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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I felt like I’d really found my niche working with people, seeing them  learn, grow and develop, and making a difference.” Sonia Robertson, Head of Recruitment at Cox Automotive, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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“I felt like I’d really found my niche working with people, seeing them  learn, grow and develop, and making a difference.” Sonia Robertson, Head of Recruitment at Cox Automotive, 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 Robertson at Cox Automotive, who began her career in HR delivering L&D at Marks and Spencer before moving onto Resourcing roles at O2, The Co-Operative Group, Shop Direct and a Resourcing Manager at the BBC before settling into her current role at Cox Automotive UK in 2016. How and why did you get into HR? I was living in West Yorkshire and was bored, I needed a challenge, so moved to London! I  stayed with some family friends, but didn’t have a job and didn’t know anyone. I look back on it now and it horrifies me, but when you’re young, you just take those leaps of faith into the unknown! I think that throughout my career, being brave and taking steps that challenge you is what has allowed me to get where I am today. It’s daunting and scary, but you’ve just got to do it. I don’t regret any of the bold and brave decisions I’ve taken throughout my career, I think they’re quite inspiring and motivating and help you focus on the future. I spent a day visiting recruitment agencies, and practically all of them said “Oh, come and work for us!”, but I didn’t want to work in recruitment‚ which I now find really amusing! One agency asked me if I could use email and I had never even heard of it. They told me what it was and I thought it sounded easy enough, so went for it! The role was with Marks and Spencer working as an Executive Secretary for one of the Directors in the Food Group. I thought, “Oh my God, I can’t do that!” That’s my next little gem; just because you think you can’t do something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. That’s been a big learn for me throughout my career, thinking I can’t do something, but going for it anyway. So even though I thought I couldn’t do it and I didn’t have the right experience, I just went for it! I worked for one of the toughest executives in the Food group at Marks and Spencer. It was the summer so I covered all of the holidays for the exec secretaries andworked for quite a few of them. What an experienced! I loved it! Before I was due to leave a permanent role came up in the Wine and Soft Drinks department, and HR asked me if I wanted it, and I said yes. I joined the Wine department in an Office Manager type role, supporting the management team and organising extensive travel itineraries. I was also involved in wine tastings, a dream come true! I moved on from that role into Marketing, producing the M&S Magazine, their home catalogue and their Christmas Gift Guide. I used to sit near HR, and one of the HR ladies told me about an opportunity in Training. She said that my personality and people skills would be areally good fit for it. It was something that I’d never thought of, but I decided to go for it. It was working for Marks & Spencer Financial Services, so I had to go up to Chester for my interview and deliver a presentation. I was the most nervous I’ve ever been in my life, but I got the job. That was my first step into HR. I became a Trainer for the Marks & Spencer & More credit card when they first launched it, and my role was to go to stores and deliver customer service training. I absolutely loved it! I felt like I’d finally found something I was good at and that I really enjoyed. I loved delivering the training, seeing those lightbulb moments and seeing people learn, grow and develop. I’ve been at Cox Automotive for three and a half years now and every day has been a school day, as they say! I really love being in an environment where I can learn and develop. I had a blank sheet of paper when I joined CA and created the Resourcing function from scratch. I’ve had some of the biggest challenges in my career in this business,and also some of the biggest achievements. I’m part of the HR SLT and my role involves delivering HR projects and also learning and development. When the Government changed the Apprenticeship Programme 2 years ago I took ownership for it, having never worked with Apprentices before! Another big challenge. I love working in HR so much. When I first went into training, I felt like I’d come home, and the thing that I adore about recruitment is that I can share my passionate belief in every business I work with, and get them to believe in it too. I love finding people and saying to them “I genuinely think this role would be great for you,” and I love seeing them flourish in that role. It’s amazing. What key themes or challenges are prevalent for you at the moment? Engagement and Talent are key for us. We’re trying to focus on those, both in terms of what that looks like now and what we need to do to ensure success in the future. We do regular employee satisfaction surveys to find out how people feel about their roles, their managers, the business etc. It’s so important we understand how our team members are feeling and what we can do differently to ensure they are feeling engaged and that they are part of something special. The business is incredibly diverse—we have auction centres, yard operatives, drivers, and office people, and the other

