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“Building relationships is crucial.” – Interview with Natasha Giles

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“For me, the power of HR is in connecting the right people to each other and harnessing their passions and motivations to achieve goals. We have a bird’s eye view across our businesses, and to add the most value, we need to be able to connect the dots and bring people together with it. Building relationships is crucial.” – Natasha Giles, Regional People and Culture Director for the UK and Europe at Les Mills, 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 Natasha Giles at Les Mills, who began her HR career as an HR Consultant with Forthright Projects, later transitioning to the role of Dream Manager for Employee Engagement and Retention at AllLife alongside her work as a Life Coach. In 2012, Natasha became Recruitment Assistant Manager at PwC South Africa, later transitioning to the role of PwC Exordia Recruitment and Human Capital Manager.  In April 2015, Natasha took on responsibilities for Onboarding, Engagement, and Career Mobility in the South Market territories of Africa for PwC, and in February 2016, she became Head of Human Capital for Uprise Markets. In June 2017, Natasha joined the team at Bravura Solutions as HR Business Partner for the South Africa office ahead of ascending the ranks to Global Learning & Development Specialist and HR Business Partner for Wealth Management across the UK and South Africa respectively. Natasha transitioned to her current role in July 2020. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I came to HR in a bit of a roundabout way, really. After school, I studied Psychology and Communications at university, then went travelling for a couple of years before transitioning to HR admin work within a family business with a legal advisory focus. I then decided I wanted to focus on coaching, so I left that role to set up a coaching business of my own. At the same time, I decided to go for a role working on a sales coaching app for a company called AllLife, who were very much on the cutting edge of insurance. As part of the hiring process, I had an initial call with the director during which I happened to mention reading about the ‘Dream Manager’ programme in the US which helped employees achieve their personal goals as well as professional ones to increase engagement and retention. After a further conversation, we implemented it at AllLife, doing everything from providing lessons on how to ride a bike to setting up training contracts for the people who wanted to study further. After a year there, I was approached by someone I knew at PwC who had a role open in their HR team within the Recruitment space. Although I had helped with recruitment at AllLife, I had never really focused on it heavily, and I thought that the role would be a great opportunity to do so. While the contract was originally set for six months, I ended up staying for about four years. It was very intense, as the business had large teams that were constantly growing. We had huge recruitment drives—not only for PwC itself, but for their software arm, Exordia.  When one of the business partners working within my advisory team moved over to Exordia, he reached out to me to see if I had any interest in joining the team there. I agreed, and it turned out to be a fantastic role for me. I got involved not only in Recruitment, but also Human Capital and Engagement work.  I was then approached by the leader of the South Market territories to interview  join their team, which I later accepted an offer for. I started working in Onboarding, Engagement, and Career Mobility within our Centre of Excellence, running engagement surveys across the whole of Africa to report on our offboarding and relationships with alumni as well as developing and implementing onboarding action plans in the South Market. I also hosted our onboarding welcome days and helped implement some technology to support the onboarding process. After some time, PwC went through some changes in the Human Capital space, and it was time to look for something new.  I enjoyed working in the start-up like environment at PwC Exordia, so when I came across a start-up trading platform called Uprise Markets, I knew I had to go for the HR role. The challenge of managing Retail spaces was very new and exciting for me. I worked right across the Human Capital chain reporting directly to the CEO, and we made some great strides in terms of implementing gamified performance management and training. Unfortunately, some instability in the future of the business meant I had to look for something new after almost a year and a half. The role at Uprise Markets was generalist, so it was daunting to come to with purely specialist experience at first, but I quickly found that when I put those roles together, I’d pretty much worked across the whole of HR anyway.  My next role at Bravura Solutions was also quite generalist. As a UK-based company growing their South Africa office, they had a start-up feel while also having the security of being part of a bigger business, just like PwC Exordia. In that role, I worked across the HR function with a heavy focus on Recruitment. I also got involved with a lot of our global projects, which ultimately resulted in me moving into a global Learning and Development role, then relocating to the UK office as the HR Business Partner for their Wealth Management business. After just over three years there, I was approached by Les Mills, and it was an exciting opportunity I knew I just had to say yes to. Taking on an international role right in the middle of COVID has been

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‘…you need to keep learning and developing to remain current and abreast of what’s happening within HR.’ – Interview with Kate Laidlow

