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“Grab every learning opportunity with two hands and don’t wait to be given it.” – Interview with Michelle Reid

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“I never made the decision that HR was my core focus but I love HR because of what it affords me. It’s very generalist, it’s about unlocking people’s potential, adding value to the business and helping the business to see value in their people.” – Michelle Reid, People & Operations Director at the Institute of Occupational Medicine, 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 Michelle Reid at the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM), who began her HR career as a HR Manager with Morrison Supermarkets. After working with the Morrison group for 13 years, Michelle took up a role as Company HR Advisor at Dobbies Garden Centres. In 2011 she was promoted to HR Business Partner, and in 2015 became Company HR Manager. Michelle has been in her current role as People & Operations Director at the Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) since January 2018.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? When I left school I began working in retail and became a jack of all trades doing everything and anything. My first experience with HR was when I was a Customer Service Supervisor working under a manager who was focussed on sales and shop standards but not on people and paperwork, so I picked up the slack in those areas.  While at Morrison Supermarkets I joined their HR management programme which included Duty Manager responsibilities. I was there for almost thirteen years before I moved into a regional role at Dobbies Garden Centres. At the time, Morrison was changing their management roles in a way that didn’t suit me. I’m not the type of person to stay shut up in an office, I enjoy being out on the floor interacting with customers and staff.   When I made the decision to leave Dobbies in 2017, I was consciously looking for roles that would enable me to develop further in the areas I was weaker in. Taking the role at IOM was a really conscious choice because I believed it would give me more of the opportunities I was looking for and enabled me to grow, as it has done.  Before that, I don’t think I’ve ever made a specific decision that HR was the right career for me. When I left school HR wasn’t seen as an essential part of business, or in the spotlight in the way it is now. My move into HR was very organic. I have a flexible mindset where I see something that needs to be done, and I get stuck in, that’s what’s always shaped my career path.   Even now, I still have a diversity of responsibilities. I don’t just do HR, I look after the business admin, business partnering, marketing, quality and facilities functions. I never made the decision that HR was my core focus but I love HR because of what it affords me. It’s very generalist, it’s about unlocking people’s potential, adding value to the business and helping the business to see value in their people.  Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? The big challenge is unlocking the value of people to realise commercial success. IOM helps develop research and shape policy for the UK in areas that you wouldn’t necessarily know were operating in organisations, things like stress and mental health and workplace design. In addition, our consulting business helps organisations create a safe and productive environment for people to thrive in, where risks of illness or hospitalisation are minimised.  At IOM we have an ageing population, alongside a desire to consolidate, simplify and grow in the future. It’s not easy to do that with the type of roles we have, some of them are very highly skilled: engineers, PHD scientists and laboratory technicians. It’s not like we can run a fast-track programme or train people from scratch into those roles, so talent attraction, development and succession planning are big focus areas for us right now.  Coupled with that is creating opportunities for new and emerging talents. One of the benefits I’m afforded because I sit on the board is the flexibility to create, so I can create programmes, work experience and outreach to see what talent is out there, without needing it to be very formal.  We’re very lucky in Scotland because there are several government groups set up to help organisations and young talent or people outside of work. For organisations like mine that are not-for-profit and don’t have a huge budget, this means we can get access to talent pools we might not have been able to reach before.  I do outreach and mentoring of young people, recruitment masterclasses, CV support, and talks about career options. In small organisations you can still get amazing experience and opportunities to learn different areas. You don’t have to go to a big organisation to learn HR or marketing. Recently I was interviewing scholars for the Saltire Scholar programme and seeing the amazing talent that is coming into the workplace is incredible. That kind of exposure is really helpful, it helps people get to know us as an organisation as well.  Ultimately the other challenge is around our value proposition, both commercially and from a people perspective. That’s about getting the IOM name out there, so people see us as synonymous with their workplace health and risk factors and realise that actually we’re a great career opportunity for someone.  What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career?  Grab every learning opportunity with two hands and don’t wait to be given it. My experience came from being curious and not shying away from something I didn’t know. One of the big learnings for me

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Human: Talent & HR Hackathon #3

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On February 23rd we hosted our third Human Talent & HR Hackathon. We were joined by an amazing panel: Lucy Capp, Internal Recruiter at Pricecheck Janet Sutcliffe, Head of HR at United Response Amanda Stainton, HR Director at Portakabin Ant Perfect, Senior Talent Development Partner at The Very Group  Steve Farmer, Managing Director Build & Connect at SPIE UK  and discussed topics like: How to compete in a candidate-driven market Adjusting the way of working because of the current market and How to become an employer of choice for graduates.   You can find the recording here. To register for our next Human Hackathon or for more information, click here.