“I felt like I’d really found my niche working with people, seeing them  learn, grow and develop, and making a difference.” Sonia Robertson, Head of Recruitment at Cox Automotive, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“I love helping people realise their potential, it is really rewarding.”- Samantha Brook, HR Leader, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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“I love helping people realise their potential, it is really rewarding.”- Samantha Brook, HR Leader, 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 Samantha Brook, an experienced HR Director who began her career as a Graduate Recruitment Officer at Bass Taverns Food & Restaurants before moving on to take a Recruitment Officer role at Endsleigh Insurance. After serving as National Recruitment Manager at Peacocks, Samantha embarked on a 15-year term at Croda, during which she took on roles as Group HR Advisor, Group HR Manager & Global CSR Coordinator, and Group Head of HR. In July 2014, she set up Tomorrow’s Future Limited, after which she transitioned to Drax Group, taking on roles as Head of Corporate HR, and most recently, Group People Director. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? During my BSc in Managerial and Administrative Studies, I undertook an industrial placement year. Originally, I wanted to get into Marketing because I enjoyed studying consumer behaviour and didn’t enjoy the HR I’d covered during my studies. Bass Taverns took me on, and ultimately put me in Recruitment, tasking me with recruiting 50 Graduate trainee managers. So you could say I was looking at behaviour just in a different way.  It was a great role, and I looked to go into Recruitment when I graduated, so I interviewed for a number of roles and took up the Recruitment Officer role at Endsleigh. That was the point where I started to develop a passion for orienting HR’s core values in order to treat people as equitably and respectfully as possible. I enjoyed finding what it was that drew people together  and matching that up with processes or systems that existed within the company. It was during my time here that I self-funded my CIPD (or IPD as it was in those days). After a year at Endsleigh, a role opened up at Peacocks Stores, and I decided to go for it. The company saw phenomenal growth while I was there, opening up 100 stores in a year, so we ran a nationwide recruiting operation to bring store managers into the business. It was incredibly fast-moving, but ultimately spending 5 nights a week away from home and traveling 1000 miles a week just wasn’t sustainable. A job came up at Croda International PLC, a global speciality chemicals company, and the fact that it was in a new industry and local really appealed to me, so I went for it. During my early years there the company went through significant amounts of divestment and I spent most of my mid-to-late 20s running outplacement programmes for colleagues on our manufacturing sites. I loved building relationships and helping people find their next role, it was really rewarding.  While I was there, I had a number of opportunities to progress my career and achieved an MSc in Career Management. After Croda aquired part of ICI, the business underwent a complete cultural shift and after 7 years it was like working for a completely different company. This brought a whole host of new challenges and opportunities both in the UK and overseas. Working across borders for the rest of my time at Croda really helped develop my adaptability and gave me a greater understanding of what motivates people at work.  On leaving Croda I set up on my own, working in talent and leadership development which I enjoyed, but I missed working in a team and being able to get my arms around the whole of a HR function and the people processes in a business, so I went for a role with Drax Group PLC, yet again a change in Industry – this time the Energy Industry. Not long after I joined the organisation we acquired a business with 1000 people this meant areas of integration, change and engagement were all high on the agenda. The role at Drax involved a huge HR transformation, as things were still at the ‘Personnel’ stage in places. Through growing the team we were able to introduce a new behaviour framework, new rewards and bonus structures, and improved the performance, learning, and career management processes.  Can you tell me about the prevalent themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? I think our two biggest challenges are the increased importance of GDPR and increasing awareness and incidences of mental health issues in business. With GDPR, as soon as you get a Subject Access Request, you need to be able to respond to it in line with the regulations, and not everyone is ready for that. I also think that when you get too caught up in having the proper data, you run the risk of forgetting what’s important—the people. So getting our own house in order as a function is paramount. We need to find the balance between the importance of strong business partnering and a compliance focus to being a profession that genuinely cares about people. AI is definitely a key theme. In my mind, technology will change our jobs by chipping away at HR tasks so the HR team themselves can focus on helping people learn and develop, because that’s what adds the most value—it’s really exciting when you step back and look at it that way and consider how it will give us access to good, meaningful data and better systems whilst freeing up time. That said, I think HR as a whole needs to be wary of digitising everything and losing the human element, as ‘pressing 1 for HR advice’ won’t cut it in real moments of need. It’s a fascinating challenge. Industry-wise, I would say that the biggest challenge the energy sector is facing is that the pace of change is relentless. The industry is thinking about its future and succession and talent

