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“Ultimately, in today’s world, it’s not just about technical knowledge, it’s about your courage, your conviction and clarity of perspective”. Mohana MD, HR Director at SAP UK, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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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 Mohana MD, who began her career as a Senior Specialist Recruitment operative at Fidelity Investments before moving on to become Manager of Human Resources. In 2014, Mohana joined SAP Labs India as a Senior HR Business Partner, before becoming the HR Director of SAP Global Talent Experience in 2016, and settling into her current role as an HR Director and Business Partner at SAP UK. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I was born and raised in India, and after gaining my BA, I continued studying and did my MSc in Psychology with a specialisation in Organisation Behaviour. As a natural next step, I began looking for a job. The IT & ITES industry was growing at that time in the so-called Asian market, and I joined Fidelity Investments. It was a really great opportunity when I look back; I joined as a recruiter at a time when they were just starting off, and that experience was invaluable to my career. I did that for four years, but in around 2008, there was a slow down and that’s when I started exploring. When you do well in something, you tend to fall in love with it over a period of time, and I really did take to HR a lot while I was doing recruitment; I felt there was a lot more in HR that I could try to do. One of the things that I decided to do was to look up work or further education opportunities within the HR sector. With that I pursued my interest in education and joined the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and took up a Master of Arts course there within the field of HR and Labour Relations. Fidelity Investments kept in touch with me, and after I graduated I chose to join them in a role that encompassed organisation development as well as leadership program development. It was a very interesting role, because as a student you learn a lot, but when you get into a role like this you could directly apply those principles and theories directly. As the organisation had matured, those initiatives were very well-funded to cater to the leadership development needs of the organisation. Before I left Fidelity Investments and moved to SAP, I also managed a team across different locations in India, and we supported the HR for operations functions within India itself. I left Fidelity to try a new challenge and join an organisation that could take my career globally; taking chances even when you are doing well ensures how much more we learn along the way about our capabilities. Connecting with leaders helped me decide the organisation I was going to join next and it landed particularly well with SAP. They’re known as the best place to work in India, so it’s sort of a highlight when you get a chance to work there. I joined as an HR Business Partner and supported the services organisation as well as the technology organisation, but my most important role was to support the HR director to manage four legal organisations with 10,000 employees and I also had the chance to work on building continuous learning mindset with Asia-Pacific HRDs. I undertook a lot of important initiatives in that time, but an opportunity in the role along with all the HR work we did was also to partner with the technology teams in SAP to help develop tech applications & apps to run our HR initiatives digitally, which helped scale our programs and employees could use them anytime, anywhere! Truly creating an engaging environment. After a year, I joined the office of the CHRO in SAP as an Executive business assistant which took me to Germany. This taught me how our HR organisation runs globally and what it took to achieve the success we have from an employee experience perspective, That experience allowed me to get into the global talent management space, but I don’t have a conventional profile of doing one job. Before moving to Germany, I was asked to lead the development of the performance philosophy strategy ‘SAP Talk’ without ratings. We were a small team, but within a month, we had re-strategised the company’s performance management, all while doing our main roles. It can be difficult to take on extra responsibilities, but it really adds credibility to the work that you do, and you can do very well in a big company like SAP.  After that, I stayed in global talent management to lead a program to strengthen and renew our Individual contributor career path into Executive levels at SAP called ‘Expert Experience’. This involved the end to end management of any large scale change & transformation work. In the digital world leveraging digital communities as a concept in the program helped us bring employees around the world with various skill sets onto a single platform, which facilitated a path toward self and democratic learning! The development of this program has been one of the key highlights of my career.  Following that, I decided to leave Germany and try something different, so I moved to the UK. I continued my global role for a time, but now I’ve taken on a HR Business Partner role here to manage regional and global sales leaders out of the UK.  Can you tell me about the challenges and prevalent themes that you’re seeing across the HR sector? Throughout my experience, I’ve consistently seen opportunities that organisations have with internal collaboration between teams, functions etc. I feel that structures limit people from common visions, and in most cases, teams could achieve things faster if structures were  framed suitably. Having women in management and women across layers is a key differentiator in organisations, and I think that it’s only going to become

“Ultimately, in today’s world, it’s not just about technical knowledge, it’s about your courage, your conviction and clarity of perspective”. Mohana MD, HR Director at SAP UK, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“My vision was always to bring software to the masses that would otherwise be entirely unaffordable, and to make it usable and user-friendly.” Jon Curtis, Managing Director, Myhrtoolkit Limited, speaks to us about the role of HR software in HR Leadership.