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“Arm yourself with knowledge and curiosity and understand the tools that you use every day.” – Interview with Rebecca Oldham

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“Your day to day work should only be a percentage of what you do. Spend the rest of your time on projects, building your brand and making an impact in priority areas.” – Rebecca Oldham, Director of Talent Acquisition at Mastercard, 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 Rebecca Oldham, who began her HR career as a Resourcer at recruitment agency Meet, before being promoted to Consultant. After a year, Rebecca joined Amazon as a Recruitment Coordinator, a role she held for one year before transitioning to Campaign Recruitment Specialist.  In 2016, Rebecca left Amazon to join Adidas’ Talent Acquisition team as a Recruiter based in Germany and was promoted to Senior Recruiter one year later. In 2018, she joined Mastercard in the role of Manager, Talent Acquisition which she held until January 2022 when she was promoted to Director, Talent Acquisition.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I studied English and Sports Science at Loughborough and chose that degree with the idea of a career in sports journalism. I really enjoyed the people focused work, communications and business aspects and when I graduated I thought sales would be a good fit. In 2013, I joined Meet as a Resourcer in Pharmaceutical, Marketing and Sales. When I joined it was a tiny company with only 15 of us in the office. I quickly realised I was far more interested in the hands-on recruitment and process side, rather than business development and decided I would be a better fit for an in-house recruitment position.  At the time, moving to an in-house role seemed like a tricky path to tread and a big decision to make. A six month FTC role was available at Amazon and I decided to go for it – I was young enough to take the risk and see where it took me.  All the way through my university studies, I was also an international athlete playing softball for Great Britain. Juggling studies, sport and a part time job taught me to become a master of discipline. During the day I had to find the most efficient way to do things and I learnt to keep my head down and focus on the task at hand.  Those skills helped me in Amazon’s fast paced environment and they still help me on a daily basis now. In my first year Amazon moved from Slough to London and the business grew by 200%. It was a huge transition and I got an excellent grounding. Despite the business growth, the recruitment team’s numbers stayed flat for a very long time so I was doing a lot of day to day logistics but I was also lucky to be involved in graduate recruitment and ad hoc projects that weren’t necessarily recruitment but were very important for HR functions, such as invoice payments and reviewing the PSL. After a year I transitioned from sourcing to a newly created role of campaign recruitment specialist. Amazon was growing at a crazy rate and I was responsible for outreach events, candidate screening, candidate experience and a staggering number of assessment centres every week.   Had I not received a message from my future boss at Adidas I probably would have stayed at Amazon. It was very innovative within their recruitment team, they took a lot of risks and it was so fast paced that you could get ten years of experience in two years, but given I’m so into sports Adidas was a dream company. I base my career moves on my managers, I look into their background and it’s important to me that I have someone I can learn from. Michael, my boss at Adidas, had that background and I’m glad I took the risk of going to Germany. Working at Adidas was probably the making of my recruitment career. The team was international, there were 72 nationalities on campus and there was much more weight on internal recruitment. I was focused on a growth area for the business called Concept to Consumer that covered everything from merchandising to retail store builds. I got involved in projects and was promoted quickly to a senior recruiter role for all of the global brands for football, outdoor and heartbeat sports, which I’m very passionate about.  I’ve always put my hands up for a lot of things, particularly ones that others might find a little bit boring and I became heavily involved in process improvement, and knowledgeable about labour laws and immigration. I spent 40% of my time becoming a subject matter expert for others in the team on those topics.  As a recruiter you can become indispensable to the business, HR and total rewards if you understand a bit more about what they do and can preempt issues with potential offers, or know what candidates can be hired in particular locations. Your knowledge makes you a qualified partner to those parts of HR, which in turn makes your relationships stronger.  While at Adidas I was always asking, what’s going to make the biggest impact on my team, and how can I drive solutions to bring improvements for all of us? That’s a theme throughout my career, I have a passion for governance and process improvement and when I joined Mastercard I was able to continue with this.  In July 2018 I set up the Mastercard data and services recruitment team, they’d never had one before, previously it was split across numerous recruiters. Starting the team meant I was able to put structures in place and as there was limited awareness about Mastercard’s consulting business in the market a lot of the work was direct search.  My team now does roughly 250 hires per year and we focus on 20 countries. Over the last three years my manager