“I love helping people realise their potential, it is really rewarding.”- Samantha Brook, HR Leader, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

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If you want to do well, you need to research your prospective company to seethe effects of HR in the core business. That’s so important.” – Damla Benli Yıldırım, Human Resources Director, Sodexo Turkey, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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“
If you want to do well, you need to research your prospective company to seethe effects of HR in the core business. That’s so important.” – Damla Benli Yıldırım, Human Resources Director, Sodexo Turkey, 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 Damla Benli Yıldırımat Sodexo Turkey, who began her HR career as an HR Manager at G4S Security Services when the company’s entire operation had 120 employees.Subsequently,Damla tookon roles within the company as HR & Quality Manager and then HR & Quality Director while the company grew to 6000+ employees. She eventually movedto Sodexo as Human Resources Director in 2015. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? At the age of 22,when I was stillin college studying Labour Economy & Industrial Relations, I decided to gain hands-on professional experience through an internship to see how HR was different from Personnel Affairs Departments and what was HR dealing with specifically.At the time,there were few HR Departments and more Personnel Affairs Departments in Turkey. Since I was taking classes at the university on the labour economy, which isclosely related to HR, I was already interested in the subject. After an internship I did at G4S, I was offereda position in the “Personnel Affairs Department” at G4S. After that, they chose me to a training program in London, where I undertook numerous training from the Quality Department and the HR Department for a period of two years. Then on, I went to work in HR at G4S Turkey for about 18 years. I think I stayed there for so long because it never got boring—I grew up with the company, and I loved managing the tailor-made projects alongside our clients; managing the size of the workforce, manpower planning, handling shift patterns, and dealing with any legal issues. I have alwaysbeen on-site, working with the clients to understand their needs, and I enjoyed that aspect—I saw so many different working styles during my time, and every project opened a new door for me.There were always new and unique challenges to overcome; therefore, no two years were the same. I also worked in the industryto search for potential local acquisitions for G4S, and during that time I learned to do due diligence from an HR perspective—that was really interesting, and opened up another way of looking at HR, because I was able to see how other organizations managed that side of things and what they were missing. After that was done, we opened up new segments of the company with new responsibilities, so we were always growing. After 18 years, I planned to have a baby, and working in the security industry was just too risky. Besides, the nature of the job required working non-stop and travellingconstantly.Additionally, because of the office location, oftentimes I was not able to come home before 9 PM due to traffic jam.Subsequently, I decided to take a break and have my baby, then look for another opportunity closer to home with more flexible office hours. After about 15 months of break in my professional life, I began searching for a new job and ultimately decided to work with Sodexo.Sodexo and G4S often worked on client projects together, so I knew of the company and their working environment.Since Sodexo is also in the Serviceindustry, and it was very similar to my priorexperience. It has been my conclusionthat my strength is working with blue-collar workforce; rostering, manpower planning, and working closely with the customer. I’ve also taken on some diversity, inclusion and social responsibility projects supporting women in the workforce. For instance, at G4S I initiated “Future Arteliers of Sodexo”, where Sodexo Turkey sponsors the culinary arts programs in vocational schools for female students in low-income neighbours. Sodexo not only provides a state-of-the-art kitchen but also the fresh ingredients such as different types of fish and meat that are expensive and not available through their regular syllabus. After classes, the students take the food they prepare for their homes to share with their families. The main goal is to bring girls into the culinary industry and prepare them before they graduate throughthis hands-on education and the internships that we offer for successful students. There is a shortage for young ladies, especially from low-income backgrounds, in the culinary industry. Our mission with this program is to help overcome the inequality for these female students, and establish a well-educated and sustainable workforce. Can you tell me about the challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? I would say that an issue here in Turkey is definitely thelack of regulations in our labour markets. The rules regulating things like dismissal are far lessloose compared to the UK for instance.InTurkey,if a supervisor does not get along well with an employee, it’s much easier to lay them off, so our biggest challenge in HR is being caught between the Operations teams and the employees. I’m trying to have a fair system and ensure that we have equalityat Sodexo, and part of that is understanding what inequality can do to our employees on a daily basis. Not having much legal enforcement for the employee’s sake makes these issues much more challenging in my role in Turkey. What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career? If you really want to be in HR, you must pay attention to where HR sits in the company you want to work for. I’ve seen so many companies that HR is perceived as just a room to store personnel files in. Therefore, if you want to do well, you need to research your prospective company and to see the effects of HR in the core business. That’s so important. If HR is perceived as a part

“
If you want to do well, you need to research your prospective company to seethe effects of HR in the core business. That’s so important.” – Damla Benli Yıldırım, Human Resources Director, Sodexo Turkey, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“In HR, you’re the oil in the engine. Done well, we make the parts work better together; we reduce friction and we increase performance.” – Anthony Perkins, Managing Director of Anvil HR, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.  

