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Millennials In The Workplace: 6 Recruiting And Retention Strategies For 2020

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Millennials or Gen Z are an important part of today’s workplace currently making up for 35% of all employees. And by 2030, millennials in the workplace will comprise a whopping 75% of the working population. Born between 1980 and 2000, the millennial workforce often has high expectations for their careers and strong beliefs about the workplace environment. Typically they are loyal employees with a high sense of purpose, and an interest in the social dimensions of a business. But while millennials are valuable in the workplace, self-reliant and tech-savvy, 53 % of recruiters report having difficulties in finding and retaining millennial talent. Here are the most important things to consider when setting up a strategy for recruiting and retaining millennial talent in the workplace: 1. Make your company attractive and emphasise your healthy business culture As competitive benefits packages are getting more and more standardized across industries, millennials are interested in a company’s unique culture as a key differentiator when considering a career move. By inviting a candidate to check out your company’s social media accounts where you regularly post new photos and videos that show off your culture and subscribe to your newsletters during the pre-screening interview phase, you can reinforce your promises and give them a sneak peek into what their life will be like if they accept the position. 2. Offer flexible hours Like most employees today, millennials are big on flexible working and work-life balance. And considering they grew up in the internet and globalization era, they are big fans of pushing local barriers and making the most of digital communication platforms and tools available today that enable remote working. Many millennials believe that getting quality work done should not depend on an hour commute, specific working hours and a cubicle. Instead, while the regular 9 to 5 window is still pretty standard for reaching colleagues and customers, millennials are also primarily interested in opportunities that don’t limit their creativity and productivity––even if that means working during the night. This allows them to live and work from anywhere in the world, explore opportunities and maximize the time spent with their family and friends. While many find it hard to grasp this concept and believe it’s a good idea to keep them separate, for millennials in the workplace, work is part of their persona and brand. While remote work and flexible schedules aren’t an option for everyone, providing even some work from home opportunities or the ability to start the workday early or late can go a long way. Work with your employee’s schedules rather than expecting them to always adhere to strict start and end times. 3. Give meaning to their work By nature, people are purpose-driven individuals. And some millennials will be prepared to give 100% at the office as long as they feel like they are dedicating their time to a good cause, a cause they believe in. So if you can prove how the role you are offering can make a significant contribution to their personal and professional lives during the recruiting process, you’ve already got their attention. Organizations that are shortlisted during the recruiting process, are usually those who are able to demonstrate how they bring a positive change into the world, adhere to unconventional and transparent work policies and align to their own set of values. While paying the bills is something we all have to do and work for, if you want to attract millennials into your organization tell them about the solid contribution their job will be making for a particular subject. Particularly if you can attach some level of social impact or higher meaning to their day to day tasks they will choose your organization over another job with less social impact. But try not to overdo it. The last thing they want you to be is a salesperson in disguise selling them a perfectly rehearsed script. Instead, try to be genuine as they value transparency and authenticity. 4. Offer growth opportunities and be invested in their professional growth For this particular type of employees – who stay on top of trends, industry news, constantly hungry to learn more — stagnation is terrifying and a static environment can soon bore them. According to a Gallup report, 59% of millennials in the workplace say that professional development opportunities are also important when weighing in the pros and cons of a new job position. To attract millennials and build a reliable and productive work environment for them to feel comfortable and appreciated in, stay ahead of the competition with a benefits package that includes access to the latest industry training and programmes for their growth. 5. Offer competitive compensation for millennials in the workplace As mentioned before, millennials aren’t the type of employees motivated by money. However, this is not to say that they do not know their worth. Quite the contrary, they see the rewarding package you are prepared to offer as an indicator of how much you value them and their work. But aside from salary, when reviewing the entire compensation package, they also look at benefits, perks, and personal development opportunities to stimulate their career and feeling of self-worth. So when presenting them the offer, consider a comprehensive compensation package with better perks and opportunities that align with their individual needs and values if you can’t compete with bigger companies on the same salary benefits. These can include health packages, gym discounts, parties, remote working opportunities, opportunities to grow professionally, even company trips, or events can be a great way of showing appreciation for their work, getting millennials excited about working at your organization, and make them feel like they are part of the family. 6. Let innovation be your driver Innovation is a powerful way to attract millennials in the workplace. They don’t want to just come into an office and work for a stagnant or boring company. They evolved alongside technology and they’re used to a certain cadence. Your toolkit should be up-to-date in