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“Self-awareness and self-reflection are very important when working in HR” – Interview with Katie Dominy

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“Think about who you want to be and how you’re going to be that – whether that’s what you want or what the organisation needs – and then keep learning.” – Katie Dominy, Head of Human Resources at Soil Association, 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 Katie Dominy at the Soil Association, who began her career as a PR Accounts Manager at Chazbrooks Communications. Katie gained further administration experience with Surrey Police, before working as a Childminder for two years. When she returned to HR, Katie joined CWR in the role of Conference Manager, later transitioning to HR Officer, a position she held until 2010 when she joined Computershare as HR, Recruitment and Business Support Manager. In 2012, Katie joined Castelan Group in the role of HR Manager, later adding Head of HR to her responsibilities. She was then successful in being appointed as Head of Human Resources at the Soil Association, which commenced in May 2019.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I remember doing the careers quiz in year 10 at school and personnel, as it was called then, came up as one of my possibilities. As a result, I spent a week on local work experience at the University of Surrey. It was my first administration insight and gave me the inkling that what I would end up doing would be around people.  I didn’t always find my education easy and just a week after I finished my A Levels I got a job with a public relations company. Initially I was doing admin work but I worked my way up into an account manager role with my own clients, which was really exciting.  After two years an opportunity to join Surrey Police in their personnel department came up and I took it. It was a really inspiring place to work. The HR Director was confident, bold and playful and suddenly I thought, you can be like that at that level. She worked alongside really important people yet was so accessible and approachable. I’m quite rational and logical, sometimes too serious, and I operate well in the policy and procedure world and so I could see myself fitting into that type of space.  In 2002, my friend was growing her own childminding business and she asked me to join her. Again, it was a role that centred around people and working with the children and building relationships with the parents was really rewarding, but after two years I was just tired, it was such high energy work. I also realised that I needed to move on for financial security, wanting to buy my first house, so I joined a local charity who gave me the opportunity to move back into HR.  The charity had about 100 people but they didn’t have a HR or personnel function and the company secretary, who was retiring, held most of those responsibilities. I got in touch to say I think there’s an opportunity here and I’d love to study and learn and work in this role for you. It was a safe and supportive space where I could start putting policies in, help line managers, commence training and start supporting employees. For me, that was my career defining moment, where I fully committed to HR and began studying via evening classes on top of my full time job.  Since then I’ve spent time working in corporate and financial service companies, but I always wanted to return to the charity sector. I wanted to work for a values-led organisation and I think in my heart I’ve always thought charity was the place to deliver that. My heart is in that ‘people, community, cause’ kind of space and so I wanted to invest my professional time there as well.  Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? As an environmental charity we are fortunate that people care about the work we do and historically, we have been inundated with people who want to work for us, often because they’ve learnt about our work through their university studies or personal interests. However, in the last six to nine months we’ve seen a shift and now recruitment is a challenging issue for us. It’s forcing us to redesign how we put our reach into the world, perhaps we became a little complacent and now we’ve got to work harder to engage people due to changes in the marketplace.  Part of tackling that challenge will be looking at where we land on hybrid working and the workplace of the future. We’ve just launched a ten year strategy and that’s been built into a three year plan in which our biggest people task is workforce planning and organisational design. We have so much expertise but the business risk is if that specialist knowledge is sitting in one person and they move on, the organisation is exposed. So we’re looking at how we can be really intentional about creating pathways for people and promoting opportunities and progression. Hopefully by the end of March we will have clarity and structure around that and we can start communicating it to our staff.  Looking at our EVP, we’re asking, how do we break from the norm? In the past our adverts and profile have been quite traditional but now we’re trying to move away and talk more about you as a person and your contribution, how we are missing you in our organisation? Part of that is getting people to think more broadly about job descriptions, departing from a task-oriented style towards broader scopes of impact where people can recognise ways they could contribute. Hopefully there’s a different audience who will engage with that and say, this is something I

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“I want to bring that user experience approach into how we reposition HR for the future.” – Interview with Simon Cunniffe