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As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, we’ve invited some leaders in the field of HR to speak to us about their role in the sector and how it’s evolving. This week, we had a great conversation with Jon Curtis at myhrtoolkit, who began his career in legal practice at Irwin Mitchell before moving on to become Head of Employment at Taylor and Emmet and a Partner at Ironmonger Curtis alongside his current role as Managing Director of Myhrtoolkit Limited, which he now devotes himself to full-time. Can you tell us a bit about how myhrtoolkit came about, and what the company aims to achieve? In 2004-2005, I set up two businesses with another chap, one of which was a law firm—Ironmonger Curtis—and I was the employment law partner. Part of the purpose of setting up Ironmonger Curtis as a law firm was that I wanted to develop as an employment lawyer to do something in line with Human Resources, because I saw a big gap in the market. Obviously, back in those days, people weren’t so sure about having personal data on the internet, so the original idea was just to store documents and discrete business information against employee names.  Quite a few of our clients bought the product, but quickly wanted some sort of self-service system, and then out of the self-service system they wanted a holiday management system, and then a sickness absence system, a way of managing performance, and somewhere to store appraisals and disciplinaries and grievances. The list went on, so it grew from there. I had the great privilege of working with about 60 clients over five or six years, personally getting their feedback, and they’d say, “Well, this is okay, but what we really need is this”. I had a great feel for what clients in that particular space wanted, so that’s where the product came from. We’re growing fast—we have around 1100 clients at the moment, and around 55,000 people log into myhrtoolkit on a regular basis. When I worked in employment law, I would get calls from frustrated managers who would say “I’ve had an employee for three years and their attendance is terrible. I want to get rid.” I would ask them to send me the dates of and reasons for absence across so I could have a look at what was going on, and they’d say they didn’t have it. Myhrtoolkit arose out of that frustration, because I could see people didn’t want to spend the time recording compliance data, they’d got other things to do. How would you say myhrtoolkit is different to other HR software offerings on the market? I think you can roughly divide the HR software market into three different categories: Enterprise systems At the top end of the market, you’ve got enterprise systems, in which HR software is just one part of this behemoth of an integrated system which covers everything from warehousing to invoicing and accounting and career development. The Small to Medium Enterprise market of up to 1000 employees has the other two categories within it.  Off-the-shelf applications At the smaller end of the market, you get smaller off-the-shelf applications that handle specific challenges—so for example, a little app that manages shift patterns or rotas, then you will get entry-level core HR systems, which will cover a range of HR admin basics.  The market is very much about compliance and control and there isn’t much human about it – it’s the storage of documents and ticking boxes. It’s very useful for businesses, particularly smaller, growing businesses. That’s it’s own little ecosystem—at the moment, there are quite a lot of people in the UK offering products in that space. Platform based HR products At the larger end of the SME market, you’ve got platform-based HR products. They’re not the huge integrated systems you get in enterprise companies, but they are very large, sophisticated pieces of software. Generally, they’re built on an API system so there’s a lot of connectivity to other platforms and applications. If you split the SME market into those two categories, myhrtoolkit sits between those two markets. We aim to bring some of the key elements of the platform to the smaller end of the SME market. My vision was always to bring software to the masses that would otherwise be entirely unaffordable, and to make it usable and user-friendly. We emphasise simplicity over functionality. A lot of the software in our space has just taken the huge enterprise systems and cut out chunks, so you end up with complex pieces of software that need someone whose job it is just to sit and operate the software, and that’s unacceptable for a business. Core HR software should be integrated seamlessly into a business as part of the culture. There shouldn’t  be anybody sitting there thinking “Right, today I need to spend an hour on myhrtoolkit”. That’s just counter-intuitive, that’s not what should be happening. We also try to bring that human element back to HR software—we’re a very friendly, relational company. The largest share of sales we get is by recommendation, and there are hundreds of Human Resources Consultants and Advisors who recommend our product, use it themselves, and will sing from the heart about the functionality and ease of use and the problems that it fixes. We don’t sell, we just make relationships with people and show them what we’ve got. In the right space, it’s exactly what they’re looking for and they’re very happy when it’s up and running. Have you seen any prevalent themes in terms of clients’ needs for HR software in the sector? I think people are becoming more sophisticated year by year, and we’re in a race to keep up with demand for sophistication. Other software offerings we’re seeing in other spaces have done a fantastic job of making things easy for businesses, so their expectations for a well-designed user experience and a well thought-through user interface is

“My vision was always to bring software to the masses that would otherwise be entirely unaffordable, and to make it usable and user-friendly.” Jon Curtis, Managing Director, Myhrtoolkit Limited, speaks to us about the role of HR software in HR Leadership. Read More »