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“Watch out for complacency; you need to keep learning and developing to remain current and abreast of what’s happening within HR.  There will be new opportunities presented to you during your career that appear at the most random of times; explore them, and if it feels right, take the plunge.  That’s the real key to career progression.  If there is even the slightest niggle in the back of your mind that says you want or need something more, listen to it…” –Kate Laidlow, Head of People & Culture at Contis, 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 Kate Laidlow at Contis, who started her HR career as National HR Advisor at Miss Selfridge before transitioning to the role of Regional HR Manager for the South of England at TOPSHOP TOPMAN, later ascending to the role of HR Manager for the London Oxford Circus branch. In March 2013, Kate took on the role of International HR Manager for the business, where she remained until joining the team at Coach as Head of HR for Retail in May 2015. In September 2016, Kate became HR Director for Corporate & Retail at Coach ahead of moving to her current role in October 2018. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I fell into HR by accident, actually. I finished university not really knowing what my career would be after that, so I went into administration roles while trying to figure things out. I was working for the Arcadia Group when an HR Assistant role needed to be covered temporarily ahead of recruiting after a relocation, and my boss at the time asked if I would step into the role. Initially, I was very hesitant about it, because at the time I thought that HR was just about dealing with other people’s problems. However, I realised after a while that I found the work really interesting and that was not the case. Every day was different; there were constantly new problems to solve creatively, and I liked that. I also really enjoyed seeing the difference I could make. I began to think that working in HR could be the career for me, but I wanted to do some more research to be sure, so I went to my local university and enrolled in a module on HR Management to explore what it would be like. Studying HR really piqued my interest; I could see how exciting it could be, so I decided to make a career out of it. I was really lucky in that my first proper HR job was within the Arcadia Group working with the HR professionals who had taken me under their wing in the beginning. It was an incredible opportunity to develop—I had the most amazing manager and mentor who threw me in at the deep end, but also trusted me, had confidence in me, and could see more in me than I could see in myself.  In the Advisor position at Miss Selfridge, I began focusing heavily on Employee Relations across the country, so I learnt a great deal about case management, at high volume, and how to identify creative solutions to ER issues that were commercial, within the law, and appropriate for the situation.  It was in this role that I completed my CIPD via distance learning; those 5am starts to study before work every day were tough, but they paid off when I qualified. I later took on a Regional HR Manager role at TOPSHOP TOPMAN within the Arcadia Group, looking after HR for stores across the South of England, working alongside a Regional Controller. After learning how to business partner a leader and influence key stakeholders, I gradually started to learn more about the business in general in order to be able to propose bespoke commercial HR solutions and understand strategic impact. Further to that role, I had the opportunity to take on the position of HR Manager for the business’ Oxford Circus flagship store. That was the most incredible experience. At the time, the number of people in the store could reach a thousand at its peak, so the HR issues that came up were incredibly varied. We also had what was almost a mini department made up of HR, Learning and Development, and Recruitment, so I started to learn how to become a Line Manager and run an HR Department. That taught me to adjust my HR leadership and problem solving, as I quickly found that one solution didn’t necessarily fit all the different units of the business. After a year in that role, I found that I needed more flexibility, as commuting 3 hours a day into central London wasn’t the best fit with my young family. Fortunately, the business was able to offer me the very flexible role of International HR Manager to support their international expansion across Europe. That role was an incredible learning curve for me, and a complete blank canvas. I was tasked with researching and advising the business on employment options across France, the Netherlands, and Germany, and by the time I left, we’d opened stores in all of those locations.   I knew absolutely nothing about HR outside the UK and Ireland coming into the role, so I went on courses, networked heavily with other people doing similar roles, joined round tables, and did lots of research to build my knowledge. With it, I was able to support senior stakeholders to make decisions at a board level about opening stores and employing in new locations. It was a really exciting role, and a great project to get involved in from an HR standpoint. After a couple of years of doing that, I was ready to move onto my next leadership position, but the kind of role

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“Trying to change your business’ performance can be like turning an oil tanker” – Interview with Craig Oddy