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“I think people often have it in their heads that HR is about designing stuff from a policy point of view. But we’re coming from it as if it’s a customer journey. I want to bring that user experience approach into how we reposition HR for the future.” – Simon Cunniffe, HR Shared Services Director at easyJet, 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 Simon Cunniffe at easyJet, who began his career as a consultant for companies including Oracle and Openreach before transitioning into HR. From 2013 to 2016 Simon was HR Shared Services Director for BT in London, before moving to Serco in Hampshire. Simon has held his current role at easyJet since January 2020. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I didn’t come from a HR generalist background, rather I began my career in consulting, delivering solutions all across Europe for a wide variety of differing industries. In 2013, I joined BT on their MBA Fast Track programme this included a rotation in working for the HR Director of their largest Engineering function. While there I was supporting the HRD with board level papers, Strategy, understanding diversity trends within the business it was my first opportunity to dip my toe into HR. At this point I become clear that a career in HR was the career direction that I wanted to take. Working at a large organisation like BT meant I worked across multiple different business units all significant in size and complexity, before being approached to design BT’s HR transformation programme. They wanted to redesign processes at a global level including changing all their providers and technology. It was significantly complex, a ÂŁ60 million investment across 60 countries and 120,000 employees. From a typical HR career perspective, some of the things I’d done previously were quite unusual and were all about managing complex businesses change and people. For example, I’d managed a large scale P&L, employing up to 5,00 people in my team and had experience writing business strategy papers. From that experience at BT, I fell into the passion of Shared Services and more importantly Employee Experience. For me Shared Services is the key experience for how the majority of employees and communicate and interact with HR. (Getting it right can make managers jobs easy or really difficult if overly complex). What really made me realise I wanted to continue my career in HR was looking at things from an employee perspective. Answering questions like, how do employees interact with HR? How do they get activities done? How do you manage processes internally? How do you get value in terms of automating and streamlining? What services do remote workers require from HR? After leaving BT, I went to two other organisations in very different industries to do a similar type of work, Outsourcing and Aviation. Now I’m at easyJet and the flex point for the role I’m doing is the multi-country piece. We’re delivering a very similar model for easyJet but across eight different countries in Europe with significant variations in employment terms and conditions. The experience again is about how do you get this right for a remote work force who do not work from a fixed office location. I’ve always been driven by a curiosity around business and a desire to simplify and improve the experience from an end user point of view. The combination of those two drivers led me into HR and if I look back on my early career, that’s also what you do in consulting – understand problems and come up with solutions that work for customers Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? The last two years have been very difficult from an aviation perspective. I joined easyJet only a month before the global pandemic hit and we had to ground all our flying programmes. Since then, things have been extremely tactical. We had to deliver furlough  across multiple countries in a quick turnaround, while working closely with our employee representatives on changes in the business. It’s been difficult from people perspective. Our business is extremely fast paced and in the last two years the need to simplify HR has never been greater. We’ve achieved a lot of change in the HR operating model in the last year, at the same time as dealing with the pandemic and ultimately, I’ve really enjoyed that aspect of my work. I am incredibly proud of the team who have constantly challenged the status quo and simplified how people interact with HR. Our HR System ‘Workday’ is being used like never before and this is a credit to the partnership we have built up between HR and IT. We have a diverse range of people working for us, from pilots to engineers and head office staff. A significant percentage of our core operational teams have been out on furlough, so the task now is to re-engage them in our organisation and ensure they get optimal support moving forward. The easyJet employment brand continues to be very strong and we have a history of recruiting and developing a diverse range of great people, which means that we continue to have a great range of exciting opportunities for people. Readiness is also a big  focus for us,  ensuring we’re ready for a busy summer flying programme. Recovery is underway and so we’re currently looking to recruit over 1,250 cabin crew and over 100 pilots. We’re putting the right things in place to get the number of high quality applicants we need as well as ensuring that they have a great experience with us in that recruitment process and  and that we have a slick offer process that matches them to training courses at the

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Human: HR & Talent Acquisition Hackathon #3

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On Wednesday, February 23rd at 1pm GMT we will be hosting our 3rd Human HR & Talent Acquisition Hackathon. We will be joined by a great panel so make sure to register by using this link. Also, if there’s a specific topic or challenge that you would like to be discussed during the event, please feel free to get in touch. Looking forward to seeing you there! Where? Zoom When? Wednesday, February 23rd at 1pm GMT