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“In HR, you’re the oil in the engine. Done well, we make the parts work better together; we reduce friction and we increase performance.” – Anthony Perkins, Managing Director of Anvil HR, 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 Anthony Perkins at Anvil HR, who began his career in HR as a personnel manager with Sainsbury’s before taking on a regional HR role at Scottish and Newcastle, and HR Manager roles at Bell and Howell and Fujitsu. He then served as HR Director at LOGiCOM, a management buy-out from Fujitsu of which he was one of the founders. Then followed roles as Vice President of HR at Proquest and Group Human Resources Director at Finlays, part of the Swire group. In 2016, he became Executive Director of People at Metropolitan, and set up Anvil HR in 2018. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? After graduating in 1986, I undertook an 18-month stint in the civil service as I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Knowing I was never cut out to be a civil servant, I secured my first proper job in HR, which was with Sainsbury’s as store Personnel Manager in the East End. I really enjoyed the breath and variety and at that point I knew I didn’t want to specialise. I didn’t want to be a career recruiter or rewards person; I wanted to be a generalist, so after I got a good grounding in what was then called Personnel at Sainsbury’s, really getting my hands dirty and doing a bit of everything, the course was set. In HR, you’re the oil in the engine. You get to interact with every part of the organisational machine. HR, done well, is an organisational lubricant. We make the parts work better together; we reduce friction and we increase performance. That’s what I enjoy about it. Can you tell me about the challenges and key themes that you’re seeing across the HR sector? I think a common one is HR’s ability to lead and be resilient to change. For me, that’s been constant throughout the last 20 years on five continents, whether it’s mergers and acquisitions, divestments, acquisition integrations, senior team changes, cultural change, or functional transformation. That continual thread of change has been something that I’ve seen run through HR over many years in many countries. The perennial thing with HR is that there’s always a ‘big thing’. In the 90s, it was competencies, and now it’s AI. I think AI is currently substantially underutilized, and the opportunities are vast and exciting. I love the idea of taking away transactional stuff with AI—having a well-informed robot deal with your tier one and two queries is a great concept—but a robot is never going to understand the nuances of your organisation. And poor deployment of AI will backfire. AI will never lead when it comes to understanding your organisation’s operating challenges, cultural complexity, or your strategy. It’s just an enabler; one of those tools in your toolbox. What you need is HR Leaders who can enable change, lead change, and reduce the risk of change. That’s the big thing that the last 20 years has taught me. I’ve been rather shocked by the lack of effective HR in large organisations who you might presume have established, capable functions. In some parts of industry, against the run of progress of most HR, there still exists back office, transactional ‘personnel’ functions that are not embedded in the business, don’t add value and aren’t visible. Crucially, there isn’t a causal link between what they do and the business ends they serve. Little wonder then that there’s no ‘pull’ from their business for HR. The profession has come a long way and I’ve seen some great examples of HR professionals over the years, so finding ‘personnel’ functions 20+ years after Ulrich always takes me aback. Darwinian principle has ensured the steady demise of old style personnel, but it does still exist. What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career? I would say perhaps the obvious; be a business person first. That doesn’t mean you have to master the finite detail that the finance people have to know, but know the fundamental commercials of your business first. This is key because pretty much every HR CV says ‘commercial HR professional’ but the reality is often different. I interviewed a HR director who couldn’t explain the difference between a P&L and a balance sheet. Understand your business first and talk in that language. Understand the KPIs and the stress points of your internal customers. Find out what keeps them awake at night and only then talk about the HR stuff. This is almost too basic to mention, but it doesn’t happen in a lot of organisations. Succeeding in HR isn’t as much to do with the technical ability (though having that is presumed), as a mindset – particularly having a very clear understanding of the purpose of HR and why you are there. Once you see yourself as being that enabler, that oil in the engine for the business plan, it sends a very strong message about who you are and what you’re there for. If you get it right, you’re not just invited ‘to the table’ you’re invited back, because they see you as relevant and valuable and making a contribution. You are relevant and to use the hackneyed phrase you’re a business partner. It’s basic, but you need to do the right stuff right. After over 30 years as a career permanent, Anthony has been Managing Director of Anvil HR since 2018, providing broad spectrum HR services  with a specialism in organisational change, M&A, functional

