“Be willing to take on responsibilities and do certain things before you take the next step” – Interview with Lucy Robinson
āA lot is being done to make sure that people do feel that they can talk about mental health and have the support in place that’s needed. Even if it’s on a smaller scale, as opposed to a bigger issue, itās important that it’s being dealt with early and people have the support early as opposed to too late.ā – Lucy Robinson, Director of Resources of the East Midlands Chamber emphasises about managing the employeesā mental health.Ā As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, weāve invited HR Leaders from a wide variety of organisations to share their insight on building a career, the challenges they face and advice they would share with those hoping to follow in their footsteps. This week, we had a great conversation with Lucy Robinson, the Director of Resources of the East Midlands Chamber. Lucy has spent the last 14 years expanding her HR knowledge in several areas, from legislative compliance and guidance to employee relations activities, performance management, and supporting the senior management team. .Ā Lucy started out as an HR Manager at a medical communications and consultancy business and became an Employment Law Consultant. Now, she is the Director of Resources of the East Midlands Chamber of Commerce.Ā Can you tell us how you got into HR and why?Ā Before I started my HR careerĀ I’d had a bit of interest in law. But when I came out of school, I wasn’t exactly sure which route to take and where I would feel happy. I ended up moving into my first job where I took on an apprenticeship. The training provider I worked with ended up taking me on and that’s where I got my first exposure toĀ training and development. That was my first foray into HR and obviously quite a specific area of HR.Ā I got a glimpse of how supporting people could have an impact on their work-life. That’s obviously a really nice side of HR. But there are other areas that are more difficult to deal with, which link back to the business side of things – what really matters to the business and how you can influence the return of investment by doing HR the right way. That includes the individuals that are obviously employed by the business. Then as an Employment Law Consultant, I worked with different companies when they were experiencing issues. It could have been anything from sick leave to tribunal claims or a grievance. Sometimes they just needed some information about what was happening within the business and I helped them work through that and put policies in place.Ā It was quite interesting to see the differences between a lot of organisations. It wasn’t just the differences between small, medium and large organisations, it was right across the board in terms of how their leadership felt about HR and how that impacted the people and their performance.Ā So since Iāve been at the East Midlands Chamber, my role covers quite a few other things. I’ve got all of that internal focus, but I do have an external focus as well, so I run some of the HR forums. I always get to hear sort of what’s going on, but I also get to speak to our members as well. And of course, whilst I’m not a consultant and I won’t give them advice that they have to follow, we can have conversations.Ā And it’s quite interesting still to find out what’s happening across the region.Ā From an HR perspective, what are the biggest challenges that youāve seen to have made a huge impact on organisations? Recruitment’s a massive thing. We’ve been quite lucky we weren’t impacted by it throughout most of last year but I think it came a bit later for us. Whereas a lot of businesses I was speaking to were really struggling to fill certain roles. You would definitely see an extension to the amount of time it takes to fill a role now. Another big thing we’re definitely seeing with member organisations, especially manufacturers, is that the cost of doing business is massively increasing.Ā Everything seems to have just kept leaping across the field now. We’re seeing this press on lots of businesses that we work with. And another interesting thing connected to that is the living wage increased as well and it is having an impact.Ā People think, āWell, I’m experienced, I’m trained, I’m now getting paid very similar to this person. They’ve had a bigger price salary increaseā. You’re definitely getting those types of conversations happening. We’re definitely hearing that externally that the pressures about pay are increasing.Ā Thereās also the competition for talents, even the topic of counter-offers. Youāve got processes in place to make sure they are fair and that they’re done properly. But theyāve almost become a deterrent because people will have already been offered a job by the time you are able to go back to them or by the time an interview process is completed properly.Ā You feel like everything’s having to change the gap quite quickly.Ā One other big challenge is mental health.Ā People have been dealing with COVID, dealing with conflict in other countries.Ā That actually has links back through whether it is family or people that we work with that are close to the conflicts.Ā Or maybe being upset even just from the knowledge of all thatās happening.Ā I think it’s adding to the pile of things that people were already concerned about. We’re definitely seeing more people suffering.Ā From an HR perspective, a lot more is being done making sure that people do feel that they can talk about it and have the support in place that’s needed. And even if it’s on a smaller scale, as opposed toĀ bigger issues, itās important that it’s being dealt with early and people have the support early as opposed to too late. Can you share some advice with those starting or advancing in their HR career?Ā