“Sometimes, a company doesn’t know what a company doesn’t know.” Claire Cahill, Author and Founder of Accendo Coaching and Training, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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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 Claire Cahill at Accendo, who began her career in the financial services industry before moving on to found her own coaching and training company in 2012, and going on to publish her 2016 book, Empowering Employee Engagement. Can you tell us about how you developed Accendo and where your career in training and development started? When I left school, I’d always had a goal to be a bank manager. I achieved my goal by the time I was 24, and I was running my own branch and working with all the people that had trained me when I’d started working for the building society, which was a bit of a surreal experience. I’ve always been somebody that’s set goals and always wanted to aim for the next best thing, so I set up Accendo Coaching and Training after the birth of my second son.  Financially, I had no option but to return to work, so I went back to work after six months. Emotionally, I really struggled, so I decided to take some time out, and went off sick for 12 weeks. During those 12 weeks, I just really needed to reconnect with myself, what I enjoyed about my job, and where I wanted to go in the future, and that’s where I came across coaching. I attended a two-day coaching workshop with The Coaching Academy, and suddenly, even though I had been in a confidence crisis, within 24 hours, I’d got my confidence back. I realised that it was actually coaching that was my real passion—it was having that desire to unlock the potential in other people, but I realised that in order to do that, I had to unlock my own. I also signed up to do a Corporate and Executive Diploma, because the corporate world is what I’ve always known. It was upon completion of my Personal Performance Diploma that I then set up Accendo Coaching and Training and decided to run that business alongside my employed role and use the opportunities that I’d had in a leadership role to bring my external experience into the corporate world. That’s what I’ve done up until this year, when I decided to put all my energy and focus into my coaching and training business and leave my job of 29 years. Employee engagement became my particular focus back when I was a Team Manager in a contact centre. I had a real connection with my new boss—who really understood coaching—and we talked about where I wanted my career to go and what opportunities could be created in that work environment. She asked for a volunteer to take some disengaged employees and put them in a team, so I instantly said, ‘This is right up my street, I’ll take them.’  I love a challenge, and here the challenge was to take them on a 12-week journey of self discovery using all my coaching skills and allow them to either decide the role wasn’t for them and move on, or reignite them back into the business, increase employee engagement, and allow them to stay. All nine of them embraced the challenge and were reignited back into the business. Their performance increased as a result of their employee engagement increasing, and all of them have subsequently gone on to live the life that they want to live. That 12-week intensive coaching got them to understand who they were and what made them tick. I have written a book about what that 12-week journey was for those individuals, and at the end of the book, I share their success stories. That’s something I can now roll out in other organisations. I did work with these individuals every day for those 12 weeks, but you don’t need to—it’s about starting that process off and following it up. My ideal client would be middle managers who I could help to develop those coaching skills and tools so that they can then use them with their team and other stakeholders, but I could even work with senior leaders so they could develop those skills themselves and share them with their stakeholders to increase employee engagement. What have you found to be the prevalent themes in employee engagement? What challenges have you seen your clients face? For me, it’s about staff retention. I’ve seen high turnover in some organisations because the staff are disengaged, they’re not happy, they’ve not had those regular one-to-one conversations they need, they may not have had structured development plans in place, they may not feel valued, or their personal values could be out of sync with company values. As a result, companies face high attrition and low retention. High absence would also typically indicate your employees aren’t engaged and there’s something going on. It’s important to understand what the root cause is. That then leads into the health and wellbeing of employees. We spend a phenomenal amount of time at work, so the challenge for employers is, how can you make that time employees are at work an enjoyable experience? How can you encourage your employees to be their best selves? I think a big part of that is your employees fully understanding their own health and wellbeing and taking responsibility for it, and having a safe environment where you can have those two-way conversations about what is healthy and what is unhealthy, whether that be physically or emotionally. Organisations facing these challenges need to be aware of their employee engagement problems before they can tackle them, but some tell-tale signs would be high attrition, high absence, and no increase in individual performance. When organisations recognise engagement is low or attrition is creeping up, it’s time to reach out and get help, whether that be from HR within the organisation or an external source. Sometimes, it’s better to go

“Sometimes, a company doesn’t know what a company doesn’t know.” Claire Cahill, Author and Founder of Accendo Coaching and Training, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

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It’s not enough to offer just a once a year appraisal anymore”. Sally Moxon, Head of HR at Proact IT speaks to us about her career in HR Leadership.

