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‘At any stage in your career, network and seek out mentors, people that you can talk to and bounce ideas off.’ – Interview with Sonia Card

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“When I look back at my career, the jobs where I excelled and looked forward to going into work every day were all with companies that genuinely cared about their employees, and that was reflected in the environments they fostered.” – Sonia Card, HR Director – UK & Ireland at VPK Packaging Limited, 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 Sonia Card at VPK Packaging, who began her career in administration before transitioning into HR.  Sonia has held a number of senior Head of HR roles at Carillion, Cofely, Kuehne + Nagel, and in 2013, Sonia became Head of HR – UK Packaging at DS Smith, later transitioning to the role of Head of Talent &  Development for the same business unit.  Prior to joining her present company, Sonia worked as a HR Consultant across a variety of industries. She took up her current position as HR Director – UK & Ireland at VPK Packaging Limited in March 2019.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? Like many others, I “fell” into a career in HR. I started out life as an executive PA working for a VP in the pharmaceutical business. The company was growing, both organically and through acquisitions, and our primary customer was the NHS. It was a mainly administrative role initially, but gradually I took on more and more additional duties, such as conversing with lawyers and issuing employment contracts before setting up the HR function.  After a while, the company experienced a shortage of nursing staff and the Training Manager and I went to recruit in the Philippines. Looking back I don’t think I appreciated at the time what a fabulous experience it was! It was a real success, we had high retention rates with the hires and I returned several times. I went on to get my basic certificate in Personnel Practice and my Postgraduate Diploma while progressing my career in HR. It was during my postgraduate studies that I realised the breadth of scope within the function. I learnt a lot from the other professionals on the course, many with years of experience, and that’s when I truly decided yes, HR is what I want to do.  Since then I’ve continued to push myself to learn. I’ve become a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, obtained a Paralegal qualification and I’m also an Executive Coach and trained Mediator. When I care about something I’m very passionate about it! The values of the company I work for are particularly important to me, along with the opportunities for development and the professional autonomy to get things done. When I look back at my career, the jobs where I excelled and looked forward to going into work every day were all with companies that genuinely cared about their employees, and that was reflected in the environments they fostered.  I can honestly say VPK is a great business. It is third generation family owned, with 6,500 colleagues in over 70 plants across 20 countries.  The country MDs have autonomy and agility around decision making and there’s a big focus on employee welfare.  I also have the privilege of overseeing and working with one of the best HR teams I have ever worked with covering the UK & Ireland – 7 sites with over 1,000 colleagues.  The team share the vision, the passion and the drive to absolutely support the business to be the best it can be, and we absolutely support each other too. Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? COVID-19 really accelerated the growth in online retail, which created a fantastic opportunity for us as a company working in packaging. Every day we counted our blessings especially when we saw how other industries such as the high street and travel were suffering. However, the flip side is there’s been a massive disruption in the availability of workers.  The combination of Brexit and COVID created a perfect storm. Many people returned back home to Europe and we lost a core group of people. That’s continued because work opportunities and pay have improved in EU countries, so now people don’t want to return to the UK.  In response, we’ve had to review our reward and recognition packages to make them a more attractive proposition. We’ve increased wages, we’ve looked at retention bonuses and apprenticeship programmes, invested in social media campaigns and open days at our sites. We also continue to engage widely with the communities local to our sites.  We didn’t want to have people working during COVID that wouldn’t get paid if they had to be off work so we accelerated implementing contractual sick pay schemes at some of our sites where it wasn’t in place before. There was a strong CSR element to that, we wanted to do the right thing – that’s who we are.  Even with all of that concerted effort, and the substantially increased wage bill that came with it, recruiting and retaining sufficient levels of staff remains a challenge. There’s also a growing recognition that substantial wage increases aren’t sustainable in the long term because at some point, we’ll have to pass those increases onto our customers.  What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career? At any stage in your career, network and seek out mentors, people that you can talk to and bounce ideas off. Once you’re in a role, understanding the business and its key drivers is incredibly important. Get a good commercial understanding of what the company does, who their customers are and who their competitors are. Then, embed yourself in the business. Today, HR is a business partner not a back office

‘At any stage in your career, network and seek out mentors, people that you can talk to and bounce ideas off.’ – Interview with Sonia Card Read More »