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“The most important thing for me is to be passionate and invested. You need to be committed to supporting people and putting a personable, fair, and consistent human face to HR.” – Zehra Hussain, Head of Human Resources at London Women’s Clinic and JD Healthcare speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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“The most important thing for me is to be passionate and invested. You need to be committed to supporting people and putting a personable, fair, and consistent human face to HR.” – Zehra Hussain, Head of Human Resources at London Women’s Clinic and JD Healthcare 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 Zehra Hussain at London Women’s Clinic and JD Healthcare, who began her career in HR in the civil service, taking on a role as an HR Programmes and Projects Consultant for the Department of Business, Innovation, and Skills in May 2004.  She later ascended within the organisation, assuming roles as Industrial Relations Manager, People Survey Programme Manager, and the HR Consultant on Shared Services, Next Generation HR Programmes, and the HR Delivery Model Project. In February 2014, Zehra joined the team at Spence Johnson Ltd / Broadridge Financial Solutions Limited as an HR Manager, later transitioning to the charitable sector to act as the Senior HR Manager for Children with Cancer UK before taking on her current role in June 2019. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? My career in HR started in the civil service. Before I got into HR, I was managing a large team, and had a reputation for being fair and always following the correct procedures. I was told that I might be a good fit for an opening as a HR Business Consultant in the Department of Business, so I applied for it and ended up in a role implementing the first disability strategy, handing disability issues across a department with about 2,500 people.  I found that I really enjoyed discovering the challenges people faced and working out how we could make adjustments to overcome them as an organisation. It was a steep learning curve, but I loved the work, especially when I met people whose working lives had been improved because of it. It’s all too easy to get lost in the processes and plans involved with making change, but seeing the end result really brings home the value of things. From there, I moved onto a role as a Business Partner involved with the department’s people strategy. I worked to put together a sound, consistent, fair appraisals process, and during its development, I really tried to talk to people and understand what their concerns were as I had done beforehand. That seemed to really enhance my work, and I found myself becoming an HR leader very quickly. In my time at the Department of Business, Innovation, and Skills, I had the opportunity to deal with the entire spectrum of HR issues, and worked with key players in a range of other departments to provide a joined-up, holistic, cross-departmental HR service. I was later able to take the skills I acquired there over to Spence Johnson Ltd/Broadridge Financial Solutions to learn what was a priority for them and build and introduce policies and procedures around that. After a while, I found that I wanted to undertake work that had more of a social benefit, and moved on to work at Children with Cancer UK, which again was very much about building a framework of policies and procedures around meeting their needs and improving the employment life-cycle of those within the organisation. From there, I transitioned to the London Women’s Clinic, and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying implementing structure and learning about the conditions that employees are working in. I think it’s really important to be clear and transparent around the state of the working environment, as having an accurate perception of things really helps us in HR to communicate and engage with people across the organisation and empower managers to lead effectively.  Working with managers is a huge part of what I do, and I love supporting them to ensure they’re engaged, loyal, and thriving in our organisation. We’re aiming for total fluidity of policy and procedure across the organisation, and the feedback on our efforts so far has been overwhelmingly positive. Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? I think it’s vitally important for HR to be reactionary, supportive and proactive in equal measures, and I’ve always believed that HR needs to be at the heart of a business to make the biggest impact. All the organisations I’ve worked with have benefitted from HR being involved at board level—our impact is felt across the entirety of a business, so it makes sense that we play a role when key decisions are being made. I think CEOs and leaders need to recognise that HR has to be positioned at the heart of things for them to get the most out of our involvement. After all, key things like growth in profit and productivity start with HR. I think a key theme we’re seeing become more and more prevalent in business and society alike is mental health awareness. In HR, we’re more conscious than ever of the importance of pinpointing and meeting the mental health needs of our employees, and I’m particularly keen to do that within the London Women’s Clinic. We’re working within the challenging area of fertility issues, and we have a very young workforce who encounter emotional situations as part of their work, so I think it’s key for us in particular as well as all organisations more generally to have support mechanisms in place that can detect issues staff may be experiencing early and respond to them appropriately. I think a large part of that is having effective one-to-one support, and we’re currently developing mental health awareness training for our managers to ensure employees have that available to them. Another important thing we face in HR is working out how we keep the workforce engaged and loyal beyond