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“Trying to change your business’ performance can be like turning an oil tanker; you can’t always do things quickly, and putting plasters over problems doesn’t always fix them.” – Craig Oddy, Head of HR for Consumer Finance at Hitachi Capital (UK) PLC, 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 Craig Oddy at Hitachi Capital UK, who began his HR Leadership career as a Learning & Development Manager at National Australia Group/Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank. After ascending to the role of Regional Manager for Retail and Wealth Distribution, Craig joined the team at TD as Senior Manager for Learning & Organisational Development. In September 2013, Craig took the opportunity to move to Toronto and spent 5 years in a variety of Learning and Talent based roles In July 2018, Craig moved backed to the UK and joined Hitachi Capital UK as Group Organisational Development Manager, transitioning to his current role in December 2019. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I’ve always described myself as someone who’s not really an ‘HR professional’ because that wasn’t ever my intent, and it certainly wasn’t the starting point of my career. I worked in Retail and Sales Leadership roles for 18 years before moving into HR. My time in Retail and Sales taught me the realities of the commercial side of organisations. It was where I also first experienced how great HR people influenced and guided senior leaders but as a senior leader the final decision was always yours. I didn’t knowingly take on Sales Leadership roles to prepare for HR, but  looking back it equipped me with some great skills I was able to apply when I made the switch and began to support senior leaders to run their organisations. Towards the end of my time in Retail and Sales I had a brilliant mentor who was part of the board, and I remember calling her when I was having a particularly tough week. She asked me some great coaching questions that made me realise I needed to make a change. I cannot stress enough the importance of mentorship and sponsorship, as well as how it can come from a huge range of sources. In fact, my first experience of true sponsorship came from a recruiter that was in my brother’s network who managed to introduce me to my first true HR role as Learning & Development Manager. I took my CIPD while I was in that role as a gateway to other opportunities, and although the role itself meant I had to accept a step back in terms of seniority level and pay, it was really rewarding. It definitely taught me that money and status aren’t everything, and that as long as you’re credible and reliable and foster a good relationship with your senior leaders, the money and seniority may well follow anyway. After three years in that role, I relocated to Toronto to become Senior Manager for Talent & Learning for TD Bank. The North American bank employed around 90,000 people versus the 800 people working in the UK, so it was a real eye opener in terms of learning how to apply my trade to such a vast organisation, but also a hugely valuable experience that stood me in good stead to progress my career. It taught me skills around deploying HR in complex organisations. Moving back to the UK provide the opportunity to shift from the specialist side of HR to the generalist space when I took the ‘Head of’ role. This is not always the path that people take on their journey to Head of HR – but one that I would showcase as a possibility. All the skills I’ve picked up across my HR career have influenced the kind of HR Leader I am today, whether they’re specialist or generalist. Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? I think that the HR sector can be a little bit prejudiced towards qualifications. Back when I was doing my CIPD, I was learning with a lot of people who were just at the start of their HR careers and the discussions were very theoretical as they didn’t have experience to draw upon. HR can be seen as blockers to progress and I believe that could be true of HR professionals who can only draw on a laborious education process that doesn’t help their judgement at all. Giving someone a case study of a business so they can pretend to offer advice is nothing like the real thing—I’d rather somebody put themselves out there and make mistakes in a real business context. I’m not anti-qualification at all, but I think we should be aiming for valuing a blend of education and experience. When it comes to doing a CIPD qualification, there is an inherent separation between HR development and HR management, but in truth, the two sides aren’t separate at all. People are in everything we do, and you need both sides. The really credible HR people can do both, which helps businesses to run HR in a much leaner way and achieve more The COVID pandemic has been very unique to work through in terms of building credibility and making sure a People consideration is threaded through everything, but our biggest challenge will be in ensuring that we stay interweaved in the business when the crisis is over. Employee wellbeing and safety has always been important for us at Hitachi, but particularly within the last 12 months, it’s been our primary concern. We’ve also taken quite a strong stance on retention. We have faith that our strategy will enable us to survive, and as part of that, we didnt furlough anyone and dont believe that cost cutting is a

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“Be open-minded and challenge what you think you want, what you think you know, and what you think you don’t know…” – Interview with David Bowes