“In HR, you’re the oil in the engine. Done well, we make the parts work better together; we reduce friction and we increase performance.” – Anthony Perkins, Managing Director of Anvil HR, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.   Read More »

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Once you understand a business, you become part of it, and that’s how HR becomes valued.” – Maria Khan, Head of HR at Design Council, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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“
Once you understand a business, you become part of it, and that’s how HR becomes valued.” – Maria Khan, Head of HR at Design Council, 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 Maria Khan at Design Council, who began her HR career as an HR Training Administrator at Harrods before moving to BSI to serve as an HR Officer. In 2004, she took on an HR Manager role at Transport for London, followed by a term at The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, where she took on roles as HR Manager and Interim Head of HR. She moved to Design Council to assume her current role in 2017. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? In my twenties, I was trying out different things, I was briefly a teacher, and I ended up one summer working at Harrods on the shop floor. I had various roles there, but I had a friend who worked in HR, and they told me that an HR Training Assistant role had become available. I was working in Export at the time, which was stressful, and I wasn’t really enjoying it, so I decided to go for it. My teaching background linked into the role, and I liked the idea of being able to experience different organisations within an HR career. Harrods was a brilliant experience. They really focus on customer service excellence, and the training they give their staff is second to none.  They had a really strong policy on internal recruitment and promotions, and one of the reasons I stayed there for so long was because I had the opportunity to develop and experience different roles. One thing I took with me was the importance of career development and promotion within organisations.  I then moved to BSI, which was my first time in a not-for-profit organisation, and I liked that it was a value-led organisation.   I received a really good grounding in HR , and they invested in me as I took my first steps towards my HR qualification.    I went on to Transport for London (TfL).  TfL was different and I liked the energy of working in an operationally demanding environment.   The environment was like nothing else I’d ever worked in. I experienced working as part of a first class HR team, where best practice was key.  One of the challenges was that HR could be seen as an emergency service called upon to resolve issues when they had escalated,  but the key for overcoming that was to make sure I went out on a regular basis to meet managers at the depots and to align my work to the way the depot worked, and basically become part of day to day operations.. I then went to The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH), which was another not-for-profit organisation. It was a lot smaller than previous organisations I had worked in, but I liked the change. While I was there, the Head of HR went on adoption leave, so I stepped up to take over fairly quickly. I’ve been very lucky to work for amazing female bosses who were great change leaders and weren’t frightened to make tough decisions.  Anne Godfrey, Chief Executive of the CIEH was certainly a role model during my time there and I still apply what I learnt by working with her. I now work for Design Council – the government’s advisor on design. Design Council champions the power of design to tackle the biggest challenges of our time and bring about real, positive change in people’s lives. I was really excited about joining as it was a totally new field for me. Putting people at the heart of all that we do – being inclusive – is a core component of our work to support organisations develop places, processes and products that work for everyone.  Our Chief Executive, Sarah Weir, is passionate about equality, diversity and inclusion in the design industry, and working for someone with that mindset has been very rewarding. One of the first things we did was work together to diversify our Board of Trustees, which is now 50% women. It’s a real achievement in a sector where 78% of the UK’s designer workforce are male. Can you tell me about the challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? I think there’s still a role to play in the gender pay gap.  HR advise on pay, recruitment, and promotions, so steps towards reducing that gap through raising awareness and giving the appropriate advice need to be HR-led. Speaking as an ethnic minority woman, I think another challenge we face is that we still need to see women from ethnic minorities in senior roles.  One way of addressing that is by encouraging that from within organisations and looking at the ways an organisation, recruits, develops and promotes its staff.   What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career? Get to know and understand the business in which you’re working. The HR technical knowledge you’ll get as part of your studies, but understand how a business works; what its objectives are, what direction it wants to go in, and the pinch points where things might not be going so well. Be visible, contribute to conversations around how the business is doing. The HR bit will come, but once you understand a business and contribute to it, you become part of it, and that’s how HR becomes valued.

“
Once you understand a business, you become part of it, and that’s how HR becomes valued.” – Maria Khan, Head of HR at Design Council, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

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