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“Hard work and a good grounding are your best assets to succeed in HR”. Victoria Berry, Head of HR at Beatson Clark Ltd., speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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“Hard work and a good grounding are your best assets to succeed in HR”. Victoria Berry, Head of HR at Beatson Clark Ltd., speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.   As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, we’ve invited some HR Leaders to share the secrets of their success. This week, we had a great conversation with Victoria Berry at Beatson Clark, who began her career in HR at Team Telecom, which she followed up with a role as National HR Manager at SPICE Holdings before moving to Ebuyer.com to act as HR Manager. In 2006, Victoria took a role as Northern Region HR Manager at Connaught, before becoming National HR Manager for Arla Foods, Interim HR Business Partner at Haribo, and HR Director at Oakworth Joinery, then assuming her current role as Head of HR at Beatson Clark in 2012. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? When I left school, I wanted to be a painter-decorator, but didn’t get accepted at Leeds College of Builders I suspect because I was female.  Instead, I completed a secretarial course and went onto become an Office Manager, where I dabbled in HR and gained my basic CIPD qualification and also an HNC in Business and Finance.  Following redundancy I considered what I had enjoyed about my role and decided it was the HR piece, so whilst working in a temporary role I chatted to some recruiters and I initially took a role in recruitment to gain some further experience.   I stayed in recruitment for a short while, but it wasn’t for me, so I joined Team Telecom in my first pure HR role.  I loved the role and found I had a passion for HR and finally felt I had found the profession for me. I worked full time for Team Telecom whilst attending university two nights a week to complete my CIPD degree. Team Telecom were TUPE’d to SPICE Holdings and whilst working for SPICE was promoted to National HR Manager.  I managed a team of HR Advisors, Administrators, and Payroll with national and international responsibilities, it was an amazing grounding.  As a generalist I couldn’t have asked for any better.   I’ve stuck to production/manufacturing and construction industries in the main since then; the professional office environment doesn’t appeal to me much. Can you tell me about the challenges or key themes that you’re seeing across the HR sector? For me, and many others, mental health is a key area at the moment and I have recently become a Mental Health First Aider.  I’m seeing a lot more recognition and acceptance around this issue. However there is still some hesitation at times, sadly this issue still presents with a gender bias.  With Beatson Clark I employ a counsellor on behalf of the company, and I have noticed there is less wariness around seeking help and access to getting support is becoming much better.  Personally, I’m also a strong advocate for equality in the workplace, and in life, I believe this issue needs to remain under the spot light, not only for the obvious issues such as race or gender but also in how we create our HR policies and importantly how we apply those policies fairly and without bias. 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 to succeed in a HR role you need to be agile with the ability to satisfy a wide range of ‘customers’ sometimes with conflicting needs, you need to genuinely care about your profession and balance both Company and Colleague needs.   Having an in-depth grounding and being involved with as much as possible at the beginning of your career is far more powerful, and rewarding, than specialising from the start.  I would encourage anyone to gain their CIPD qualifications and to put themselves forward to work on projects outside their own role. I love learning and HR is ever evolving both with legislation and new thinking and I get the greatest pleasure from people who want a career in HR and I would do all I can to encourage this as it is a fantastic and rewarding career choice. If you can, try to work for a smaller organisation as often they can offer you opportunities to grow and learn before potentially moving to a bigger company.  The smaller companies can offer greater exposure to allow someone to gain wider generalist skills. If you can work for a manager who loves what they do, as I did when I worked for Team Telecom, this is infectious and the best supportive environment for someone new or indeed someone with years of experience, I believe to be successful in HR you have to have the passion for it. Read, attend seminars, network do whatever you can to keep abreast of what goes on in HR, and build and keep good relationships with people (including recruiters, in uncertain times you never know when you’ll need them!) A key skill in HR is to try and have as much of a balanced unbiased view as possible, however, you also need to be able to have difficult conversations when required, this is one key area that makes HR a better fit for some people and not for others.  At the same time as being able to have the difficult conversations you have to be empathetic. As much as you need to be agile in terms of how you think and the tasks you do, you also need to be emotionally agile without losing your base values, some of the situations you find yourself in may not go the way you expect them and people in difficult situations can act completely differently to how you might expect, you need to respond quickly and appropriately to the situation.  The natural ability to read people really helps with that, it’s

“Hard work and a good grounding are your best assets to succeed in HR”. Victoria Berry, Head of HR at Beatson Clark Ltd., speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