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“Be open-minded and challenge what you think you want, what you think you know, and what you think you don’t know; particularly when it comes to yourself, your career, and your strengths and weaknesses. Never be afraid to ask for advice, but if you get an opportunity, go for it.” – David Bowes, Chief People Officer at Phlexglobal, 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 David Bowes at Phlexglobal, who started his HR Leadership career as Business Development Director at Lattelekom—an acquisition of Cable & Wireless—before moving  to Cable & Wireless to act as Business Development Manager for the Asia Pacific region. In August 2000, David became COO at Riot Entertainment, later joining the team at WDS as Regional Manager for Europe before ascending the ranks by taking on the roles of VP for Organisation Development and Chief People Officer respectively.  In June 2016, David became Director of TalentFit Ltd, going on to join the team at Phlexglobal as Global HR Director in June 2018 before transitioning to his current role in March 2020. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? From very early on in my career, even before taking on an HR role, I always felt that I worked well with people—I understood and could relate to them very easily. I always preferred working with people to working with things, but interestingly, I didn’t always follow my heart in that regard; there were a couple of pivotal points in my career where I ended up following money instead.  I worked as a software developer at one point because that was where the money was, but I fairly quickly tuned into the fact that I had a real inclination and strength of mind when it came to working with people within the Technology sector. As a result, I ended up getting more and more involved in implementing rather than developing systems, and working with users exposed me to more of their requirements and what businesses were trying to achieve. I started to get a real understanding of people, of technology, and of business all at once. As well as wanting to develop around those themes, I also wanted to work abroad, so I joined a big company called Cable & Wireless to do some project management in technology change. When they bought a former national telephone company in Eastern Europe, I took the opportunity to go and manage the change programme over there. There was a lot of technology change that needed to take place, but the culture and workflows also needed modernising to allow them to take advantage of the new technology when it came in. After about six months, my job changed quite considerably. The company appointed a new CEO, and I went to him to express my concern that the 10-year change programme I was supposed to be managing was no longer relevant. After that conversation, he asked me to work with him to filter, understand, and advise him on everything that came across his desk. I agreed, and the two years I was in that role were probably the biggest learning curve of my life! It was fascinating to be at the senior level of a business, and the CEO was terrific. As a former Finance Director, he taught me to understand the mechanics and economics of the company, so I started to build my knowledge of its inner workings and how and where we made money. That meant I could contextualise all of the changes we were making and prioritise our actions based on the financial outcome and the impact on our vision for the future direction of the business.  The role really helped me to be able to not only look at statements and reports and understand them, but also understand where we needed to dig deeper into what was behind the data. In business, everything leads back to people—whether that’s our teams or our customers. I learned that successful financial outcomes depend not only on how you do in the marketplace in front of customers, but how well the people within the organisation are able to perform and sell based on your working practices, culture, and talent development. If you want to deliver great outcomes, you have to get your People agenda right. After two years in that role, I found that I wanted to learn more about business, so I took on a role managing mergers and acquisitions for Cable & Wireless in Asia, then came back to the UK and went into a role managing the European part of Wireless Data Services, or WDS. There, I owned the resources, the P&L, and we achieved good growth by getting the People agenda right. I did that for two years, and then the CEO came to me and said that while the business had been generating a lot of profit in Europe, the international branches felt more like seven different businesses than one organisation. I explained that that was a People challenge on the organisational and cultural levels, and he asked whether I would take the position of HR Director to be able to address it and make the function less transactional. That was my official entrance into HR. All of a sudden, I’d got my dream job, because I understood business and I could understand the impact of getting the People side of things right. I started to build a team of HR professionals who could educate me about the elements of HR I was less familiar with, and we became far more strategic about our organisational capability to leverage talent and remain agile. That allowed the business to grow to the level that it caught the attention of Xerox, who ultimately bought the business because of our organisational effectiveness,

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“Never be afraid to challenge yourself…” – Interview with Euan Graham

