“Throw out any kind of HR rule book that you’ve ever been taught from or that you think is the right thing to follow. […] [Y]ou need to be brave enough to adapt to what your business needs.” – Laura Guttfield, HR Director at Childs Farm 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 Laura Guttfield at Childs Farm Ltd, who began her career in HR as an HR Administrator and later an HR Advisor at Lexis PR before moving to Ketchum Public Relations to work as a Talent Manager.
In January 2013, Laura took on a role as HR Business Partner for ITN Productions and Channel 4 News before moving to subsequent roles as Human Resources Business Partner for ITN Productions and ITN Technology, and Head of HR for ITN Productions and Technology, winning the title of HR Business Partner of the Year at the 2016 Personnel Today Awards for her efforts in her HRBP role.
In August 2018, Laura became Head of HR for ITN Productions & Corporate ahead of taking on her current role in January 2019.
Can you tell us how you got into HR and why?
After doing my law degree, I knew I didn’t want to continue down that career path, and I took some time out to think about what it was that I wanted to do. I’d really enjoyed my company law and employment law modules, and I knew I wanted to be an expert in an integral function that was relied upon in an organisation, but at the same time wasn’t law. I happened upon HR, and found that it offered the perfect combination of being able to work with people, use my law degree, and allowing me to become a go-to expert.
I was lucky enough to get an entry-level position in a PR agency in London the year after I left university, but getting there wasn’t without its challenges. I went for so many interviews to get into HR after I graduated, but everyone seemed to want admin experience or office experience I simply didn’t have, as I’d only ever worked in retail part-time. Thankfully, I was able to secure the role at Lexis with no experience, and it was a fantastic first role to have. I was an HR Administrator reporting straight to the HR Director, and that gave me an incredible grounding in both more generalist HR and the qualitative and cultural side.
Rather than just paper pushing, data processing, and treating people like numbers, we were really hands-on, and there was a huge focus on employee engagement, company culture, and reward. I was exposed to anything and everything at Lexis—I really got to understand the business, and I loved it.
From there, I moved to another PR agency, but the role was very Recruitment-focused, whereas in the long term I was really keen to work my way up and take on an HR Manager role. Shortly after that, I moved into broadcast media. The transition was incredible. That’s one of the things that sticks out about HR for me—you can go and do the job you’re passionate about anywhere, which opens up the possibility of also working in an industry you’re passionate about as well. It was a really exciting prospect for me.
The Business Partner role at ITN terrified me, but in a good way. It was quite high-profile—working with Channel 4 News and the commercial arm of ITN, ITN Productions—but it was also the perfect step to tick off all the HR experiences that I hadn’t had the chance to fulfil in my previous roles. I found that I really enjoyed working within ITN Productions to grow the business. It was dynamic and exciting, whereas the newsroom side of ITN didn’t really face the same kind of commercial challenges and had less potential for me to be able to shape things. With that in mind, I sought opportunities to take on other divisions and climb the ladder that way. I made myself known and made sure that people were aware of my skills and achievements within the commercial side of the business, as well as what kinds of change I could enact in a role more suited to my skill-set.
As a result, I moved across to the technology and group functions, which was brilliant. Both groups of functions were quite traditional and legacy-run, so there was huge potential for me to make changes and encourage them to be more commercial in their thinking and do things more efficiently while also managing union relationships.
Following that, I asked to transition to a Head of HR role. It was really important to me to show progression, but I was also leading some really significant projects and running crucial negotiations in my role as HRBP and wanted to be recognised for what I was bringing to the business, and the role enabled that.
I was at ITN for six years in total, and it was an amazing time during which I achieved a lot and developed a lot personally. I loved the challenge and excitement of fast growth during my first years there, but it’s a large organisation with unions to account for and a complex change process.
I found myself wanting to turn my attention to a growing business with an agile approach to change, and the opportunity at Childs Farm ticked every single box that I was looking for—a founder-owned business with an incredible growth story, hugely successful products, and a strong affinity with my personal values.
I was recruited to go in and set up an HR function, so I went from having Learning and Development and Benefits functions reporting to me to having no direct reports, but instead rolling my sleeves up and getting involved. Some people looked at it as an odd move for my career, but I knew from the business’ ambitions that it wouldn’t be like that for long.
It’s been a year and a half since I joined, and the role has been incredible—my investment has really paid off. I’ve loved the challenges that I’ve had to step up to and the diversity of my responsibilities in the leadership team. The opportunity to partner with someone as inspiring as our founder in the early days was brilliant; I was never afraid to challenge her, and we’ve built an incredibly strong working relationship off the back of that that continues even with our new leadership team in place. We’ve got some really exciting plans.
Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing in HR at the moment?
At Childs Farm specifically, we are starting to look at what we do post-COVID. We’re going to be introducing more agile ways of working, but obviously that comes with certain cultural challenges, and communication and engagement concerns need to be addressed. There’s a real magic about our team, and we don’t want to lose that through people not always being together.
Alongside addressing those challenges, we are taking our first steps into new product categories, so we’re looking to broaden and deepen our in-house skills and experience to facilitate that, and that involves a lot of work in terms of planning, resourcing, and recruitment.
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 think self-awareness is a really important trait to have when you’re seeking to advance in a business. The bulk of my career progression has come from asking for opportunities, but I never would have asked to advance if I had any doubt about my ability or whether I was actually having an influence and making the impact I thought I was making. It’s important to ask yourself those questions, but also to be sure of yourself and confident once you’ve answered them.
Throw out any kind of HR rule book that you’ve ever been taught from or that you think is the right thing to follow. There’s a book called HR Disrupted written by Lucy Adams, who used to be HR Director for the BBC, and everything she says in it really resonates with me. HR has a reputation for being difficult and stuck in the mud because of how procedural we can be, but you need to be brave enough to adapt to what your business needs by really understanding what it does.
Only by spending time with the key stakeholders and talking to all the staff can you really understand what your team needs, and you can’t find the solutions to those in a book—you need to act from your instincts with a knowledge of the challenges your business and the people in it face. Establish what you feel is the right thing to do, be open and transparent about it, and give it a go, but don’t be afraid to try something else if it doesn’t work. In my experience, people have always really appreciated honesty and flexibility.
The other piece of advice I would give is not to be afraid to shout about your achievements. I put myself forward for the Personnel Today HR Business Partner of the Year Award back in 2016, and was championed by quite a few other people as part of that. I won the award, and that was a huge confidence boost for me.
Laura has been working as HR Director at Childs Farm Ltd since January 2019, and provides both strategic and commercial HR leadership to support the company’s growth and expansion and promote a leading people experience. Most recently, Laura has focused on laying the operational HR groundwork for the launch of ‘Farmologie by Childs Farm’, an adult skincare range that offers effective, ethically-produced, natural products suitable for all skin types.
If you are interested in having a confidential conversation about your career or would like support growing your team, please get in touch today.