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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 Sally Moxon, Head of HR at Proact IT. Sally began her career in an Administrative role before realising her love of HR and L&D and developing a career as an HR Leader. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? “After university I went into an administration role with Barnsley Council, and from there I developed into a management role with a community based charity and that’s where I began getting more exposure to HR. I had to do payroll and there was a huge emphasis on the people; I was managing volunteers, making sure everyone had contracts. I wasn’t aware at the time, but the Office Management role had a huge amount of HR. From there I took the next step to move into an Engineering company and again, as PA and Office Manager, gained more exposure to HR. There was no dedicated HR resource in the Sheffield office. Part of my job description was around transactional HR and Employee Relations, always supported by the HR team in Surrey. When I reflected on my role, I realised the HR side of things was the part I really enjoyed. Our Managing Director then asked me to look into Investors in People and my work helped us through that accreditation. It was from then on that my sights were set firmly on a career in HR.” Can you tell me about the challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? “The biggest thing for us is Culture and Employer Brand. We’ve done so much work over the last two years to get the culture of our organisation right. We hire for culture at Proact, we don’t just hire for skill. We are fiercely passionate about that because we have to bring the right people into the business. I think this has been a real change across HR in the last few years. The focus now more than ever seems to be on the culture of organisations and their employer brand. As we go through a phase of acquisitions our greatest challenge will be the cultural integration of newer businesses into our organisation. We don’t want to lose what we’ve built upon over the last couple of years. HR analytics and big data is also becoming increasingly important for us. We’ve always used our HR analytics to feed into our business models, and we report on that every single month. However, I’m aware from my networking with other HR professionals that in some businesses, data analytics is nothing but a concept, whereas we use it to influence every single part of our HR strategy and our wider operational business plans. Finally, Learning and Development is a key theme at a lot of the conferences I attend. Coaching seems to be everywhere I go at the minute. Businesses are investing in their teams at a higher level than previously. I hate to use the word, but you know, you can’t talk about HR these days without discussing millennials. There’s a lot of discussion about how millennials are a different type of employee and how we need to engage and motivate them.  As the workforce changes you have to appeal to them in a different way because they are money motivated but that’s not all that drives them. Increasingly employees of all generations want development. They want more. They want promotion. They want CSR. Proact’s CSR programmes have been a massive focus for the last 7 years. Partly because I’ve got quite a passion for it and I’ve been able to drive that forward! That’s really paid dividends with our millennial team members because they like the fact that, for example, they get paid volunteering days here at Proact, and we have a calendar of CSR-related events and initiatives going on throughout the year. They look at how they can make a difference, and they like the fact that, as a company, Proact wants to do that too. That’s also a big part of the reason we are so invested in our coaching culture. We’re hot on that because we need to be today. You need to develop your people, or they will just leave. It’s not enough to offer just a once a year appraisal anymore. People really need to start thinking differently about their learning, development and performance plans.” “What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career? “If you get the opportunity to do something that has a people focus, then just embrace it. I would also say in HR you can’t get too hung up on job titles, because there are so many ways to say ‘HR Leader’.  I’ve been called all sorts: HR officer, HR manager, Head of HR, HR Business Partner. I wouldn’t ever get hung up on the title if you’re doing the job that you love. I started life as an office manager and I didn’t realize that, for about 60% of the time, I was doing HR! Nobody told me I was HR, and it didn’t say HR in my job title, but I was doing it and loving every minute. If you’re in a managerial role, there will be some element of HR that you can tap into. If you’ve got an interest in something, go and speak to somebody and see if you can get involved; the worst they can do is say ‘no we can’t facilitate that’. In terms of people who want to step up, again, same advice applies; if you can get that exposure, go for it. I have done work I haven’t been paid extra for, but it was massively beneficial for me in terms of my personal and professional career development.” Sally joined Proact in 2011 as

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It’s not enough to offer just a once a year appraisal anymore”. Sally Moxon, Head of HR at Proact IT speaks to us about her career in HR Leadership. Read More »

Candidate showcase: FTSE 100 Strategic HR leader

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At Human we operate in a number of ways in order to best serve our clients and candidates. With combined experience of almost 50 years in Recruitment we understand that the best way to help our candidates and clients is to build authentic relationships to support and connect the individuals we serve. We support our clients to understand their value proposition, identify the type of organisations they’d like to partner with and take an active role in promoting their profile to hiring managers within relevant organisations. Today we are promoting a FTSE 100 strategic HR leader with a background in mergers and acquisitions, leading complex change programmes and talent and development. Career achievements include: Leading the people work stream in the sale of a £1 billion (>3k FTE) operation creating a joint venture with a leading competitor. Identifying and removing £20M cost savings over a 6-month period. And realigning the Diversity and Inclusion strategy to be business-led through the introduction of revised gender targets at CEO and Executive level. They led on strategic mergers & acquisitions; including a £1 billion deal, integration of a digital business, and the sale of an established transit operation for £1.5 billion. They are also a Fellow of the CIPD and hold an MSc Industrial Relations. If you would like to learn more about this or any of the other individuals we support, please get in touch today on 01709 717212

Candidate showcase: FTSE 100 Strategic HR leader Read More »