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“Never be afraid to challenge yourself, be open to different routes into different roles, and remember the value in stretching beyond your comfort zone.” – Euan Graham, Principal Consultant at EG Advisory Ltd, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership and Employee Relations. 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 Euan Graham at EG Advisory Ltd, who started his HR leadership career as a Team Leader within the Employee Relations Field Specialist team at HSBC ahead of ascending to the role of Senior Employee Relations Manager at the bank. In July 2013, Euan went on to become Employee Relations Manager at Lloyd’s of London, later continuing the role at Norton Rose Fulbright before becoming the UK Head of Human Resources at the law firm. Euan then took on the role of Head of Employee Relations role at Dyson in May 2019. In March 2020, Euan founded EG Advisory and transitioned to his current role within the business. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? My interest in HR started way before I actually did it, and goes right back to growing up in an industrially-minded family on the west coast of Scotland in the time of Thatcherism and the miners’ strikes. My family had always had an interest in unions and industrial relations, and I ended up taking that forward into my career when managing large elements of the trade union relationship at HSBC. I started out as a workplace trade union rep dealing with issues on a day-to-day basis alongside my day job, but I got the opportunity to work for what was then the Banking, Insurance and Finance Union full time via a secondment from First Direct bank, which of course is a division of HSBC. That was really interesting—it gave me the opportunity to hone a lot of the skills I was developing already around handling difficult cases, but also to expand my learning enough to train others to hone skills of their own. Just at the time my secondment was coming to an end, the bank was restructuring their HR team and creating a new role for Employee Relations Field Specialists who managed casework issues like disciplinaries, grievances, investigations and capability matters. I was offered one of those roles, which I took, and I’m very proud of the fact that I was the first secondee ever to go straight into an Employee Relations role and not a generalist HR role. I moved from Scotland to Yorkshire to do that job, and became the team leader of the function within a couple of years. That’s where I found my home in terms of where my interest really lay and what I wanted to do. A lot of my peers in that job had gone through generalist HR roles before settling on Employee Relations, but I knew I wanted to go straight into ER from the moment I came across it. In the same way, I had always known I wanted my career to be people-focused, and I worked in people-centred sectors like hospitality long before I worked in finance. The idea of sitting at a desk surrounded by piles of data rather than having conversations and interactions with people has never appealed to me, and that’s why I’ve stayed in a people-related field since I was in education. Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? In terms of both the issues that are facing me and those facing the clients I work with, COVID has definitely been the most challenging.  The end of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme drawing closer means that people are thinking more and more about the future of the workforce. We’ve seen some devastating numbers across industry in terms of redundancies, which may well continue. Planning what happens after the furlough scheme ends is a real challenge on employers’ minds at the moment.  The other challenge, I think, is in dealing with employee relations in a remote environment. We have learnt that as much as issues do still happen when we are remote, they can also still be tackled when we are remote as well—we just need to adapt our way of working to do that. As someone who has been directly helping businesses tackle challenges like this throughout the crisis, I would say first and foremost that it’s important to recognise that we’re working in different ways in the wake of COVID, but that we should still set clear expectations of our people. Working remotely doesn’t mean that our behaviours or the way we work with each other should be any different in a virtual environment to what they are in a face-to-face environment, and we shouldn’t hold back from doing the right thing by the organisation and dealing with Employee Relations matters virtually for as long as we are working remotely. I would advise businesses to make sure that their policies and messages are clear around that, but also to be mindful of the fact that remote working does create extra stresses and strains that might manifest in the work environment, and that needs to be managed. Recognise that people might need extra support by way of greater flexibility, emotional support, or time off, and offer that where you can. If you’re dealing with a disciplinary or investigation, for example, you may also need to adjust your modes of interaction to ensure that the people involved feel as supported in a virtual environment as they would in a face-to-face one.  Factors of mitigation are always important in any Employee Relations context, and a big part of the investigations into issues that I do for businesses is taking those mitigating factors caused by remote working into account, and being aware of the fact that they might well be influencing

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100 months of Human!

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This week marks 100 months of Human!    When I launched Human back in January 2013 at the end of a recession, I made a commitment to help change the way hiring happens, to Humanise the process and have some fun along the way.  Granted, the last 12 out of 100 haven’t been as much fun as any of us would have hoped – candidates unable to find work, people dealing with redundancy and uncertainty, health and safety. There was unprecedented pivoting, home school, face masks, zoom calls….    We’ve weathered a few storms and I am proud to say Human is still standing. Now more than ever, that’s a reason to be grateful. Some haven’t been so lucky.     Over the last 8 years the business has evolved from a generalist, local recruitment partner to a People and HR Search Consultancy supporting clients across the UK and beyond with Hiring, Engagement, Employer Branding, Talent Pipelining and HR Search.    Thank you to everyone who has supported us, given us the opportunity to work alongside them and championed us along the way. To the team of people who make Human ‘go’ and finally to my beyond patient, supportive husband – Thank you!

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TA Hackathon #1

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We had a great TA Hackathon on April 28th, joined by an amazing panel like: Clive Smart, Head of Talent Acquisition at Sky Betting & Gaming Emily Hocking, Talent Acquisition Manager at Arriva Group Ian Stilgoe, Talent Acquisition Specialist at 3M and Jennifer Marsden-Lambert, Strategic Advisor- Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at Second Chapter. We discussed topics like neurodiversity, how to make hiring more inclusive and what reasonable adjustments can be made. You can find the link to the hackathon recording here. Enjoy!