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“The world of work is changing…” – Interview with Sue Round

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“I believe the world has now woken up to the value that expertise in organisational development can bring… The world of work is changing, but we haven’t haven’t had enough time yet to reflect on what’s happened, and what’s still happening.” – Sue Round, Head of Social Mobility, Inclusion and Belonging at Co-op, 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 Sue Round at Co-op, who began her career as a flight attendant at BA before moving into a cabin crew training role. In 2000 she became Learning and Development Manager at Logicom, later joining Three as a Sales Training Manager and O2 as Head of Retail Training.  In 2004, Sue became Head of L&D at Marks and Spencer where she spent two years before joining Sainsbury’s as Head of Learning, Development and Talent Management. In 2008 she joined British Gas as Director of Learning & Development, Engagement and Talent. She spent eight years working for BP, beginning in the role of Head of Talent and later transitioning to HRVP Talent, Diversity and Inclusion, Leadership and Learning.  Alongside her training work, Sue obtained qualifications in Advanced Organisational Design, Myers Briggs, Firo and other psychometric testings. She holds a Masters in Strategic Organisational Development and a Doctorate in Coaching and Mentoring.  Sue has her own coaching and consulting business called Round Coaching and Consulting and is a partner in Lodestar Talent. Since April 2021 she has been working on an interim basis as  Head of Social Mobility, Inclusion and Belonging at Co-op.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I began my working life as a cabin crew with BA and after a time I became involved in training for them. It was a well-trodden career path at BA and a brilliantly functioning training organisation and so I was lucky to gain excellent grounding. Part of the role was training different teams to work together, which is so important from a safety point of view. A lot of it was around communications and teamwork. I learned about delivery and design and about helping people to reach their potential   I really loved that work, although at the time I didn’t know what the other related possibilities were. In 1998 I took voluntary redundancy, took the plunge and began working freelance in training. I began my CIPD and, when I finished, the instructor suggested a Masters in Strategic Training Development at Surrey University. To my amazement and delight I got on to the programme, which I completed while juggling my freelance portfolio and three young children.  Eventually I moved back in the house. My next roles were in telecommunications at Three and O2 where I started gaining qualifications in psychometrics. My career continued to grow from there and in 2004 I began heading up L&D at Marks and Spencer. At that time, talent wasn’t a very well defined discipline and I picked it up as part of my role. In later positions, I also took on other areas including succession planning, talent development and later, diversity and inclusion. Now, I manage my own consultancy alongside an interim post as Head of Social Mobility, Inclusion and Belonging.  Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? I believe the world has now woken up to the value that expertise in organisational development can bring, and I include in that all the pillars I mentioned above. I believe that things need to be connected, it’s difficult to do any of them well in isolation. Now, perhaps because of a labour shortage, businesses also really understand the value of their people. The world of work is changing, but we haven’t haven’t had enough time yet to reflect on what’s happened, and what’s still happening.  The challenges now are knowing where to focus. Where should you spend your time to have the most impact? Organisations are having to shift and think more about their impact on society as a whole. As a result of this I think they’re becoming more open minded. Not all businesses are in the same place, but some are moving towards the spiral dynamics concept, where organisations evolve to become less about winning and more about community.  What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career? Speak out, be brave enough to call out things that are biased or incorrect. Take opportunities when they’re there and never think you always know the answer – keep curious and be open-minded. Take your work seriously but don’t take yourself too seriously  For someone stepping up to a senior level, my advice is keep your hand in. It’s great to be leading a large team of people, discussing budgets, delegating work and having impact, but don’t let yourself become too removed from the real work.  Finally, don’t forget to develop yourself. In HR, we shoulder a lot for other people but taking care of ourselves is important. If anyone is thinking about taking on their own academic studies while working, my advice is to keep going with it. Learning how to learn and how to structure your thinking was immensely helpful to me. My masters helped me to think more strategically about the work I’m doing and my doctorate was a labour of love – I had to dig deep and learn to get through the pain barrier, but it definitely stretched my brain.  Sue runs Round Coaching and Consulting as a partner in Lodestar Talent and is currently undertaking an interim role as Head of Social Mobility, Inclusion and Belonging at Co-op. She holds a doctorate in Coaching and Mentoring from Oxford Brookes University Business School. In April 2021 she joined the board

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Human: HR & Leadership Hackathon #8

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On January 26th we hosted our 8th Human HR & Leadership Hackathon, joined by a great panel of Human (and human) professionals. We discussed topics including How to overcome the challenge of capturing EDI data across borders Resumption and the return to work Creating a great employee experience in post COVID times You can watch the entire session here. The Hackathons have been a great success so far so we took the opportunity to schedule them for the next 6 months to help you plan. You can see the schedule and register as a listener here. If you’d like to join us as a panellist, please get in touch and we will send you the calendar invite ASAP!  PS. If you know someone who would like to join our community of HR leaders and take part either as a listener or a panel member, please feel free to forward the link.