“The most important thing for me is to be passionate and invested. You need to be committed to supporting people and putting a personable, fair, and consistent human face to HR.” – Zehra Hussain, Head of Human Resources at London Women’s Clinic and JD Healthcare speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“My advice to anybody is don’t ever take it personally. If you do that, that gives an in to anybody to say, right, I know which buttons to press actively”, Rajiv Gunawardana, Head of HR, with experience in the social care sector speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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“My advice to anybody is don’t ever take it personally. If you do that, that gives an in to anybody to say, right, I know which buttons to press actively”, Rajiv Gunawardana, Head of HR, with experience in the social care sector 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 Rajiv Gunawardana, who began his career as a mechanical engineer before moving into HR.  Can you tell us a bit about how you got into HR and why? I think it was probably an intelligent mistake. I started with a mechanical engineering degree and I really wanted to be a car designer. I should have been going through more like art college than engineering. After that, I basically started to work in a temporary contract and one of the training and development people said  “have you ever considered HR?”. They thought I would be a good fit because I was working on a couple of projects and I had to deal with various changes that were happening in the workplace and I was actively like an office manager for a small project and straight out of university. So I pursued a postgraduate qualification in Personnel Management at Wolverhampton poly and then secured my first proper HR role. Can you tell me about the challenges or key themes that you’re seeing across the HR sector? The biggest challenge for everybody in social care is around retention and recruitment. Because we are a charity and our funding is based on care packages from local authorities who are under pressure from central government to make cuts. The challenge is trying to recruit people who are just above the minimum wage, and to provide something that can be quite challenging at times, in terms of some unpredictable behaviours, but also hugely rewarding. So, it’s not like a normal recruitment process. If you find the right match of person, they could be from any sector. Also turnover it’s notoriously high in the care sector, and we’re trying to address that by looking at some really key analytics, like when they’re leaving, why they’re leaving and what can we actually do about some of these issues. In addition, given the current rate of employment, I think that people can afford to become incredibly choosy, and they just don’t turn up to the interviews. I just can’t believe somebody would actually go through the whole process of putting the application and just not show up. What career advice would you offer to someone working towards a career like yours? In terms of careers advice, it’s incredibly rewarding, and it’s so diverse now. You just need to decide whether you want to specialise in one area (eg Recruitment) or whether you want to become a generalist. Ist very competitive but persevere. If somebody really wants to get into HR, the paths are clear. Find a project that is kind of in an HR department with an employer who really wants for you to do your qualifications otherwise you have to go and do it yourself. CIPD qualification is the industry standard. While some people don’t prescribe CIPD and don’t believe in it, I believe it is imperative to be qualified, but there are many senior people who are not. That does not make them a poor HR practitioner and neither doe having the qualification. At the end of the day if you enjoy what you are doing then that in itself will be the motivator to do better and progress. if you don’t like working as an HR person (or anything else for that matter) it’s simple, go and find what you enjoy doing.  My advice would be to get your CIPD accreditation. The other thing is to try and work in as many different types of sectors as you can. And this may sound a bit controversial, but I also would say don’t stay more than five years in one organization because you need that fresh challenge in terms of HR, you need to get your experience.Especially if you’re going to head towards a head of HR or HR director role, you just need to have that because different organisations do things differently.  So I would say if you want to work in HR, try and work in as many industries as possible in your initial career like, manufacturing, retail, local authority, charity sector. Because it helps you build up a huge range of knowledge and casework and experiences of how people behave, and how managers think and you will understand that difference ‘pace’ at which each organisation operates. Also make sure that you get the experience of working with unions to get that experience of dealing with and talking to management staff and union people, which is different to the study management and staff.  Rajiv is an experienced HR Director and has 20+ years of experience in HR. If you are interested in having a confidential conversation about your career or would like support growing your team, please get in touch today.  

“My advice to anybody is don’t ever take it personally. If you do that, that gives an in to anybody to say, right, I know which buttons to press actively”, Rajiv Gunawardana, Head of HR, with experience in the social care sector speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

On HR in Schools: Interview With Stephanie Readhead, Head of HR & Compliance at Pocklington School

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  “In HR, you’ve got the opportunity to make a tangible difference to the bottom line of an organisation, but also to the individuals within it. [
] You’re making across the board difference that filters across every part of the organisation, and that’s quite unique.” – Stephanie Readhead, Head of HR & Compliance at Pocklington School, 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 about HR in schools with Stephanie Readhead at Pocklington School, who began her career as an HR Administrator at Barnardo’s before moving to NestlĂ© to work as an HR Advisor in 2001. This was followed by positions as a Senior HR Business Consultant for Scarborough Building Society, and an HR Advice Team Manager for Comet. In 2008, Stephanie joined the education sector as Director of HR, Support Services & Special Projects for Headlands School, and in 2013 joined the HR team at Pocklington School, expanding her responsibilities from Head of Human Resources to her current role in September 2019. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? It was completely by accident, really. My early interest was science, so I studied the sciences and Maths at A-Level, then undertook a Human Genetics degree, as well as some interesting classes in business and economics. The ethical future of genetics was looking a bit questionable at the time, and I found myself enjoying business and economics more, so I took a bit of time to reassess what I wanted to do. During that period, I took on a temporary assignment in HR at Barnardo’s, and it’s been a 20-year career since. It’s a challenging and rewarding career, and I think it stuck because Barnardo’s gave me a great start and pushed me to do the qualifications. I also had a manager who was great about involving me in what she was doing. Although I was new to the career and lower down in the hierarchy, she gave me a really good insight into the rewards of climbing the career ladder. In HR, you’ve got the opportunity to make a tangible difference to the bottom line of an organisation, but also to the individuals within it. One minute, you’re sat looking at the strategy, what you’re going to bring in and how it’s going to impact the business, and the next you’re talking to an individual who needs your support and help. You’re making across the board difference that filters across every part of the organisation, and that’s quite unique. Can you tell me about the key themes or challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? I’ve had a really diverse career, but HR in schools particularly is a very unique and challenging environment, and is quite complex. There’s a unionized aspect, and navigating the various terms and conditions of a school setting, but also the external expectations put on schools. I’ve not worked in an organisation before where I get 24 hours’ notice of an external body coming to assess my work, and if my work isn’t up to scratch, it has the potential to close my business down. A big part of school inspections focuses on the HR side of things, and if you haven’t done what you’re meant to do in the way you’re meant to do them, that reflects on your school, and you can fail the inspection. There are actually an awful lot of demands, pressures, and things that happen that you have very little say in but you have to follow through, and that can be difficult when you’re trying to do project work—particularly in the maintained sector, because your hands are a bit more tied than in the independent sector, so you have to be more inventive and find the way around the red tape. I think HR in schools is becoming much more of a key role in the sector, both because of an increasing business focus and a desire for shared resources across academy trusts, as well as the increased workload that changes in legislation have put on local authority centralised HR functions. It’s grown rapidly into being a much more focused and specific role in schools, whereas before it was something that used to be done by non-specialists with the support of the local authority. It’s an up-and-coming area with much more demand for it these days. Neither school I have worked for had a specialised HR role before I started, but most schools have an HR representative onsite now. We’re also seeing recruitment shortages across the teaching profession, so attracting and retaining talent is a key thing for us in schools, especially when we’re competing in an international recruitment market to a level we’ve never seen before—I think there’s a need to evolve in terms of the way we look at things like flexible working to retain staff while also being inventive with the resources we have in order to offer them benefits. Schools are increasingly being run much more like businesses, and we need to be able to meet the changing expectations of staff as a result. There’s also a very real threat to the existence of independent fee-paying schools within the sector, and whatever your view is on that, I think we need to understand that there’s a real personal impact behind moves like adding VAT to fees or stripping schools of their charitable status; not just for us, but for our students, our workforce and our local community. We are the largest employer in our locality so what impacts us can have wider ramifications. What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career in HR in schools, or someone just getting started in their HR career? I would say that HR in schools is an area that there’s a lot more demand

