. Similarly, we’ve got CEOs who are used to being able to control the environment around them, and again, they can’t do that. So it boils down to trying to get that message across that there are things that we can do better and things we just can’t fix. As long as we are focusing on those things we can do better, then positive action will flow from that.
Being in a global role as well, you’ve got the added challenge and complexity of culture and localisation. No one size fits all. We need to be transparent. It’s the little things that I think end up causing the biggest issues and often they could have been avoided if we would’ve just explained why in the early days.
In our case, we’re a very acquisitive company. I spend a lot of my time coaching teams around transparency and open communication because people will create their own narratives if you don’t communicate. And if you don’t have an answer, you need to tell them that you don’t have an answer yet and why you don’t have an answer.
Also, people have proven over the last two years that they are more than capable of being treated as adults. We can trust them to do their jobs. It doesn’t matter where they are. We are not putting restrictions on people’s time. I think people are looking for an environment where there is flexibility and trust. In all honesty, I had that at the Flight Centre. I had that at IncrediBull. I had that at Text100. I wouldn’t still be here at Next 15 if I didn’t have that. It’s incredibly important to me.
What pieces of advice would you give to those planning to pursue an HR career?
The advice I actually give all the time is to take the opportunities. Don’t be trapped into just one pathway because taking opportunities when they come will open up a whole new door, a whole new area of expertise that you weren’t aware of.
I never thought I’d be working in mergers and acquisitions, and that’s actually a large part of my job now and I absolutely love it. But if you asked me when I was doing training and development if I would ever do anything outside of that, I probably would’ve said no.
So take opportunities as they come and also, be a connector. I think part of the success I have been lucky enough to have has been because I get to know people and what they do and the value that they bring to the organisation, which allows me to then connect them to other people. Connecting to like-minded people or people who can open opportunities for others, allows me to see people succeed and grow in their roles. It’s incredibly fulfilling.
Another thing that I think makes me good at my job now is that I talk to people every day. I appreciate the challenges they face while they are trying to manage home lives and clients making demands, as I have been there and worked with clients. You end up having a different level of engagement with them. I always say to my team, don’t ever lose sight of putting yourself in other people’s shoes. Always stop and think about what they’re going through and dealing with on a day-to-day basis before you offer help. It is important to provide options rather than just one answer.
And to those who will be stepping up into an HR leadership role, I think good people leaders nowadays should learn as much about the business they are in or going into. Become best friends with your CFO or your operations leader. Understand what the levers are that you have within your toolkit to help enable people within the business to succeed.
Samantha joined Next 15 as its Group People Director in 2019. She has been involved with companies and brands that this communications group has acquired and merged with since 2007.