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“Be curious but also push back, and do it in a humble way.” – Interview with Ant Perfect

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“COVID has held a mirror up to us and made us realise that we don’t have to continue in the same way. It’s such a different world and there’s an opportunity to do things differently now.” – Ant Perfect, Senior Talent Development Partner at The Very 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 Ant Perfect at The Very Group who began his HR career as a Skills Coordinator at E.ON UK, later transitioning to the roles of Learner Progress Manager and Pathways & Professional Development Manager. In March 2014, Ant became L&D Coordinator – Apprenticeships at Severn Trent Water where he stayed for two years before becoming L&D Specialist at Blue Sky Assessing & Consultancy Ltd. In July 2016, Ant took on the role of L&D business partner at Costain Group Plc. Ant joined the Fraikin Group in March 2017 where he worked for over five years, in the roles of L&D Manager and Group Talent and Learning Director. In October 2021 he took up his current position as Senior Talent Development Partner at The Very Group.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I stumbled into HR in many respects, or rather L&OD found me. I began my career on a youth training scheme in retail, working through various roles until I held a management position. At that stage, I took some time out to do an MBA which has a strong HR bias.  What does HR actually mean in real terms? Ultimately, what resonated for me was HR as the opportunity to help people get better at what they do. I always had an interest in both what people learn and how they learn it, but I returned to retail and effectively parked that interest. For years I was keen on looking into HR but never motivated enough to make the leap.  That changed when I was working as a business development advisor for a training provider in the Midlands. I was finding placements for 16-18 year olds, and seeing the development of young people lit a fire in me. After that role, I moved to another independent training provider based at Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station, which became part of E.ON UK.  My role was to conduct progress reviews with learners on the mechanical and engineering apprenticeship run by this particular provider. What really interested me was seeing their growth in knowledge and in behaviour. For example, from being okay with maths, to understanding the complex calculations they needed to use for work with specific pieces of equipment. I saw the impact that we had on people’s learning and how that helped them to traverse through their career choices.  When that particular provider was purchased by E.ON and we became the engineering academy, I became the progress manager, managing a team of assessors looking after the apprentices. The responsibility for graduates was merged into my role and after a while I had responsibility for professional development generally within engineering at E.ON.  It was a whole new role and I was really inspired. That was when I realised that this is me, and this is what I want to do. My boss was a strong mentor and I am indebted to his tutelage. Along with my innate curiosity I like to influence, so the areas of learning and development were a natural fit for me.  Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? The pandemic has forced us to look at things in a different way, to work from home and to find creative ways to continue developing our people and our business. At the end of the day we’re talking about commercialism – helping our businesses to achieve increased profits for the business. Having impactful learning for the individual is crucial, but it goes beyond that to the betterment of the business. I think when we were all forced into our homes it made it difficult to look at learning from a bottom line perspective. How we learn in a post-pandemic world is very challenging. In Nick Shakleton Jones’ 2019 book, How We Learn, he called for taking a step back and really examining the value in education and that resonated powerfully with me.  The phrase ‘blended learning’ has never been more appropriate than it is now. I think the pandemic has made us less patient and less tolerant of going into a training room or an online session with a group of other people. The pace has quickened exponentially and now it’s about playing to individual strengths by asking, how do those individuals learn and what do they need in order to be able to develop and contribute to the bottom line of the organisation? I see figuring out how we do that as being the single biggest challenge of the moment.  COVID has held a mirror up to us and made us realise that we don’t have to continue in the same way. It’s such a different world and there’s an opportunity to do things differently now.  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 it’s powerful to have some grounding, so for someone just starting out in their HR career I recommend the generalist route to get experience and understand key principles. That does not in any way replace the need to be incessantly curious about yourself and your own growth in that role.  For someone looking to move into a leadership capacity, be cognisant of the needs of the people on your team in terms of both their development and the benefit to the business they’re in. If you do that, then you’re already on that