“Challenge yourself and be true to yourself.” – Interview with Caroline Thomas

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“HR goes to the core of what you stand for and what you believe. I believe in fundamental fairness. In doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. You have to be kind and care for others, because you never know what someone else is going through.” – Caroline Thomas, Director HR at B&Q, 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 Caroline Thomas at B&Q who began her career as an apprentice in the manufacturing sector before discovering her passion for HR. Caroline worked at Rover Group in HR Admin before joining BMW Group UK, and later National Tyres and Autocare, as a Personnel Officer. In 2004 she joined New Look as a HR Business Partner where she spent five years before transitioning to People Change Manager.  In 2011, Caroline left New Look and joined her current organisation, B&Q, as Organisational Design and Talent Programme Manager. In 2014-2015 she spent time with B&Q’s parent company, Kingfisher Plc as Head of Business Change before she returned to B&Q to take on her current role as Director of HR in July 2015.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I began my career on a business management apprenticeship at Rover Group where I rotated around several different functional areas. I spent time in marketing, finance and procurement before HR. While in recruitment, I realised how much of a difference it makes in people’s lives and I was hooked. I spoke with the HR Director and transitioned out of my rotations to become his PA. In that role I got a strong grounding in HR in a heavily unionised environment.  I see organisations as living, breathing organisms, so the manufacturing sector with it’s process oriented, mechanical nature of working really excited me and I spent most of my early career in the automobile industry. After I left Rover Group I worked for both BMW and National Tyres and Autocare. Then, after 5 years I started thinking about getting experience in either the retail or hospitality sectors. I had moved to the south coast and New Look was one of the largest employers in the area. I earmarked them as my next company and was able to get a role within their distribution centre. It was a big change. Previously my companies had been ‘operational focussed’ but this was a much more entrepreneurial environment, which I loved. I ended up staying seven years working as a Business Partner and later a People Change Manager.  I was made redundant after returning from maternity leave. It was an eye opening experience to be on the receiving end of those conversations and to realise how cold and brutal that process can be. I felt like rather than utilising the new insights I’d gained through the life-changing experience of becoming a mother, the company had forgotten me.  B&Q hired me days after I reached out to them and I’ve been with them ever since doing specialised roles in change management, talent and organisational design, as well as more general positions around business partnering, communications and shared services. I’ve always believed that the more you can learn about cultural differences the better HR leader you will be and in 2014 I had the opportunity to work at group level with Kingfisher Plc (who own B&Q) and spent time in France, Poland, Russia and Spain. I returned to B&Q to consolidate what I’ve learnt and became Director of HR in 2015.  For me, HR goes to the core of what you stand for and what you believe. I believe in fundamental fairness. In doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. HR is about trusting those around you and being trusted. It’s two-way, you have to build credibility and respect. You also have to be kind and care for others, because you never know what someone else is going through.  Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? Firstly I believe there is a huge challenge at the moment about authenticity and strength in leadership. As a HR professional, how do you ensure that leaders are clear about what has influenced their leadership style and why? How can you help them recognise that they’re on a journey and always learning? Colleagues are, quite rightly, demanding more of leaders and I think leadership is shifting beyond what you do and know, to what you believe in. Arguably it’s got easier to be a leader because it’s no longer about you having the answers, it’s about how you’re listening, being curious and asking the right questions. Our role as HR professionals is about getting leaders to understand themselves first before they start to understand others and the business around them. A conversation I’m frequently having with leaders is how are you investing in your inner mentor? How are you championing yourself? How do you recognise when you’re getting things right? Leaders need to be authentic and clear about what has influenced their leadership styles.   The second challenge I see for HR is hybrid working. In our roles we navigate conversations, observations and make connections but right now we’re more removed from our colleagues than ever before. We need to up our game to ensure we’re making those connections, having the right conversations and observing what we need to. Within HR, we need to be more agile, prioritise where we spend our time, listen to all colleagues and focus on where we can make a difference to their experiences. Hybrid working is absolutely the way forward, it’s not a barrier, but we do need to be smarter and savvier in HR about how we go about our work.  And finally, but most importantly Diversity and Inclusion, we need to recognise

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Join us on our 8th Human HR & Leadership Hackathon

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We are excited to announce that on January 26th 2022 at 1pm GMT we will be hosting our 8th Human #HR & Leadership Hackathon. We are now looking for topics to discuss during the session, so please feel free to get in touch if you have a topic in mind. You can find the registration link here. Looking forward to seeing you there! Where? Zoom When? Wednesday, January 26th 2022 at 1pm GMT #hackathon #leadership #human

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Could you be our next Human CEO?