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“[A]lways consider making sideways moves as well as upward ones” – Interview with Siri Nomme

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“[A]lways consider making sideways moves as well as upward ones, as they will develop your experience and perspectives. Your career should be a jungle gym you actively manage rather than a ladder you simply climb up.” – Siri Nomme, Head of Diversity & Social Purpose at Norton Rose Fulbright, 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 Siri Nomme at Norton Rose Fulbright, who began her Leadership career as Project Manager for the International Conference Service in Oslo before becoming Training Manager for Euromoney  Training in London. In January 1999, Siri joined the team at Deutsche Bank as Graduate Development Manager, going on to take on the further roles at the bank as  US Head of Talent Development for Private Wealth Management, Global Head of Talent Development for Private Wealth Management, Talent Management Project Manager, and Diversity & Inclusion Manager. In March 2016, Siri took on the role of EMEA Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Norton Rose Fulbright ahead of transitioning to her current role in April  2021 Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? My career progression has definitely been more of a jungle gym than a ladder, and the career I expected to have after university was not at all in any of the spheres I have actually found myself in. My father is a retired diplomat from Norway, and after developing a love for travel, history, and political science, I expected to follow in his footsteps and either become a diplomat myself or work for an international organisation like the UN. After finishing university, I initially got a temp job doing data entry at an event management company in Oslo, but was quickly taken on as a permanent member of staff and became a Project Manager for that company. After  that, I studied for an MSc at the London School of Economics and took a job at Euromoney in London, project managing their financial training courses. While I was there, I received a call about a Norwegian Government-sponsored conference on banning landmines that would be visited by representatives from governments around the world and generate a treaty. I was offered a job to help organise it, which was an incredible opportunity. I spoke with my dad and my boss about it, came to an agreement with Euromoney, and took my first big career risk—taking a leave of absence to go to Norway and help with the conference. Taking that risk gave me the opportunity to do something I was passionate about and could grow from, and the conference itself was a once-in-a lifetime experience, so I’m glad I did it. Soon after, I was headhunted into the Graduate Development Manager role at Deutsche Bank by  a former Consultant for Euromoney who was then the  Head of Graduate Development at the bank. I wasn’t looking to move from Euromoney, and I was very nervous about it, but I went for it anyway. That was my first foray into HR, but I actually found myself drawing on a lot of the same skills I’d used as Project Manager at Euromoney. I went from delivering financial training to graduates in a private organisation to doing so for young talent at a large investment bank, so it was more of a sideways move than a career leap. I spent 15 years at Deutsche Bank and took on various HR roles in that time, but I spent the longest in the Graduate Development  space. Eventually, though, I knew it was time to grow beyond it and explore other things. Around that time, the Global Head of HR at the bank restructured our HR operating model, and I ended up working in New York for three years in a Private Wealth Management Talent Development role that really took me out of my comfort zone in terms of both geography and specialism. As much as it was unknown territory at first, it was a great opportunity to see an international organisation from a different geographical standpoint that allowed me to connect with a whole new set of stakeholders, so it was definitely worth it. When I came back to London after three years in New York, I took on the Global Head of Talent Development role for the Private Wealth Management division. I did also move into a Performance Management role for a year, which was very enlightening from a process perspective, but I missed being first-hand with employees and managers. In terms of getting to the Diversity & Inclusion space I am in now, I would say that having a very international upbringing has always underlined the importance of diversity in my personal life, but after we started doing some leadership development initiatives for women at Deutsche Bank, I began questioning systems, processes, language, and behaviour, and was inspired to start pushing for equity and fairness for underrepresented groups. In HR, we’re responsible for looking after the business’ biggest asset—our people—and those people have a right to be treated equally and fairly no matter their background. Actually becoming the UK head of Diversity & Inclusion was a challenge. I hadn’t specialised in the area before, so to a certain degree, I had to learn my craft—my work in the gender diversity space was a great training ground for wider D&I work, but I still had to learn a lot about other forms of diversity and inclusion and what that meant for a large organisation.  After 15 years at Deutsche Bank, I decided to take a career break and follow a personal interest I had in the voluntary sector. I was curious about how large international charities managed Diversity & Inclusion, I wanted to undertake more training, and that point in my career seemed like the perfect time to do it. Deutsche Bank asked

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Human HR Hackathon #4

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We had such a great time on our fourth Human HR Hackathon. The aim was to build a community of HR professionals who can each help solve issues arising in a variety of ways.   We had a great session discussing topics like: Using the pandemic as a catalyst for change Psychological safety at work Bringing the energy of love back into the business   If you want to check out the recording, please click on this link.