“You don’t need to be an over-the-top salesperson; you just need to be personable and respectful. A ‘Thank you’ goes a long way in terms of getting things done.” Roy Douglas, Employee Benefits and Pensions Professional at Sony, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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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 Roy Douglas from Sony, who began his career in retail banking before working for an oil company in employee benefits. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? It wasn’t a conscious decision at all. More by default than design. I started out in the retail banking environment where I was employed as a Cashier. I then moved to a building society and eventually an oil company. After a few months at the oil company, I saw an opportunity in HR dealing with housing subsidies and employee benefits. Then as time went by, I got more and more involved, and as people came up for retirement, I started taking over their work, and so on. I came to the UK from South Africa 20 years ago, and my first UK role was for JLT, doing pensions administration. That was where I learnt about UK pensions, and then I moved on to Citigroup as Pensions Analyst, and then State Street, and now Sony. So, over the years my career in the UK has evolved to the role I’m in now. Can you tell me about the themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the sector? It’s probably easier to talk about the UK than the rest of Europe, simply because there’s more going on. In the UK, the Pensions Regulator is really starting to bare its teeth more, which is a good thing, making sure companies and trustees are compliant with the legislation. I think we’re going to see more and more companies appointing professional trustees to run their pension schemes, which is a direct result of the increased regulator involvement. The TPR is now also considering whether a professional Trustee is a requirement for all Trustee Boards and has launched a consultation around this and other Trustee duties and responsibilities.  Also, on the back of pension freedoms that came into force a few years ago, there’s been a lot of media publicity about people taking their ÂŁ400,000, or whatever it is from a Defined Benefit Pension Plan, and essentially managing that money themselves, or through a financial adviser. Sometimes this route may be better for the person, sometimes not. But this is something that has gained a lot of traction lately. On the defined benefits side of things, a trend we’re seeing is ESG funds (Environmental, Social and  Governance), so ethical investing, for want of a better word. The whole agenda is furthered by the recent demonstrations in London and all the coverage of environmental issues in the media recently. And pension funds on mass can actually influence corporate behaviour – in terms of, “Well, we’re not going to invest with you unless you change your outlook on the environment”. If they come together in the right way, pension funds can be a real force for change. We are already starting to see this impact with RSC and other artists wanting the relationship with BP to end. The National Trust has also decided to terminate their investments with companies they deem go against their ESG beliefs. On the defined contribution side, more and more schemes are moving into the ‘master trust’ arrangement, simply because of the increased regulation. There are obviously significant economies of scale to be had by doing so, reducing costs for companies and for members. Master trusts are now being authorized by the Regulator and there are a lot of small schemes out there as well, which can be consolidated into master trusts. Overall, my opinion is that this shift is going to provide better retirement options for members. From an employee benefits point of view, financial education and financial wellbeing is definitely gaining more traction. There’s a lot of media publicity around stress and depression at the moment and linking that into financial wellbeing. Therefore, more and more companies are starting to see the benefit of putting financial education, financial wellbeing and overall wellbeing initiatives in place. However, my personal opinion is that this is all too late in the day and education on this level needs to start in school as part of the maths module, teaching kids about mortgages, interest, savings, credit cards, loans, leases – real life examples which they can translate into their everyday lives when they’re adults. What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career? Firstly, I think you’ve got to embrace the fact that it’s not exactly the snazziest job out there! You do get the opportunity to act with a large degree of freedom though, which suits me. To be successful in this role you have to be able to build and maintain strong relationships both internally and externally and develop trusted advisers. People often say that a lot of decisions are made in corridors or on the golf course! It is really helpful to be able to talk to people informally and bounce ideas off them. Obviously, if you’re in a position to have a formal mentor, then that can be invaluable. In Sony at the moment, a lot of the Reward and Pension work has been outsourced to colleagues based in other parts of the EU. and so you have to rely on third parties to do the work for you. This is where the strong relationships really come into play. You don’t need to be an over-the-top salesperson; you just need to be personable and respectful. A “Thank you” goes a long way in terms of getting things done. It’s also very important if you’re applying to a company to fully understand the culture of that company, because going to work for an investment bank, may not suit your personality, whereas coming to work for a Sony or another technology company may well do.

“You don’t need to be an over-the-top salesperson; you just need to be personable and respectful. A ‘Thank you’ goes a long way in terms of getting things done.” Roy Douglas, Employee Benefits and Pensions Professional at Sony, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“There is no manual teaching you how you go from ÂŁ1 million to ÂŁ5 million, ÂŁ10 million to ÂŁ20 million and so forth! Every revenue or staff milestone presents you with a completely different set of challenges as a leader”. Chris Johnson, CEO of JJS Manufacturing, speaks to us about developing a career in Leadership.