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Have the self-awareness to find what motivates and enlightens you, and then play into those strengths.” Craig Morgans, Director of Talent Acquisition, Emerging Talent & Employee Experience at The AA speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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Have the self-awareness to find what motivates and enlightens you, and then play into those strengths.” Craig Morgans, Director of Talent Acquisition, Emerging Talent & Employee Experience at The AA 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 Morgans, who began his career as a Personnel Clerk at the Yellow Pages. He assumed subsequent HR Advisor and National Resourcing Consultant roles with the company before moving on to work in various Resourcing roles for GMAC-RFC, Cadbury PLC, LV=, Care UK, Willis, and Vodafone Global Enterprise via Futurestep, ahead of joining the AA in 2015 as Head of Talent Acquisition, Learning and Development. After also taking on responsibility for HR Shared Services, he assumed his current role as Director of Talent Acquisition, Emerging Talent & Employee Experience in 2019. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I studied GNVQ Advanced Business Studies at Windsor College after I finished school, and alongside that, I worked part-time at King Edward Hospital in the Personnel Department. I liked my job there, and I really enjoyed the Personnel/HR module on my GNVQ, so I decided to follow it as a career. I was lucky enough to secure a job with Yellow Pages as a Personnel Clerk, and I stayed with them for nine years, working my way up through the ranks to HR Advisor. That was a generalist role, and I found that Recruitment was what really floated my boat—I loved getting people into a business and helping them find the right role to grow in. When they set up the national resourcing team, I was approached and it was a no-brainer. I then spent three years supporting high-volume recruitment up and down the UK in that function. It was a great place to cut my teeth and take up lots of different opportunities. After that, I was approached to work at GMAC as a Resourcing Specialist and overhaul their recruitment function, which was too good an opportunity to turn down. I spent two years there; it had a great culture, high volume recruitment, and we became a high functioning direct sourcing team, but after the recession, the recruitment dropped, and I had to move on. I then took a managerial role at Cadbury, setting up a new recruitment function for them. I had a team under me who supported graduate Sales and Marketing recruitment, and I retained global vacancies and supported senior hires from Corporate Head Office. I was then headhunted by LV, who again had a recruitment function that needed some fundamental overhauling. That was an amazing opportunity—it was a step up into my first ‘Head of’ Role, it allowed me to create a team, and there was plenty of opportunity to change and improve things, which is what has really motivated me throughout my career. I think I’m quite creative / innovative & I like pushing boundaries. After two years, I moved to Care UK to look at their recruitment functions and processing, starting out with the Community Services division and then moving into Head Office to work on their niche hiring for GPs and other specialists through direct sourcing. I then moved to Head of Resourcing at Willis, where I created a start-up recruitment function based in Central London, but I ultimately needed to return home to my young family, so I got in contact with Futurestep. The opportunity they offered me ticked all the boxes for me – it was closer to home, and something I hadn’t done before, so a bit of a challenge. It was very enjoyable. When I was headhunted by The AA, the L&D aspect was another new challenge for me, and the resourcing team needed improvement—we ended up rebuilding it from scratch. Again, that was a great opportunity to come in and work on big projects and build new functions, which I love. I’ve been here almost four years now, and it’s just been one new challenge after another—going in and taking control of Shared Services, and then moving into a Director role. It’s allowed me to grow, given me the freedom to be creative and innovative, and taken me out of my comfort zone. Can you tell me about the challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? From an industry perspective, I would say that technological advances are fundamentally changing the way we operate. We need to innovate and clearly differentiate ourselves from our competitors, and be looking at things very differently to sell a different proposition from other companies. From a talent acquisition perspective, getting talent into the automotive market is a bit of a challenge. Trainee numbers are dwindling year on year, and it’s a very male-dominated industry. At AA, we’ve trailblazed and set up our own apprenticeship programme to try and give something back to the industry by sending apprentices out to our garage network to learn their trade. Following that, they come back into the business on either a three- or five-year programme to train in our vans. That was a big project for us, and it’s very different to what’s been done before. 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 choosing your manager is just as important as choosing an organisation to work for. I’ve had some great managers who have given me full autonomy and allowed me to make mistakes, but then also supported and guided me, as well as mentoring me and allowing me to develop. I’ve taken those skills on in my own leadership—about 30% of my team are apprentices who’ve never worked in Recruitment before, and I enjoy seeing them develop and come on the journey with us. I would also say don’t be afraid

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Have the self-awareness to find what motivates and enlightens you, and then play into those strengths.” Craig Morgans, Director of Talent Acquisition, Emerging Talent & Employee Experience at The AA speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“Don’t live in your little HR bubble. Invest the time to genuinely understand your company, not just from an HR perspective but how it makes money and why customers buy its products” -Jonathan Parsons, HR Director at Triumph Motorcycles.