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‘Don’t allow your past to dictate your future!’ – Interview with Ian Newbury-Milton-Scott

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[I]f you get offered an opportunity you want but don’t feel totally equipped for, grab it and learn on the job.” – Ian Newbury-Milton-Scott, Principal Executive Officer at Five Rivers, 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 Ian Newbury-Milton-Scott at Five Rivers, who began his career in HR as a Personnel Assistant for Sheffield City Council, later progressing to the position of Personnel Officer. From there, he advanced to a Senior personnel position at Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council. In September 1999, Ian took a job as Principal Personnel Officer at Derbyshire County Council before moving on to act as Group Head of HR & Organisational Development at The Regenda Group, subsequently taking on an interim position as HR & Change Implementation Manager at the Learning & Skills Council. This was followed by another interim role as Chief Adviser for HR & Management at Charter Community Housing. In 2004, Ian became Group Director of Human Resources at the Ruskin Mill Trust Group, later taking on a role as Head of Human Resources for Gloucestershire County and Gloucester City Councils and the Gloucestershire Fire & Rescue Service, including working closely with the NHS on integration. In February 2016, he returned to the Ruskin Mill Trust Group as Director of Change and Transformation, Chief Operating Officer, ahead of assuming his role of Director of People Services.  To show the true transitional skills of a HR practitioner, Ian has taken on the role of Principal Executive Officer at Five Rivers which is more involved in business growth and development along with touching on strategic HR.  His skills and experience in HR have been paramount in taking on this more organisational operational role.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? Well, it was really by chance. I initially studied Business Administration at Sheffield College after I left school, and when it came time to look for a job, I noticed that Sheffield City Council had a position open in Personnel. I was intrigued, and did some research on what Personnel was, then decided to give it a go. Shortly after I joined, I was seconded to a local college to help them transfer HR services from the central council over to their own control and ensure all their systems were functional and in place. That was followed by a position at Rotherham Council, and it all grew from there. Each challenge I was presented with was new to me, but I loved it. Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? I think the biggest challenge for those in the more senior positions in HR is being able to sit on the decision-making board and actively participate in processes that could result in huge changes for the organisation. Senior HR leaders need to be asking themselves, ‘Although I have a seat at the table, is it just a token gesture?’ Even if it is, they have to do their utmost to ensure they have a voice. I’ve been in that position myself, and though what I have to say might sometimes be controversial, I make sure I’m heard. It’s vital that we gather all necessary information on changes we’d like to make and present it to senior leaders, and if it doesn’t go well, we know how to repackage it and make changes to it to get that across. It’s really important to remember that the only failure comes from not trying. More broadly, I would say that to work effectively in HR, we need to be able to acknowledge and understand the fear factors of the people we work with and what can make that fear of HR creep up in them. I’ve found that asking people how they would like to be interacted with and explaining things can really help to break the barriers down between you the wider workforce, so they see you as a person before they see your role. Something as simple as leaving a text or voicemail if you can’t reach someone over the phone to explain why you’re calling can put them at ease and reassure them that there’s nothing to worry about, even if you’re not sure they’re in that fear realm. That said, as much as we need to relate to people well and approach everyone as being trustworthy until proven otherwise when dealing with situations, we also need to be able to react well in a crisis, take control, and be an effective business partner as our HR colleagues have recently proven. We need to understand that we are recruited by businesses to work within their agenda and embrace the shifting sands of change, and filter that change down through the rest of the company as seamlessly as possible. If you know there’s a strategy out there that will enable you to do that effectively, you need to present it and try and get it signed off on as soon as you can rather than letting it lie. Organisations know where they are and where they want to be, but they need HR business partners to bridge that gap and help them do the difficult bit in the middle of actually implementing change. While those both inside and outside HR need to recognise that we are approachable and there for the wider workforce, they also need to recognise our potential beyond that. It’s very easy to unconsciously pigeon-hole HR as ‘people-oriented people’ and nothing more, when in fact HR forms a part of senior leadership, and contains leaders and managers just as any other sector of an organisation does. HR is about that balance between being able to make strategic decisions when needed, and providing ‘tea and sympathy’ practical support, I think. What career advice would you

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