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Developing a Career in HR Leadership: Interview With Zoe Stephens, HR Director at Blatchford

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  “
You can be good at tactical HR, but you can’t be good at the strategic stuff if you don’t understand what your organization’s trying to do and where it’s trying to go to.” – Zoe Stephens, HR Director at Blatchford 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 Zoe Stephens HR Director at Blatchford who began her journey in the hospitality sector before moving into a career in HR. Can you tell us a bit about how you started your career in HR Leadership and why? I trained as a chef and started working in restaurants then I very quickly realized that I preferred being out front instead of in the kitchen. I moved into restaurant management quite quickly after that I spent a period running several restaurants in central London. I look back on it now and it was the best job when you’re new out of university and you can party and enjoy yourself and still go to work the next day. Whilst working for a chain of restaurants and I was put on their high potential program, for restaurant management. As part of the high potential program, they asked me to look at getting the investors and people accreditation for the chain. I knew nothing about managing people, or using resources in a way that drives business success. I quickly started to understand what the emphasis on people and standards could do for a business and it sparked an interest in me. Back then it was a desktop exercise. You literally just had to create a performance review form and put it in a folder, and you didn’t have to demonstrate any evidence that you were using it on the go. But it was enough to make me think, I find this fascinating. At that point the company that I worked for wouldn’t sponsor me through what was the IPD then now the CIPD and I moved to The Body Shop and sponsored myself through the CIPD. Can you tell me about key themes or challenges you’re seeing across the HR sector? I think the first one is the way people have begun recognising value of HR and the impact it can have on a business.  In my role, I’m really in the centre of helping with business achievements. Whereas when I started my career, HR’s role was to keep the business safe, “let’s not get into trouble and also avoid high staff turnover”. It was much more geared towards employee relations. But now, I would say it’s about demonstrating how you add value. We’re solution finders now. So, tell me the problem that you’re trying to fix, and let me see if I can find a way using people and all the resources, we’ve got to fix your problem. And that might be through recruiting the right person who’s bringing in new skills, it might be through development and training interventions, that might be through reorganizing the business for them or giving them suggestions as to how they can move the skill sets around for business to be better focused on the objective. It might about looking at the rewards and recognitions agenda. Thinking, ‘Are we missing a trick, are we staying ahead of the curve?’. And in terms of employee engagement, how do you really harness all that discretionary effort? It’s about understanding your employee base, knowing one size does not fit all. 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’d offer them the basics initially, which means understanding what the business is trying to achieve and understand your employee base and how do you leverage them to be able to help achieve the objectives of the business and the individuals. I’d also advise them to be the eyes and ears of the organization. Keep close to the temperature of the organization, because often managers don’t. So, you can be good at tactical HR, but you can’t be good at the strategic stuff if you don’t understand what your organization’s trying to do and where it’s trying to go to. I would also say be super curious about the business and every role you’ll be in, ask questions. Why do we do that? What’s the outcome? What’s the impact if we don’t do it? Just try and be inquisitive, frequently HR people don’t naturally come with that as a behaviour trait. So, pure curiosity enables you to challenge the norms of the business in a very constructive way. And I think the other thing is that you must take risks, calculated risks.   Zoe is the HR Director for Blatchford and has over 22 years of experience in the HR industry.   If you are interested in having a confidential conversation about your career or would like support growing your team, please get in touch today.  

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On Finding The Right Fit in HR Roles: Tereza KoĆŸuskĂĄ, Human Resources Director for CE at Ipsen Pharma