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 As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, we’ve invited some Leaders to share the secrets of their success. This week, we had a great conversation with Chris, majority shareholder and founder of Paragon Electronics Ltd, whose main brand is now JJS Manufacturing. Chris began his career as a junior at Texas Instruments before moving into sales and leaderships roles at component distributor Polar Electronics Ltd. Can you tell us how you got into Leadership and why? In 1978, I started in the electronics industry with Texas Instruments, before moving on after 12 months to join a small start-up called Polar Electronics, where I stayed for 12 years. My first role was in field sales and from there I set about climbing the ‘greasy pole’! My father had run his own business, and from an early age, I had always assumed I would do something similar; in order to achieve that goal I needed to develop as a leader. As I have said above, Polar was a very small business when I commenced my employment with them, and a much larger business when I finished; we had also been through a public flotation. At the beginning, I was one of only three full time staff. The company grew massively during my time with them, and my role got bigger and bigger. Over the years I’d gone from Field Sales, to Sales Manager, Sales Director, Managing Director, and I was Group Managing Director when I left in 1991. However, titles can be fairly meaningless in my view, it’s what you do that is relevant. The simplest way of explaining it is that I was in some sort of leadership position almost from the very beginning of my career with Polar. Looking back Texas Instruments and Polar were my ‘apprenticeship’ in the electronics industry and my introduction to leadership roles. I was in my early thirties when I thought “if I’m going to do my own thing, I need to do it soon or I’ll be too old to have the energy and the drive to lead it effectively”. So I resigned, sold my shares in Polar, and spent the summer of 1991 setting up my own business, Paragon Electronics Ltd. I was literally putting my money where my mouth was! Can you tell me about the themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the sector? The journey we’re on at the moment is very much a ‘scale up’ journey. The business I originally set up in 1991 has completely transformed from ‘a few blokes in a shed’ to one of the largest Electronics Manufacturing Service (EMS) providers in the UK, employing over four hundred staff across four sites and two countries. As a business grows and more particularly when you are scaling up, and move from what had been a small entrepreneur-led business, there is a constant need to reinvent yourself as a leader. If you’re going to maintain your position at the helm, you have to be able to grow as an individual and grow your skillset. In recent years, as the business has become significantly larger and more complex, I’ve joined an organisation called Vistage. Vistage supports CEO’s of SME’s and helps them address the challenges within their business by providing mentoring and leadership support. One of the primary reasons I joined Vistage was to find new ways and ideas and to challenge our established ‘wisdoms’ within the business. To go out and learn different ways of doing things, and to look at how other businesses were addressing their challenges. There is no manual teaching you how to go from ÂŁ1 million to ÂŁ5 million, ÂŁ10 million to ÂŁ20 million and so forth! Every revenue or staff milestone presents you with a completely different set of challenges as a leader. Addressing these waypoints on your journey is a combination of experience, and taking advice from people who have been through similar experiences, and in some cases, gut instinct. It’s very easy to get it wrong at lots of different stages, and really quite difficult to consistently get it right. Look at the changes over the years since we’ve been in business: there was no email when we started out and no internet, but we did have mobile phones and computers! As innovations occur you have to assess and embrace technologies that add value to your business; social media (love it or hate it!) being a case in point. If you don’t pick up on these things, you are increasingly unable to relate to customers, suppliers and certain strata within your employee profiles. Today you could well have four different generations within the workplace, and every one of them wants something different. That’s part of the learning journey. We’ve embraced our staff challenges with a range of options, including listening days and staff satisfaction surveys, as well as regularly consulting our teams to help ensure we engage with everyone in a meaningful manner. What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their Leadership career? I’ve got four sons, they are all different, but I say similar things to them: personally I don’t believe in family businesses and therefore an ‘automatic passing of the baton’ to the next generation. So I’ve said to them, and it would be my advice to anyone at their stage in life, you need to go out and ‘learn a trade’. I don’t mean purchasing or engineering as such, I mean learn a business, find a sector that excites you. If you can get into it, you can learn and understand it, which is what I did. I learned an industry and a number of roles within it. I also had an entrepreneurial side to me, and after 14 years in the electronics industry, I had a very good idea how it all worked. Other factors you need to consider? No one has a monopoly on good ideas;

“There is no manual teaching you how you go from ÂŁ1 million to ÂŁ5 million, ÂŁ10 million to ÂŁ20 million and so forth! Every revenue or staff milestone presents you with a completely different set of challenges as a leader”. Chris Johnson, CEO of JJS Manufacturing, speaks to us about developing a career in Leadership. Read More »

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we have a sign on the wall which reads ‘HR’ with a big red cross through it”. Katrina Ritchie speaks to us about People and Culture at Gripple and why the phrase HR has been banned.

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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 Katrina Ritchie, Head of People & Culture at Gripple. Katrina leads a global team of 9 and has been with the business since 2000. How did you start your career in HR?   My career in HR began with Gripple. Gripple is an employee owned business and absolutely fantastic. I just felt passionately about the people in the company. I’d been in internal sales for 13 years, but I felt like I’d reached the peak of my Sales career. I wanted to do something different and was also ambitious. I looked at the business and thought where’s the business going? How can I progress and make a difference? At the same time there was an opportunity in L&D (we didn’t have a HR department). I didn’t know anything about L&D or HR but thought I do know about people and have an inherent understanding of our culture and values. Soon after joining as a coordinator I suggested re-naming the team of two to People and Culture. That was six years ago now I lead a team of nine globally and have a seat on the Exec Board. The word ‘Human Resources’ is banned, we have a sign on the wall which reads ‘HR’ with a big red cross through it. What key skills do you think are important for an HR leader in 2019? It’s important to be able to influence, listen, enable others and take ownership of the people agenda. In the beginning that wasn’t very easy, managers had their own agenda. For example, I wanted to improve our appraisal process to reflect our unique culture. We were talking about ‘Gripple People’ and our values, but we had never clearly defined what a Gripple person looks like, how they behave and what do they do. I approached the Chief Exec at the time and said, ‘I’ve got this idea, I think we should be appraising people based on values and behaviours, if people have these then we can train them to do anything’, we call it the ‘Gripple Spirit’. His endorsement made it easier to implement. We also recruit against the Gripple Spirit and manage performance. Do you think your background in Sales has attributed to your success in HR? I think so because a large part of the role is engaging with people and stakeholder management; it’s influencing. For me good HR is led by common sense, it’s about doing the right thing, not what’s right. We don’t want P&C to take the problems away from managers because we want our managers to be leaders, to be accountable for their people; ensuring employees are being developed, trained and looked after. In the beginning that was tough because originally, you’d get the people bypassing the manager and coming to me. But to make it work I had to push back, you have to for the integrity of what we are trying to achieve. If you’re in the weeds working operationally, you can’t get to the strategy of improving the business and performance. What key themes and challenges are seeing the sector face at the moment? The biggest thing that is causing me the most concern is the mental wellbeing of employees. In the last year, we’ve seen more cases than ever. I’m not sure if it’s due to more awareness and people being more open but it’s a real concern. We have introduced lots of strategies to support employees such as; chaplaincy support, a listening service and we have trained all our managers in Mental Health First Aid. All our employees have medical insurance so we are communicating this stronger as well as bringing in mobile medicals and occupational health services.  We also run events such as Well-men and Well-women sessions and invite outside agencies to speak with employees about lifestyle and general wellbeing. What careers advice would you offer someone hoping to build a career in HR? Get involved in your business, volunteer, put your hand up! It’s also important to set an example to others, show up for events, ‘muck in’ and learn as much as possible about people from all areas of your organisation. Katrina has been part of the team at Gripple since 2000 and has been Head of People & Culture since January 2013. If you are interested in having a confidential conversation about your career or would like support growing your team, please get in touch