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“Don’t live in your little HR bubble. Invest the time to genuinely understand your company, not just from an HR perspective but how it makes money and why customers buy its products.    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 Jonathan Parsons, HR Director at Triumph Motorcycles. Jonathan began his HR career working in the city before moving into the automotive sector.  Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? Many people say they fell into HR, so I suppose you could say the start of my career was more planned than most. I grew up in mid Wales and when I was doing A levels and choosing a university, I was really conscious that I hadn’t had much professional work experience. I therefore looked deliberately for a course that had a year in industry, and did a mainstream business studies course which allowed you to specialise.  From a relatively early stage, I knew that I was more people oriented than focused on other aspects of business and that meant that when it was time to choose modules on the course, it was more natural for me to go down the HR route.  The real motivator for me was the chance to spend a year in industry, in an HR department. I had a fantastic mentor who ensured that I had lots of exposure to all areas of HR. I was their first HR industrial placement student and so both of us wanted to make it work and be a success. Historically they had students go into their equity analysis teams, but not into support departments. I was also very fortunate in that it was a small HR team so I got to see what an HR manager did versus an HR officer versus a reward specialist. I got involved in as much as I could and took full advantage of the opportunity. The whole experience meant that I’ve always tried to ensure that summer students and industrial placements who come into our HR team, really get something worthwhile out of it. Can you tell me about the challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? There are a number of common themes, at a macro level, across engineering and automotive. There are the challenges faced around talent attraction and retention but that’s not just our industry, we are re-learning what it is like to experience full employment again. Certainly, there are niche engineering skills around electrical and hybrid technology that are so scarce that nationally I think we are now paying the price for not attracting enough students into STEM subjects.  Closer to home are some of the challenges faced by HR departments themselves, who must relentlessly keep focused on balancing the needs of their multiple customers. I’m always a bit disappointed at the reaction when I tell people in a social environment that I work in HR as often they go on to tell a less than complimentary story about their own HR department, if we want to add value to organisations, we have to change that perception.  Another key focus for us is trying to ensure that our internal environment keeps up with our external brand image. This occurred to me when I went with my CEO to Loughborough University, to their new engineering centre and all of the students were surrounded by the latest technology in this beautiful glass building. It was a healthy reminder of how important the built environment is. I remember that when I was a student, you went from what felt like an old fashioned university environment into a very modern work place. Now I think that Universities have become such exciting environments that we can run the risk of new graduates feeling like they are stepping backwards when they come into the workplace.   “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 recommend being open minded about taking opportunities in multiple different industries and sizes of companies until you find where you are most effective. The perfect combination, where you’re really interested in the end product, but you also love the values and the feel of the place is a powerful motivator.  When I came for the final stage of my interview at Triumph, I met the owner and he talked about how important the canteen was. We were recruiting lots of young engineers who were often living away from home for the first time, and he was really concerned that they were fed properly. I thought, wow, what an amazing culture, somebody who owns a company is genuinely thinking about the needs of the people that work there, that was a very important factor in my decision to join. My final piece of advice to HR people would be to make sure that you don’t live in your little HR bubble. Invest the time to genuinely understand your company, not just from an HR perspective but how it makes money and why customers buy its products.  Jonathan has been the HR Director for Triumph Motorcycles since 2015 and is responsible for all people and safety issues. If you are interested in having a confidential conversation about your career or would like support growing your team, please get in touch today.