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  “You need to think about the profile of the job really carefully when you accept positions, and not be afraid to change positions when jobs don’t turn out to be the right fit for you.” – Tereza KoĆŸuskĂĄ, Human Resources Director for Central Europe at Ipsen Pharma, 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 Tereza KoĆŸuskĂĄ at Ipsen Pharma, who began her career with Kraft Foods, acting as a Compensation and Benefits Specialist and a Training and Recruitment Specialist before moving to GE Money to serve mainly as Senior HR Manager and temporarily Deputy HR Director. During her time with GE Money, she also moved from being part of Human Resources to the role of Black Belt and 6 Sigma Trainer. In 2010, she took on a role as Senior Consultant at Aon Hewitt, from which she was able to launch her own consultancy enterprise. In 2012, she joined Beckman Coulter as a CEE HR Manager, before assuming her current role in June 2015. Can you tell us how you got into an HR role and why? During my degree studies in Statistics and Commercial Languages at the University of Economics in Prague, I worked at a recruitment agency two days a week, doing interviews and trying to find the right candidates for our clients. After I graduated from university, the recruitment agency offered me a job with Kraft as a Compensation and Benefits Specialist. I felt it was a logical connection between HR and statistics, so I accepted. I was really open to anything at that time, so starting out in a HR role was a complete coincidence. I think that a lot of first jobs happen by coincidence. People usually do not have a plan when they leave university; you either come into something that you’ll stay in first time around, or spend a few years looking for the right opportunity. When I moved onto GE Money, I started as an HR Manager, but being a generalist, I also took on aspects of HR Director and HR Business Partner roles. Working for GE in the Czech Republic was extraordinary; the environment was fast-paced and very tough, but offered so many opportunities. I loved being able to tackle projects with a group of people I chose and make decisions about everything—that was really empowering. I also got the chance to switch from a HR role to Quality and back. I’m grateful for all the knowledge I acquired while doing so—it was very beneficial. For example I have been able to effectively map processes in every position I’ve gone onto since because of it, and have clarity about who needs to do what. That’s key, otherwise processes don’t work, and things like payroll and onboarding simply have to work well. Can you tell me about the prevalent themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? I think my biggest challenge at the moment is that the role I’m in is a combination of different duties that range from making strategic, multi-country decisions to quite basic operational stuff. As I have no internal team, I have to control everything and be point of contact for all. The challenges that wider HR faces are very much connected to where both the business and society are heading as a whole, and that varies between industries. When an industry goes into crisis, usually we start in the HR area with cutting costs, do outplacements sooner than deployments, and finding the cheapest solutions for everything. I don’t think that’s good for either people working in HR roles or the wider society itself. And if this comes, it is crucial to be transparent in communication to people and smart/respectful in decisions if possible. In industries like IT that from my perspective are not too much in crisis and are able to be innovative, HR can be more compassionate and caring. It’s interesting to look at how different HR can be from industry to industry and the different types of competencies working in HR roles can require. I think the pharmaceutical industry is different from others out there, as it seems very close-knit and little static compared to industries like finance, FMCG or telecom; where there’s a lot of rotation in and out of industry. 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 would say that you need to embrace the mistakes you make rather than avoid them, because those mistakes can teach you things. My own mistakes have helped me realise what I don’t want, and I’m grateful for that. Be brave and try new things—I left HR for a short time, and I’m glad I did. I got to see HR from the outside, and realised that many people can feel afraid of it. It helped me understand that people can be wary of the information and influence we hold, and since then I’ve tried to work differently and change that perception. HR uses such a combination of skills that it’s important to realise where your strengths are and work to them. Some people can start a career HR because they like working with people and then find that 60% of the role they’ve taken is administrative. You need to think about the profile of the job really carefully before you accept positions, and not to be afraid to change positions when jobs don’t turn out to be the right fit for you. Don’t be afraid to open your mind to other industries, either, as you can make real change to new ones that may struggle with innovative/different point of view. Be as close to business as possible to be able to have added value. If you want

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“Make sure that you’re always thinking about the future and fostering good coaching and mentoring relationships so you’re prepared when the right opportunities come up.” – Lindsay Beresford, HR Director at Royal Mail, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership