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we have a sign on the wall which reads ‘HR’ with a big red cross through it”. Katrina Ritchie speaks to us about People and Culture at Gripple and why the phrase HR has been banned. Read More »

“Don’t think you can plan your career, because you probably can’t! The best thing is to do the very best you can at the job you’re in, and then opportunities will tend to come your way.” Janet McKenzie, Reward Manager from Southern Co-op, speaks to us about developing a career in Reward.

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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 Janet McKenzie of Southern Co-op, who began her career in IT before moving to work in HR & Reward. Can you tell us how you got into Reward and why? Career-wise, I don’t think many people start out by saying “I’m going to work in Reward!” – you often just develop into it. Some people come in through the HR generalist route but I was originally in IT as a Mainframe Systems Programmer.  I grew to manage a client account for Capgemini and when the contract completed, Capgemini said, “you’re quite good at talking with people, plus you know IT stuff, so why not come and do some technical recruitment?”.  And that was my gateway into HR.  After a few years, I moved from recruitment to Car fleet management, then benefits, and finally outwards into the wonderful world of Reward. I’ve worked in lots of different sectors. People can get focused into a single sector, but I find it’s really interesting not to get pigeon-holed as you can pick up ideas and approaches that don’t automatically translate.  As you move, you can ask, “have we ever thought about doing XYZ?”, and that’s very useful. Can you tell me about the themes that are emerging and the challenges that you’re seeing across the Reward sector? There’s currently less focus on pensions than there has been previously.  We’ve got auto-enrolment fairly well embedded now and attention has switched to Wellness.  This area has grown hugely in recent years, looking at financial, mental and physical aspects of wellness.  It means thinking about someone’s ability to focus on doing their job and how we can help support them.  Anything that negatively impacts on that is not great for either the person or the organization they work for. One of the current issues in the UK is the NHS funding challenge. The burden of providing medical support for employees is gradually shifting towards the American model where the cost lands with the employer. Medical insurance, for example, was typically only made available to senior employees, and is now often available to a much wider group.  The challenge this brings is how to manage your insurance bills given that medical inflation always seems to run ahead of normal inflation.  One option is to use an NHS plus model, providing private medical support for colleagues where the NHS isn’t able to respond within certain timeframes. Then there are healthcare cash plans, which can be funded or offered as a voluntary benefit. These are changing gradually to have GP consultations as part of their basic benefits structure, because people are increasingly struggling to get NHS appointments. On the financial side of Wellness, there are a lot of providers like Wealth Wizards coming onto the market, who provide help with understanding personal finances such as budgeting or understanding compound interest in terms of an APR on a credit card, or looking at options for a loan. ‘Payday’ loan providers have been restricted following recent changes to legislation so it’s increasingly about digital providers such as credit unions, Salary Finance and Neyber; or pay advance companies that also integrate with payroll using new technology. These take the pressure off in the short term but also provide longer term guidance at reducing debt so both employees and employers have the comfort of knowing they’re dealing with a responsible provider with a sensible interest rate. At Southern Co-op, we are also working to create meaningful careers.  We know that in the convenience sector people like flexibility – we have five generations in our workforce, all of whom have different motivations – and some people need a smaller number of hours to fit alongside other commitments.  But others need a full time salary to pay their bills.  The question for us is how do we work smarter?  We want to say “Right, we have a cluster of stores in a town, so perhaps we’ve only got 15 hours in that store, but actually we’ve got another store two miles down the road and we have 15 hours there as well”.  The challenge is legacy mindsets; you need to encourage more collaborative ways of working to achieve that kind of framework and to do that you need flexible managers who can communicate effectively. One of the main things you have to do as a Reward Manager is assess what feels fair.  When you introduce a benefit, you want to make it available to as many people as you can. And you need to communicate it effectively as well which is especially challenging when most employees aren’t sitting in front of a PC.  We’ve just launched a new financial advice product for everybody in our business and it can be accessed from a phone or tablet at home or wherever is convenient. So, it’s really about doing something that’s appropriate for your population. What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career? Well, don’t ever think that you can plan your career, because you probably can’t! The best thing is to do the very best you can at the job you’re in, and then opportunities will tend to come your way.  If you’re constantly trying to keep an eye on what’s next, you’re tending not to focus on what you’re doing now, and you won’t necessarily do as great a job. If people are thinking of a long-term career and progressing through HR, Reward gives you a really good grounding. You’ll often see adverts for HR Director roles with a specific requirement for a Reward background, so it’s a really good string to have to your bow.  And it’s fabulous!  Reward is brilliantly interesting!  You can be in Reward for years and years and it’s always changing,