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Since launching during lockdown 1.0, we’ve had great conversations with some outstanding Human CEOs. If you head over to Apple or Spotify, you can listen to all our previous episodes there. We are now looking for more guests for The Human CEO in 2022. We’d love to hear from Human CEOs who can share their knowledge with their peers and those hoping to follow in their footsteps. You can nominate yourself or a leader that inspires you. Please feel free to email us who you’d like for us to interview in 2022 at hello@recruithuman.co.uk

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HR Leaders Reading List 2021

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“The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.” – James Bryce In addition to physical and mental wellbeing great workplaces need to start making room for intellectual wellness. With 2022 fast approaching we thought it would be great to ask all our HR Leaders for their book and podcast recommendations to get you started on your journey for intellectual wellness. 

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Xmas Reading list: Human CEO’s share their favourites

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What will you be reading over the Christmas break?   With the end of what has been another unusual year fast approaching, we hope you have some downtime scheduled. We thought it might be interesting to ask all of our Human CEOs for their book recommendations to get you started on your Christmas reading.     “You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book” – Dr Seuss.   We hope you find it valuable.  

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Could you be our next HR Leader?…

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For the month of December we are going to take a break from posting regular HR Leadership articles. However, if you head over to our blog page you can find all of our previous articles there. Since launching a few years ago, we’ve had great conversations with some outstanding HR Leaders like Martin Glover, Cindy Peters, Anthony Green, Donald MacRae, Heather Waterhouse and the list can go on. We are now looking for more contributors to our articles for 2022. We’d love to hear from HR Leaders who can share their knowledge with their peers and those hoping to follow in their footsteps. You can nominate yourself or a HR Leader that inspires you, by sending us an email at hello@recruithuman.co.uk

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“…try and get experience in as many different aspects of HR as possible” – Interview with Kristine Pollock

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“Wherever you are in your career you need to understand the language of your business. You need to understand finance, profit and loss and communications.” – Kristine Pollock, Group People Director at Eurovia UK Ltd, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, we’ve invited some HR Leaders to share the secrets of their success. This week, we had a great conversation with Kristine Pollock at Eurovia UK Ltd, who began her HR career as a HR Officer at Mark One (Oxford St) Plc, before transitioning to the role of Assistant Office Manager with Vizards. After two years, she became HR Manager at The Hanover Park Group. In 2000, Kristine joined Eurovia UK Ltd where she has continued to build her HR leadership career for the last two decades. From 2000 to 2009 she held the role of Group Head of Human Resources, before being promoted to her current position of Group HR Director in June 2009. In August 2019 Kristine became Group People Director. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I’d love to say I had a grand plan to get into HR, but that’s not quite what happened. I studied Law and French at University with a view of doing international law. During my course, I was particularly intrigued by the employment law side of things. After graduating I began a role in finance, which was enjoyable enough but it wasn’t long before I saw a vacancy in HR and moved across. I thought dealing with people would have an unpredictable element that appealed to me. After a few years I decided to obtain my professional qualifications and began with CIPD before a master’s in strategic human resources. There’s always something you can learn and even now, at this stage in my career, I’m halfway through my second master’s in People and Organisational Development. The opportunity to make a difference is what keeps me engaged in HR. Sometimes that’s in a human and personal way, other times it’s about strategic, companywide decisions. Nowadays in HR, you need to talk the language of the business and understand the figures, plus have a forward-looking view where you can see the impact of what you’re doing. I enjoy feeling that I’m part of an organisation that’s moving forwards and my role is to ensure that the people aspects are taken into account. HR has very important soft elements to it, but it’s no longer a traditional, fluffy, tea and sympathy role. It’s about how you achieve the best in your business through the people that work there. Of course, to achieve the best you need a People focused approach, ensuring your employees are fulfilled and feel they belong. I’ve been with Eurovia for 21 years. When I joined the business, they had 1,700 people and no one in HR. Everything has been built from that point onwards, but what we build changes all the time. Our organisation provides highways services, and a lot of people assume that because someone may work on the side of the road for a living that they’re low skilled or can’t do anything else. Actually, the opposite is true. Our employees are highly skilled and we are an organisation that is always looking to use innovation to improve and move forwards. As a business we change all the time. I am not People Director of the same business I joined twenty one years ago. It has changed, evolved, and grown and our HR priorities have as well. In addition to innovation, our business is so attractive to me because you’re not just allowed to use your initiative, you’re expected to. I feel a genuine ownership and connection to what I’m doing in a business with a good heart, we try to do the right thing. Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? Remote working is a challenge in some parts of our business. Two thirds of our employees work on the highways network and you physically cannot do that work from anywhere else. They are key workers and we have to take that into account. We don’t want to have a one-size-fits all approach. We’re trying to balance the needs of those who want to work remotely with the need for face to face connection so we’re beginning slowly. In a mixed workforce with different professions, you have to find an approach that gives something to everybody. I like to think that one day we might get to a place where our roadside workers can have some form of flexible working, but because of the high mobility and complex logistics – such as required response times on the network – it’s difficult. Like any employer, we have to look to the future and consider where we can bring in flexibility in a way that benefits both the employee and the business. A challenge I see for HR in general is systems, data and metrics and the meaning we apply to those. At Eurovia we’re in the process of moving to a new HR system. Part of that is asking, what data do we store? How do we use it? What data do we measure? What does it tell us and is it meaningful? Does it enable us to manage our business better? Data and metrics in the HR arena are increasingly important but there’s no point in reporting on things for the sake of it. We need to ask, what does it tell us? And how can it help us drive the business forward? I talk about What, So What, and Now What with my team – what do we measure, so what does it mean, and now what do we do with that? What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their