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“Make sure that you’re always thinking about the future and fostering good coaching and mentoring relationships so you’re prepared when the right opportunities come up.” – Lindsay Beresford, HR Director at Royal Mail, 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 Lindsay Beresford at Royal Mail, who began her career as an Operations Manager (later as a Mail Centre Manager) before moving into HR Business Partnering. She became Head of HR for Logistics Operations, and later led the deployment of a Management Reorganisation Programme. She took on a number of HR Programmes from 2015-2018 before becoming Head of Employee Experience, followed by assuming her current role as HR Director for Operations in March 2019. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? My HR career was really a combination of something that I planned to but an opportunity that came up by chance. I started in Operational Management, and whilst I enjoyed managing big teams, I definitely took more to the engagement side of the role. I really enjoyed talking to my team about how we could make things better, and I was increasingly finding myself gravitating towards doing activities with my management team on leadership and engagement. That led out into a number of other activities surrounding maximising the skills of other people and how they could progress those skills. I didn’t immediately make the link between that and needing to go and work in HR, but there were a couple of pretty inspirational HR Business Partners working with our team at that point, and during career discussions with my line manager, we started to join the dots. An HR Business Partner role came up in the Logistics part of our organisation, which worked really well with my history in Operations. They didn’t so much want people with a lot of HR experience as those who understood how what HR were trying to do transpired in the actual operational line. I absolutely loved it. We were able to make some really significant changes, and we undertook a big review of our whole network, which I did alongside the day-to-day business partnering activity. I found having organisational experience before I moved into HR really worked well for me, and helped from a credibility perspective. I think I’ve just been hooked ever since, really. I found that I really buzz off of being the HR voice in a team and keeping the People agenda at the forefront. Once I realised that was the place I wanted to stay in, I did my Master’s, and during that I really enjoyed working with people from other organisations. Having only worked in one organisation, I’m always conscious of how much time I spend trying to keep up to date with what’s happening in the HR world. Since then, I’ve just tried to move across the HR sector and do a number of different things to broaden my CV. Can you tell me about the challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? As an organisation, Royal Mail are always investing in and reinventing ourselves to keep pace with the competition. The parcels market is growing, but it’s also very competitive and some of our competitors have very different labour models to ours, so a challenge for us is the balance between wanting to provide good-quality jobs and keeping pace in a really high-pressure sector. We do that by trying to play really heavily on our brand. Our employee value proposition is that we offer the best-quality product and the best-quality people. We work really hard to make sure that everyone knows that this is a commercial organisation but we try to keep a link to our traditional roots. HR always used to be about making sure you had a seat at the table, but that’s never really been a major issue in our organisation, which is really great from one perspective, but at the same time our biggest challenge is making sure that our frontline managers feel like they have the power and  ownership in certain elements, and they don’t rely on an HR function to come in and fix everything for them. I think there needs to be a balance between having credibility and being able to show that you’re experts in your support functions but not doing the doing. I have a big team of Business Partners who are mostly doing that Operational HR work, and I think treading that line is a big challenge for us. Being in the digital era, I think everyone is trying to work out how to make the best use of technology, and we’re no different, but creating digital relationship with people who are out delivering post can be quite challenging, especially when trying to attract the younger generations and improve employee engagement. What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career? Work smart not just hard. So many people fail to prioritize what’s going to have the biggest impact on their lives. You should identify the key metrics that you’re trying to drive and what success looks like for you on different horizons, whether that’s a week, a year, or five years. Once you’re there, you need to try and remain focused on those and what you do to get to them. There’ll always be another person you can help or another thing that you can get involved in, and it’s all valuable work, but you’ve got to be focused on what’s going to make the biggest difference. When I started, I thought I’d have a management career, but I started to feel like my drive and resilience was being tested but my brain wanted to explore new things, so I decided

“Make sure that you’re always thinking about the future and fostering good coaching and mentoring relationships so you’re prepared when the right opportunities come up.” – Lindsay Beresford, HR Director at Royal Mail, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership Read More »

“Feedback may be hard to take at times, but you’ve just got to flip the switch and understand that you should never stop learning or have areas where you can’t improve.”- Kimberly J. Burton, People Partner, HR Director and Human Resources Business Partner at LEGO Group, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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“Feedback may be hard to take at times, but you’ve just got to flip the switch and understand that you should never stop learning or have areas where you can’t improve.”- Kimberly J. Burton, People Partner, HR Director and Human Resources Business Partner at LEGO Group, 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 Kimberly J. Burton at LEGO Group, who began her HR career as a Candidate Development Specialist for Yale University. She moved to the LEGO Group in 2008, taking on a role as an HR Consultant before advancing to HR Partner in 2010, and being promoted to Senior HR Business Partner in 2014. She then progressed to her current role, combining this with a role as Senior Onboarding Manager for Western Europe from 2016-2017. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? My career in HR was borne out of my BA in Psychology, and not really knowing what to do with it. I spent five years in the banking industry, but I knew I was going to go back to school to get a Master’s degree at some point. I became immersed in business and running my own branch of the bank, and I realized that the marriage of psychology and business was basically an Industrial Organizational Psychology degree. Working with the cultures of companies and leadership and development of talent sounded great, so that’s what I did. I moved to the East Coast of the US and got my Master’s degree. I was working in the recruitment area of Yale University at the time, doing an internship which turned into a full-time role after I graduated. It was a good opportunity, but academia is quite slow. I was then headhunted for a Business Partner role at LEGO after an external head-hunter found my resumĂ© online. It’s an amazing company to work for. By the time I joined, they were on the upward swing of things and seeing tremendous success, but more than that, they were always open to me taking on more. There was no real limit on the positions I took that meant I couldn’t try something new—at LEGO, you have plenty of creativity and opportunity to do what’s best for the business you support. They’ve always had a really good model for a Business Partner role, and I feel like I can just bring myself to work, the same person that I am at home. The only thing that’s been a constant at LEGO since I’ve been there is change; it’s never stopped changing. I started in an area of the business called Consumer Education and Direct, which covered our direct-to-consumer businesses and educational programmes. I later supported North America’s direct-to-consumer market specifically, and handled a lot of the hiring of store managers. It felt very entrepreneurial and end-to-end. After doing that for a few years, I took an opportunity in Australia and New Zealand, where they’d never had a HR Business Partner onsite before, and it was an incredible, life-changing experience. It was a very different model from the US, and really good exposure in terms of seeing how operations, marketing, and supply chain worked together to run an entire market. Once that opportunity had run its course, I decided to move to London to support Marketing and Consumer Experiences. That later became what was called Digital Consumer Engagement, and was a great organization. A year later, we went through another massive change, and I was moved to a role supporting the global LEGO Retail organisation. It’s just been amazing learning in an end-to-end value chain business. The Head of LEGO retail fully expects me to help run the business with him, the Senior Director of Finance, and the strategic team, so that’s been a huge learning opportunity. I’m extending myself even further into understanding the business, but also contributing in ways that aren’t straightforward HR things, yet have an impact on people and their motivation and satisfaction overall. Can you tell me about the challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? From an HR perspective, for us, it’s just being behind digitally. We don’t have the access to data and insight we would like. There is data out there, but it’s all very manual, and could be vastly improved to give us so much more insight into actions that we’re taking. We have a lot of investment coming into our IT infrastructure, and we’ll see some good traction on that in the next few years. Digital progress is also important because it’s a key attraction tool. The way that you integrate the digital into your business and the employee experience is crucial. We have an amazing physical product, and we always want to be centre stage, but we’ve neglected to understand the importance of integrating digital resources in different ways that don’t take attention off of the physical product, but maximise the way we get it out there. 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 you always have to be hungry to learn, and accept that you do not ever know everything. I’m constantly reading and listening to so many things that inspire me to do things differently. It’s about embracing the growth mindset; you’ve got to be able to take on feedback, you’ve got to be curious about the business, and you’ve got to see where it will take you. Feedback may be hard to take at times, but you’ve just got to flip the switch and understand that you should never stop learning or have areas where you can’t improve. Don’t take it personally, just get curious and dig in—it’s so much more fun that way. Kimberly has been working