“Don’t live in your little HR bubble. Invest the time to genuinely understand your company, not just from an HR perspective but how it makes money and why customers buy its products” -Jonathan Parsons, HR Director at Triumph Motorcycles. Read More »

“It’s been a massive opportunity for me—I don’t know what would have happened if I’d have done something with linguistics!” Britta Werner, Director and HR team member at Unicorn Grocery speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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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 Britta Werner at Unicorn Grocery, who began her career as a Co-operative Grocer before becoming a full-time member and director, joining the HR team, and serving as Non-Executive Director and Vice Chair for Co-operatives UK, which she performed alongside her current roles until June 2019. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? In my previous life, I studied linguistics. I moved to the UK from Germany, and when I finished my BA and MA in Linguistics at the University of Manchester, I kind of ended up working at Unicorn—I was vegan, and it’s a vegan shop, so it was nice.  I quickly realised they had a very different way of doing business, so I applied to be a member—a full-time employee. I really liked that kind of flat structure; people respect each other; there isn’t a managing director looking down on you, and there are no managers that just happen to be there because they’ve worked there long enough. The really good people and mutual respect really stuck out for me.  After a year of being a full-time member, I started doing the staff rotas and all those kinds of things. There was an internal vacancy for HR, and I applied and got the job. I ended up doing a CIPD college course, and then a couple of years later I did my Masters in Human Resource Management and started doing more strategic stuff at Unicorn. We’re still a smaller business—we’ve got around 90 employees, 70 of those are permanent members of the team —so you do end up doing a bit of everything; there’s four of us in HR, but none of us are doing it full-time.  It sounds really cheesy, but I wanted to get into HR because I’m a natural people person. I’m quite good at relating to people and understanding what people are about. I definitely feel I have the empathy you need to have, and I’m non-judgemental, so it really appealed to me.  Because I was doing all the rotas and things beforehand that definitely went into HR territory, it was kind of a natural progression. I got into the work with Co-operatives UK because a founding member of Unicorn Grocery contacted me and asked if I would be interested in standing for the Worker Co-op Council, which is a kind of sounding board organized by Co-operatives UK. I always like to challenge myself and find different opportunities, so I stood for that position and got elected. I did that for quite a few years, and it was really interesting— doing it, you meet not only people from the UK, but all over the world. That really supplemented my HR experience as well, because doing HR in a worker co-op is very different; not just in terms of things like employment law, but all the softer skills you need. I organised a worker co-op HR network, and we’ve done a couple of events and got people together from different worker co-ops in the UK.   Can you tell me about the prevalent challenges that you’re seeing across the co-operative and HR sectors? One of the biggest ones for me is performance management. It can really affect co-operatives, whether that’s because of the lack of incentive in flat pay, or it’s just not what people want to do. The flat structure of most worker co-operatives can make managing really challenging.  The absence of line management has a lot of positives, but it can be difficult. For example, when you have a line manager in an office, they can pick up if you’re not feeling right or your performance is off, but in a worker co-op, it kind of gets a bit lost, and sometimes things like that can get found a bit too late. Everyone has times when they need a bit of managing—for example, you might have trouble at home or whatever—and not having that monitoring can be quite difficult for the individual, because a lot of people don’t want to run to HR and say they’ve had an argument with their boyfriend or something. At Unicorn, we’re really good at the bigger picture leadership and strategy—everyone has the opportunity to take that leadership role in different areas—but it’s the smaller things that can be more of a challenge. What advice would you give someone who was either looking to follow in your footsteps or just getting started in their HR career? If you’re looking to go into a co-op, especially a smaller worker co-op, do a basic college course. It will give you a bit more confidence that you know what you’re doing, and people will see that you’re making an effort and actually trying to get qualified. People think HR is just “people stuff” and that anyone can do it, but if you want to do it well, you have to make that effort. Working in a co-op, and in a worker co-op especially, you have to manage yourself quite a bit, and a course will also help with that. They’re not expensive, and you can even do them online. Unicorn and other worker co-ops provide a massive opportunity. A lot of people think you’re just working in a shop, but the business skills and the understanding you learn from a business like this are absolutely unique. It’s been a massive opportunity for me—I don’t know what would have happened if I’d have done something with linguistics! You can make it as little or as big as you want to; if you just want to work in a shop, you can do that, but there’s so many opportunities connected with that. Britta has been working as a Unicorn Grocer, Member, Director, and as part of Unicorn’s HR team since 2004, and provides support for HR teams