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“When you become a leader in HR you have to remember doubly that it’s all about people…” – Interview with Paul Buckland-White

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“When you become a leader in HR you have to remember doubly that it’s all about people: the people who are your customers and the people you are leading. It’s your responsibility to make sure that the people who are working for you are being treated as fairly and well as the people who need to have dealings with HR.” – Paul Buckland-White, Director of Learning Solutions at Smith & Nephew, 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 Buckland-White at Smith & Nephew, who began his career as a trainer before transitioning to L&D. Paul worked as a Systems Trainer at Buck and Hickman and BSS Group before becoming the Learning and Development Manager at Residential Lettings for Countrywide in 2009.  In 2015, he was promoted to Head of Learning and Development. He remained in that role for two years before becoming Head of Learning and Development, B2B and Learning Technology. In 2019, Paul added Interim Head of Recruitment to his responsibilities and from June 2020 to April 2021 he held the role of Head of Learning Support and Digital Learning. Paul left Countrywide and transitioned to his current role as Director of Learning Solutions at Smith & Nephew in May 2021.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? Like a lot of people in L&D, I fell into the work by accident. I was working in a call center and used to be involved in coaching new starters. From there I moved into a training role which was an epiphany for me in terms of career opportunities. At the time, in my late twenties, it really appealed to me both because my inner entertainer had the chance to perform and because of the serious undertones of making sure people could do their jobs well. That was my starting point and from then onwards I always wanted to be in roles that supported and helped people.  As I moved around different businesses I transitioned from operational to strategic training, which was when the HR aspects kicked in. That’s when I came to understand that training wasn’t just a transactional relationship, it was much more strategic, as part of workforce planning, talent, succession and other categories of success within a business. That was my career defining moment, when I understood the value that HR provides to a business. I knew I wanted to be part of the journey that the business and the people within the business go on.  Since then I’ve worked my way through different roles, always trying to improve and develop myself and my career. In my previous L&D role at Countrywide Plc I had the opportunity to do my CIPD Level 5 using the company’s apprenticeship levy funding. That was such an eye opening experience and fundamentally changed my approach. I learnt more about the different disciplines in HR and understood deeply the part that L&D plays across the people’s life cycle. L&D is more than talent and succession, it’s about empowering people and giving them incentives to stay within the business. Shortly after my CIPD, I was fortunate to be able to take on the Head of Recruitment role as a secondment in addition to my existing role. That gave me hands-on experience of recruitment which further built my appreciation for what happens across the whole of the human resources function.  Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? There’s an age-old challenge in L&D where people view it as traditional training that requires someone to be taken away from their day job to attend. Particularly if you’re working in a sales based industry where people are trying to generate revenue, there can be a reluctance to allow people to take time to learn. That view is missing the point. Training is an investment in people that enables them to be able to perform better. Additionally, smaller interventions, rather than multi-day training, are becoming more common and they often have a longer term impact on the bottom line.  A general HR challenge I see is the siloed nature of HR. While it’s more broken down than it used to be, there can still be a tendency to hand people off to different parts of the HR team. From an employee perspective, perhaps your recruitment partner doesn’t want to interact with you once you’ve joined and you’re now meant to talk to your business partner. That lack of continuity is a challenge. At the end of the day, we have to remember that people are at an organisation to do a job, but they’re also there because it’s a significant part of their life. The more we silo in HR, the more difficult it is to improve the experience for our people. What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career? Firstly, go and work in other parts of HR – I can’t stress that enough. Professional qualifications are great, but you can’t beat the experience you get first hand from being part of a disciplinary hearing or a recruitment process. The different aspects will broaden your understanding and give you a contextual approach that will then allow you to choose to specialise in a preferred discipline, if indeed you have one. If you are career focussed, don’t think that a sideways move is a bad thing. If you want to go into management, give yourself flexibility to see how people operate in other teams and other roles. They may all be people focussed but there are many different approaches. When you step up into a leadership role for the first time, my advice is to seek out development, mentors and