“Don’t think you can plan your career, because you probably can’t! The best thing is to do the very best you can at the job you’re in, and then opportunities will tend to come your way.” Janet McKenzie, Reward Manager from Southern Co-op, speaks to us about developing a career in Reward. Read More »

“It’s important that we work hard to incorporate flexible working into our recruitment process”. Samantha Scarfe, HR Manager at AMG Superalloys speaks to us about challenges facing the sector.

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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 Samantha Scarfe, HR Manager at AMG Superalloys. Samantha joined AMG or London and Scandinavian as it was then in 2002 and became Executive Assistant to the Directors and also supported the then HR Manager with administrative support. From there she developed a love of the role and has now been leading the HR team for over 5 years. Can you tell us how you got into HR? I joined AMG or what was then London Scandinavian in 2002 as an operations secretary. I worked my way through the ranks and ended up being an executive assistant to the then managing director. That was around 2008 and at that time I was also looking after the HR administration too. I found that as I was developing in that role, I was quite inquisitive and was doing things on my own initiative. It was at that point I realised that what I knew was self-taught.  I’d not had any kind of official training, so went on a few training courses for HR Admin and the basics of employment law. I gained some kind of grounding and thought, I quite like this. It was at that point that I wanted to do something more official, so I spoke to the HR manager and asked to be put through my CIPD. I went to college on day release while juggling a full time role, which was a challenge, but I enjoyed it. In 2013, we had quite a major reorganization at the business. When our current MD said, I want you to do this role full time, you’ve got the potential to do it, we’ll continue with your studies and support you. Since then I’ve grown quite a large team. Where previously I was standalone HR, I’ve now got a team of 4 across HR, L&D and payroll. What key themes and challenges in HR are you seeing at the moment? At the moment, some of the things that we are focusing on include mental health and wellbeing. We really want to focus on the wellbeing strategy and making sure that people are as fit and well as possible. We’re planning  on training a number of employees as mental health firstaiders to support and focus on mental health wellbeing. We have wellbeing campaigns every month and we’ve even started to put signs up on the backs of toilet doors to remind employees what their health benefits are and how to access them. Flexible working is quite a big issue across the sector. It’s important that we work hard to incorporate that into our recruitment process. The difficulty is often in changing manager’s mindsets from, ‘I want somebody full time Monday through Friday and working nine to five’ to considering flexible working. We want to try and engage with the talent that’s out there and not restrict ourselves. We work quite closely with the hiring managers to challenge their thinking to consider part time working or different shift patterns to accommodate potential employees. Finally, the war for talent is high on my agenda. Everyone wants the best. So, we’re looking at emerging talent, we’ve created our own operations graduate scheme. We introduced that back in 2018. We looked for two people and we ended up with four and we have a further programme again this year. The plan is to build on that and focus on growing our own. What advice would you give to someone that wanted to build a solid HR career? It’s important to get that good grounding and have a generalist role first. Because I think once you’ve got that then a specialist role can follow. Being able to understand the recruitment process and sickness absence is important. Understanding the whole HR cycle is a good grounding for that. The CIPD qualification is generally what employers ask for rather than an experience sometimes. Networking is also important because if you’ve got a network of people that live in the same boat as you, you can support each other. So, if you want to implement a holiday buy system for example there’s likely to be somebody in your network that’s got a policy and wouldn’t mind sharing it with you. Finally, being resilient is key. Resilience plays a big  part because sometimes everyone comes to you with their problems thinking that you’re going to solve it for them.. Sometimes it’s tough particularly, if you’re going through restructuring and redundancy processes. There’s sometimes a need to have the hard conversations that sometimes managers aren’t that comfortable with. Samantha has worked at AMG Superalloys for over 17 years and leads the HR function. If you are interested in having a confidential conversation about your career or would like support growing your team, please get in touch with us today.

“It’s important that we work hard to incorporate flexible working into our recruitment process”. Samantha Scarfe, HR Manager at AMG Superalloys speaks to us about challenges facing the sector. Read More »

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