“It’s been a massive opportunity for me—I don’t know what would have happened if I’d have done something with linguistics!” Britta Werner, Director and HR team member at Unicorn Grocery speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“Ultimately, in today’s world, it’s not just about technical knowledge, it’s about your courage, your conviction and clarity of perspective”. Mohana MD, HR Director at SAP UK, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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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 Mohana MD, who began her career as a Senior Specialist Recruitment operative at Fidelity Investments before moving on to become Manager of Human Resources. In 2014, Mohana joined SAP Labs India as a Senior HR Business Partner, before becoming the HR Director of SAP Global Talent Experience in 2016, and settling into her current role as an HR Director and Business Partner at SAP UK. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? I was born and raised in India, and after gaining my BA, I continued studying and did my MSc in Psychology with a specialisation in Organisation Behaviour. As a natural next step, I began looking for a job. The IT & ITES industry was growing at that time in the so-called Asian market, and I joined Fidelity Investments. It was a really great opportunity when I look back; I joined as a recruiter at a time when they were just starting off, and that experience was invaluable to my career. I did that for four years, but in around 2008, there was a slow down and that’s when I started exploring. When you do well in something, you tend to fall in love with it over a period of time, and I really did take to HR a lot while I was doing recruitment; I felt there was a lot more in HR that I could try to do. One of the things that I decided to do was to look up work or further education opportunities within the HR sector. With that I pursued my interest in education and joined the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and took up a Master of Arts course there within the field of HR and Labour Relations. Fidelity Investments kept in touch with me, and after I graduated I chose to join them in a role that encompassed organisation development as well as leadership program development. It was a very interesting role, because as a student you learn a lot, but when you get into a role like this you could directly apply those principles and theories directly. As the organisation had matured, those initiatives were very well-funded to cater to the leadership development needs of the organisation. Before I left Fidelity Investments and moved to SAP, I also managed a team across different locations in India, and we supported the HR for operations functions within India itself. I left Fidelity to try a new challenge and join an organisation that could take my career globally; taking chances even when you are doing well ensures how much more we learn along the way about our capabilities. Connecting with leaders helped me decide the organisation I was going to join next and it landed particularly well with SAP. They’re known as the best place to work in India, so it’s sort of a highlight when you get a chance to work there. I joined as an HR Business Partner and supported the services organisation as well as the technology organisation, but my most important role was to support the HR director to manage four legal organisations with 10,000 employees and I also had the chance to work on building continuous learning mindset with Asia-Pacific HRDs. I undertook a lot of important initiatives in that time, but an opportunity in the role along with all the HR work we did was also to partner with the technology teams in SAP to help develop tech applications & apps to run our HR initiatives digitally, which helped scale our programs and employees could use them anytime, anywhere! Truly creating an engaging environment. After a year, I joined the office of the CHRO in SAP as an Executive business assistant which took me to Germany. This taught me how our HR organisation runs globally and what it took to achieve the success we have from an employee experience perspective, That experience allowed me to get into the global talent management space, but I don’t have a conventional profile of doing one job. Before moving to Germany, I was asked to lead the development of the performance philosophy strategy ‘SAP Talk’ without ratings. We were a small team, but within a month, we had re-strategised the company’s performance management, all while doing our main roles. It can be difficult to take on extra responsibilities, but it really adds credibility to the work that you do, and you can do very well in a big company like SAP.  