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“…be open, be flexible and always try to do a good job.” – Interview with Montserrat Bravo

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“I think career progression comes from the right skills, the right attitude and being at the right place at the right time.” – Montserrat Bravo, HR Director, EMEA & APAC at Similarweb, 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 Montserrat Bravo at Similarweb, who began her career as a professional psychologist before transitioning into HR. Montserrat worked as a HR / Recruitment Manager at Ashbourne Group in London for five years before becoming a HR Officer at WorldSkills UK, where she quickly transitioned into a HR Manager, Shared Services role.  In 2015, Montserrat joined Connexity as the HR Manager, where she remained for 5.5 years. During her tenure, Connexity acquired Hitwise and promoted Montserrat to the role of HR Director, UK. In 2020, she joined her current company, Similarweb as HR Business Partner, EMEA & APAC. She transitioned into her current role as HR Director, EMEA & APAC in January 2021.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I’m originally from Mexico, and in Mexico it’s common for HR professionals to be psychologists. That’s my background, I completed my bachelors in psychology with a focus on organisational psychology, then got my first job as a HR assistant for a real estate company. After a while, I returned to academia and obtained my masters in clinical psychology. I was, and still am, very passionate about people in general, and the drivers behind their behaviour. Why do people behave the way they do? How do people experience happiness? How do the intersections of personal and professional life overlap? I worked in education for a while as the head of a psychology department before moving to London 14 years ago. It was then that I began working as a recruitment consultant, which led to a role in HR. Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? One of our current challenges, which I think is common for companies our size, is our business grows faster than our people. This means we have to promote people faster than we would like to, so the maturity of our managers can be a challenge. Many of our managers have built careers within the company without working in other organisations and we have to support them and equip them with the skills they need to become effective leaders.  We don’t have attrition or hiring challenges right now. We have a good proposition and we’re able to attract top talent, but the question is, once we hire them, how do we grow them and give them a sense of career growth within a furiously competitive market?  Related to this is our second challenge, which is the perception of growth. Similarweb is in the tech sector and most people in this sector are part of the millennial generation. We have a combination of very talented, high potential people, who are ambitious to progress in their careers but who lack maturity to understand how growth actually takes place. As a solution, we’re trying to find the right balance by providing mechanisms and frameworks that will enable both managers and individual contributors to understand how they can get from point A to point B.   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 strongly believe job titles and the package attached to them are a byproduct of something else, more important. I’ve always done things because I care. I’ve followed my passion and my values, so the advice I give to others is to do the same.  I think career progression comes from the right skills, the right attitude and being at the right place at the right time. Be humble and focus on learning. Actively ask for feedback and push yourself to be self-taught as much as you can. Grab opportunities when they are in front of you, especially if they can lead to strong relationships.  If you are starting out in your career, get experience at a smaller company. This is the route I took and it allows you to learn quickly, experience different areas of HR and stretch yourself. Lastly, be open, be flexible and always try to do a good job.  Montserrat has been responsible for the EMEA & APAC regions at Similarweb since April 2020, first in her role as HR Business Partner, and then as HR Director. 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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