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“Be persistent. If you want to get to a higher level don’t be put off by setbacks.” – Interview with Paul Atherton

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“HR knowledge is something that can be acquired on the job. Don’t undervalue your experience in other areas, because it will help you become a more rounded HR professional.” – Paul Atherton, HR Director, Global Quality & Integrated Business Planning at Stanley Black & Decker, Inc, 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 Paul Atherton at Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. Paul built a career within the commercial and operations sector of Construction before transitioning into HR roles. His first HR role was HR & Continuous Improvement Manager at Bramall Construction in 2000 before being promoted to HR & Academy Development Manager for parent company Keepmoat plc.  Paul worked for the Keepmoat group of companies for twenty-two years, before moving into manufacturing and engineering. He became Head of HR, UK and Ireland at Pentair Valves & Controls in 2012. Paul ran his own consulting business providing HR support services and interventions from 2014 to 2015, when he took up the role of Senior HR Manager at Avdel, a business division of STANLEY Engineered Fastening within Stanley Black & Decker Industrial sector. During his time at Avdel, Paul’s responsibilities expanded from the UK to cover parts of Europe too. He was promoted in January 2021 to a brand new global role for parent company Stanley Black & Decker as Director HR, Global Operations Quality and EHS.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? At the time I transitioned into HR, around 2000, I was working within quality and training management in the construction sector. That sector can be very cyclical, it could be boom or bust and I became interested in people’s motivations. What kept them with the company? What made them disenfranchised?  Up until that point in my career I’d  worked in commercial roles; estimating and surveying and in operations ; site and contracts management before moving into quality assurance. While in quality, I completed a management programme and found the HR elements really interesting, it triggered something within me. I was then asked to take on the management of training which had previously been out-sourced and I also became involved in developing ‘equal opportunities’ as it was then known. My business division at that time didn’t have any professional HR so it was an opportunity for me and the company to develop policies, procedures and approaches that built on what I would describe as a solid platform of dealing with and developing people.  It was the psychology aspects that initially attracted me to look into HR, but then I became interested in training and what’s now equality and diversity. I was fortunate to be one of the front-runners in that area within our company and indeed within the construction sector. From that, I branched out into more generalist HR.  My time working in quality assurance gave me the opportunity to work with every part of the business and that, along with my earlier commercial exposure stood me in good stead for the transition. Now I’m working for a very dynamic and progressive company that provides lots of opportunities for people both locally and on a worldwide scale.  Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? In my current role I have a population of around 1,600 people globally. On the quality side, most of the people are based in plants and distribution centers around the world, and while most report through the quality function, some still don’t. One of the current challenges is to move us to a position where we have increased ownership of quality globally. That will enable us to drive consistency of standards throughout the organisation.  Additionally, we’re conducting a job architecture project, looking at all job levels across the company to determine if the individuals are in a support, professional or leadership band. From that, we’re helping people develop their careers and signposting options so they’re aware of what’s required if they want to move from one level to the next, or from one function to another. Currently we’re in the early stages of that project and we’re also working on a skills assessment for global quality to inform a training needs analysis.  While I am centrally based, I work in conjunction with people based out in the plants doing HR business partner roles, and with regional leadership. It’s a very cooperative way of working. I’ve got the oversight, but I need their help and support in delivering change in the separate businesses and regions. Of course the cultural differences are a consideration. It’s not always easy, but being based in Europe we’re particularly well-placed to span the timezones.  What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career?  For someone looking to move into HR from another profession, don’t feel that the task is insurmountable, or even more difficult because you haven’t had a HR education. That knowledge is something that can be acquired on the job together with part-time study. Don’t undervalue your experience in other areas because it will help you become a more rounded HR professional. On paper, not coming from a pure HR background might appear to be a challenge, but I believe it can be a distinct advantage. For someone looking to step up into a HR leadership role, my advice is tough it out. Be persistent. If you want to get to a higher level don’t be put off by setbacks. Keep building experience and eventually the opportunity to step up will arise. Working in HR is tough. You’re often faced with things coming from all directions. You’re charged with implementing the strategy and dealing with the day to day details, and you’re accountable

“Be persistent. If you want to get to a higher level don’t be put off by setbacks.” – Interview with Paul Atherton Read More »

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