After that, I stayed in global talent management to lead a program to strengthen and renew our Individual contributor career path into Executive levels at SAP called ‘Expert Experience’. This involved the end to end management of any large scale change & transformation work. In the digital world leveraging digital communities as a concept in the program helped us bring employees around the world with various skill sets onto a single platform, which facilitated a path toward self and democratic learning! The development of this program has been one of the key highlights of my career.  Following that, I decided to leave Germany and try something different, so I moved to the UK. I continued my global role for a time, but now I’ve taken on a HR Business Partner role here to manage regional and global sales leaders out of the UK.  Can you tell me about the challenges and prevalent themes that you’re seeing across the HR sector? Throughout my experience, I’ve consistently seen opportunities that organisations have with internal collaboration between teams, functions etc. I feel that structures limit people from common visions, and in most cases, teams could achieve things faster if structures were  framed suitably. Having women in management and women across layers is a key differentiator in organisations, and I think that it’s only going to become

“Ultimately, in today’s world, it’s not just about technical knowledge, it’s about your courage, your conviction and clarity of perspective”. Mohana MD, HR Director at SAP UK, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“My vision was always to bring software to the masses that would otherwise be entirely unaffordable, and to make it usable and user-friendly.” Jon Curtis, Managing Director, Myhrtoolkit Limited, speaks to us about the role of HR software in HR Leadership.

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As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, we’ve invited some leaders in the field of HR to speak to us about their role in the sector and how it’s evolving. This week, we had a great conversation with Jon Curtis at myhrtoolkit, who began his career in legal practice at Irwin Mitchell before moving on to become Head of Employment at Taylor and Emmet and a Partner at Ironmonger Curtis alongside his current role as Managing Director of Myhrtoolkit Limited, which he now devotes himself to full-time. Can you tell us a bit about how myhrtoolkit came about, and what the company aims to achieve? In 2004-2005, I set up two businesses with another chap, one of which was a law firm—Ironmonger Curtis—and I was the employment law partner. Part of the purpose of setting up Ironmonger Curtis as a law firm was that I wanted to develop as an employment lawyer to do something in line with Human Resources, because I saw a big gap in the market. Obviously, back in those days, people weren’t so sure about having personal data on the internet, so the original idea was just to store documents and discrete business information against employee names.  Quite a few of our clients bought the product, but quickly wanted some sort of self-service system, and then out of the self-service system they wanted a holiday management system, and then a sickness absence system, a way of managing performance, and somewhere to store appraisals and disciplinaries and grievances. The list went on, so it grew from there. I had the great privilege of working with about 60 clients over five or six years, personally getting their feedback, and they’d say, “Well, this is okay, but what we really need is this”. I had a great feel for what clients in that particular space wanted, so that’s where the product came from. We’re growing fast—we have around 1100 clients at the moment, and around 55,000 people log into myhrtoolkit on a regular basis. When I worked in employment law, I would get calls from frustrated managers who would say “I’ve had an employee for three years and their attendance is terrible. I want to get rid.” I would ask them to send me the dates of and reasons for absence across so I could have a look at what was going on, and they’d say they didn’t have it. Myhrtoolkit arose out of that frustration, because I could see people didn’t want to spend the time recording compliance data, they’d got other things to do. How would you say myhrtoolkit is different to other HR software offerings on the market? I think you can roughly divide the HR software market into three different categories: Enterprise systems At the top end of the market, you’ve got enterprise systems, in which HR software is just one part of this behemoth of an integrated system which covers everything from warehousing to invoicing and accounting and career development. The Small to Medium Enterprise market of up to 1000 employees has the other two categories within it.  Off-the-shelf applications At the smaller end of the market, you get smaller off-the-shelf applications that handle specific challenges—so for example, a little app that manages shift patterns or rotas, then you will get entry-level core HR systems, which will cover a range of HR admin basics.  