“Feedback may be hard to take at times, but you’ve just got to flip the switch and understand that you should never stop learning or have areas where you can’t improve.”- Kimberly J. Burton, People Partner, HR Director and Human Resources Business Partner at LEGO Group, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“Get out of your comfort zone—that’s the best way to learn and develop. If you want to stay comfortable in a risk-free world, you have to accept that you’re happy to stay where you are.” – George Kollias, HR Lead for Europe and APAC at Donnelley Financial Solutions (DFIN), speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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“Get out of your comfort zone—that’s the best way to learn and develop. If you want to stay comfortable in a risk-free world, you have to accept that you’re happy to stay where you are.” – George Kollias, HR Lead for Europe and APAC at Donnelley Financial Solutions (DFIN), 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 George Kollias at DFIN, who began his HR Leadership career as an HR Manager at BT before moving to the Financial Services Authority to act as HR Business Partner for Regulatory Services, followed by a role as Internal HR Consultant. In November 2008, George joined the team at Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he started out as a UK HR Business Partner before becoming HR Director for Greece, Reward Lead for the European Markets region, and finally Talent Partner for the Europe Markets, Australia & Canada region. From January 2018 George led the European HR team at Asurion before taking up his current role in October 2019. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? When I was studying for my degree in Economics at the University of Athens, one of my professors suggested that a postgraduate degree in Personnel/HR, as I had an interest in those elements of my degree.So I decided to come to the UK to pursue a Masters in Organisational Analysis and Behaviour at Lancaster, followed by a Masters in Industrial Relations and HR at the LSE, which gave me a more practical, business-focused perspective on the subject of people in organisations. During my time, at the LSE a classmate and I did our dissertation as part of a real-life research project with BT,investigating perceptions of organisational justice and fairness in performance reviews for remote workers. When it came time to apply for a job, I knew BT well, so I decided to apply for the graduate scheme and got in. There was a lot of opportunity to learn and progress there, and I undertook a number of roles, moving from a Junior HRBP to supporting a team of 40-50 people. When BT decided to merge their divisional call centres into a central contact centre organisation, I joined the HR team that worked on the organisation design and people-related aspects of the project, andlater became the HRBP for the functions I had helped establish, namely Contact Centre Support Operations. BT was a very advanced organization HR-wise; their operating model was incredibly sophisticated for the time, there were a lot of resources to tap into, and I learnt a lot about many aspects of HR, including industrial relations, during my time there. It was a great place for a new HR professional to be. Eventually, I joined the then Financial Services Authority, which wasa lot smaller than BT, and had a completely different culture and ways of working. I got to experience HR from a different perspective there, because of their smaller size and the fact that their HR operating model was at an earlier maturity level than BT’s, so I got involved in work and projects that I didn’t have the opportunity to do at BT. I was also much closer with the central HR team at the FSA—the fact that everybody was in the same building made my job easier, but also highlighted the importance of having good personal relationships and networks to get things done more effectively. Bristol-Myers Squibb was also avery different organisation; much more global than both the FSA and BT, with some kind of presence in almost every country. The challenge for me there was to learn to build relationships with colleagues in the US and other countries and to learn to navigate a complex matrix organisation. Asurion is another US-based, international company of a similar size to Bristol-Myers Squibb, but has a different history and operatesin very different industry with its own challenges and opportunities. I’ve been fortunate to have had a very diverse career in terms of cultures and business sectors so far and I am looking forward to writing the next chapter of my career at DFIN Can you tell me about the prevalent themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? I’ve seen a few common themes come up in every industry I’ve worked in, and a big one at the moment isincorporating digital into our work, both in terms of how the business operates, and in terms of increasing the effectiveness and customer-friendliness of the HR function. The challenge for HR is twofold. The first part is about working out how to actually support the business to go through a digital transformation and the pace that that should happen in. The second is working out how to choose and use the right tools we have available in HR to automate as much of the transactional work as we can and make things easier for employees. There is a big hype at the moment about artificial intelligence, especially when it comes to Recruitment, and I think the challenge is to help each organisation determine to what extent things like that are relevant for the company and will indeed result in high return on investment. Linked to that is the challenge of creating an exemplary, attractive employee experience that will attract people to join the organisation and make them want to stay. Companies often invest a lot of time and money in giving customers a good experience and holding onto them, but they don’t always invest the same energy and resourcesto understand what their employees really need in order to be engaged at work. Offering that amazing employee experience needs to start with engaging people to come to work for you and onboarding them in a way that gives them a good foundation for success.Then, we need to make more of an

“Get out of your comfort zone—that’s the best way to learn and develop. If you want to stay comfortable in a risk-free world, you have to accept that you’re happy to stay where you are.” – George Kollias, HR Lead for Europe and APAC at Donnelley Financial Solutions (DFIN), speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, but when you do, learn from them and make sure they don’t happen again. A lot of HR is learning from experience, so dust yourself off and keep going.” – Michael Smyth, HR Director at GRAHAM, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership

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“Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, but when you do, learn from them and make sure they don’t happen again. A lot of HR is learning from experience, so dust yourself off and keep going.” – Michael Smyth, HR Director at GRAHAM, 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 Michael Smyth at GRAHAM Construction, who began his career as a Training Manager at GRAHAM Training before ascending to the role of General Manager. In 2004, Michael moved over to GRAHAM Construction, serving as  Training and Recruitment Manager, HR Manager, and Head of Human Resources, before assuming his current role in 2016. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I originally started out as a psychologist—I studied for an MSc in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. After graduating, I joined GRAHAM Training, where I worked in training, recruitment, and apprenticeships, as well as engaging with Government programmes designed to help unemployed people find work.  I moved up to a management position in 1996, and oversaw four different sites across Ireland—GRAHAM were very much an Ireland-based business with occasional UK dealings, and we only had a workforce of 300 back then.  After eight-and-a-half years in that role, I was approached by the business owner, who asked if I could come over and help out with the construction business, which didn’t have a training department. I ended up serving as the Training Manager for about 18 months, and then took on the Recruitment side as well. Shortly after, the HR Manager started the move to retire, and when he did, we were left with just three people in the team, and nobody knew much about HR. Although I’d come in from a training aspect, I now had responsibility for doing other things alongside it, and in retrospect, that might have been a good thing.  We had carte blanche; all we knew was that HR needed to recruit people the right way and listen to what employees had to say. HR is pretty much common sense, so all we had to do was provide a service that made people say, ‘Wow!’ and show them that we could do the basics really well. That built our credibility, and from there we made sure that managers had efficient processes in place and all the information they needed at their fingertips. When we’d make changes, we’d always tell them about the benefits to employees first, and then roll them out gradually, getting feedback at every stage to ensure we were delivering what the business needed. I’ve carried that through to the rest of my career; I always cover the basics first, then think about how to make them better, identifying what works and what doesn’t by listening to managers and employees. For example, we had 70-80% positive feedback about our onboarding process, but that wasn’t enough for me, so I carried out a survey with managers and recent recruits. As a result, we’re introducing more technology into our onboarding process. It’s always better to improve when you’re doing well than when things start to lag. I’d say that HR stuck because I saw what an HR Manager needed to do, started doing it when the HR Manager retired, and found that I was quite good at it. I’ve always been interested in what motivates people and makes them want to be successful, so working closely with them and really learning about them while doing HR has been perfect for me. I like the fact that it’s never boring, and every day is different—of course, there are some more difficult aspects of the job, such as redundancies, but even they can be carried out with dignity if you treat people well.  I’ve also been fortunate to have always had a team I can have robust conversations with and be challenged by. Being able to debate things within the team builds trust, so you can ensure that what you think is the right thing to do genuinely delivers quality and excellence to the business. People may not always like the HR department, but as long as they respect you, that’s fine. Can you tell me about the  prevalent themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? A major one is definitely wellbeing, and GRAHAM have been trying to lead the industry in that regard. We have won an Investors in People award for our work around different types of wellbeing, and at the moment we’re training managers in how to deal with mental health issues, and providing Mental Health First Aiders and other interventions for staff. Recruitment is a big challenge for our industry. We’re having a number of conversations around what might be stopping us from attracting people, and one of the challenges is definitely flexible working.   Its an issue for our industry but we hope that as new technology and construction methods are developed that effective people processes will grow alongside them. Flexibility is also part of what young people want from their jobs nowadays, and because we have an aging workforce, we need to work out how to bring the younger generation in. Our skilled older employees also need to stay in work, but face the challenge of embracing new technology and the younger employees have  these skills but sometimes lack the technical know how of more experienced workers. To ensure we harness everyone’s value, GRAHAM have introduced a mentoring scheme between employees aged 20-35 and our more experienced employees.  By doing so, we’ve ensured skills and knowledge are retained within the company, and the older employees pass on their fundamental understanding of working in the industry, while the younger generation teach them about more recent advancements like digital construction. Similar changes have also taken place in the HR department, where those with

“Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, but when you do, learn from them and make sure they don’t happen again. A lot of HR is learning from experience, so dust yourself off and keep going.” – Michael Smyth, HR Director at GRAHAM, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership Read More »

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