The market is very much about compliance and control and there isn’t much human about it – it’s the storage of documents and ticking boxes. It’s very useful for businesses, particularly smaller, growing businesses. That’s it’s own little ecosystem—at the moment, there are quite a lot of people in the UK offering products in that space. Platform based HR products At the larger end of the SME market, you’ve got platform-based HR products. They’re not the huge integrated systems you get in enterprise companies, but they are very large, sophisticated pieces of software. Generally, they’re built on an API system so there’s a lot of connectivity to other platforms and applications. If you split the SME market into those two categories, myhrtoolkit sits between those two markets. We aim to bring some of the key elements of the platform to the smaller end of the SME market. My vision was always to bring software to the masses that would otherwise be entirely unaffordable, and to make it usable and user-friendly. We emphasise simplicity over functionality. A lot of the software in our space has just taken the huge enterprise systems and cut out chunks, so you end up with complex pieces of software that need someone whose job it is just to sit and operate the software, and that’s unacceptable for a business. Core HR software should be integrated seamlessly into a business as part of the culture. There shouldn’t  be anybody sitting there thinking “Right, today I need to spend an hour on myhrtoolkit”. That’s just counter-intuitive, that’s not what should be happening. We also try to bring that human element back to HR software—we’re a very friendly, relational company. The largest share of sales we get is by recommendation, and there are hundreds of Human Resources Consultants and Advisors who recommend our product, use it themselves, and will sing from the heart about the functionality and ease of use and the problems that it fixes. We don’t sell, we just make relationships with people and show them what we’ve got. In the right space, it’s exactly what they’re looking for and they’re very happy when it’s up and running. Have you seen any prevalent themes in terms of clients’ needs for HR software in the sector? I think people are becoming more sophisticated year by year, and we’re in a race to keep up with demand for sophistication. Other software offerings we’re seeing in other spaces have done a fantastic job of making things easy for businesses, so their expectations for a well-designed user experience and a well thought-through user interface is

“My vision was always to bring software to the masses that would otherwise be entirely unaffordable, and to make it usable and user-friendly.” Jon Curtis, Managing Director, Myhrtoolkit Limited, speaks to us about the role of HR software in HR Leadership. Read More »

“Sometimes, a company doesn’t know what a company doesn’t know.” Claire Cahill, Author and Founder of Accendo Coaching and Training, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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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 Claire Cahill at Accendo, who began her career in the financial services industry before moving on to found her own coaching and training company in 2012, and going on to publish her 2016 book, Empowering Employee Engagement. Can you tell us about how you developed Accendo and where your career in training and development started? When I left school, I’d always had a goal to be a bank manager. I achieved my goal by the time I was 24, and I was running my own branch and working with all the people that had trained me when I’d started working for the building society, which was a bit of a surreal experience. I’ve always been somebody that’s set goals and always wanted to aim for the next best thing, so I set up Accendo Coaching and Training after the birth of my second son.  Financially, I had no option but to return to work, so I went back to work after six months. Emotionally, I really struggled, so I decided to take some time out, and went off sick for 12 weeks. During those 12 weeks, I just really needed to reconnect with myself, what I enjoyed about my job, and where I wanted to go in the future, and that’s where I came across coaching. I attended a two-day coaching workshop with The Coaching Academy, and suddenly, even though I had been in a confidence crisis, within 24 hours, I’d got my confidence back. I realised that it was actually coaching that was my real passion—it was having that desire to unlock the potential in other people, but I realised that in order to do that, I had to unlock my own. I also signed up to do a Corporate and Executive Diploma, because the corporate world is what I’ve always known. It was upon completion of my Personal Performance Diploma that I then set up Accendo Coaching and Training and decided to run that business alongside my employed role and use the opportunities that I’d had in a leadership role to bring my external experience into the corporate world. That’s what I’ve done up until this year, when I decided to put all my energy and focus into my coaching and training business and leave my job of 29 years. Employee engagement became my particular focus back when I was a Team Manager in a contact centre. I had a real connection with my new boss—who really understood coaching—and we talked about where I wanted my career to go and what opportunities could be created in that work environment. She asked for a volunteer to take some disengaged employees and put them in a team, so I instantly said, ‘This is right up my street, I’ll take them.’  I love a challenge, and here the challenge was to take them on a 12-week journey of self discovery using all my coaching skills and allow them to either decide the role wasn’t for them and move on, or reignite them back into the business, increase employee engagement, and allow them to stay. All nine of them embraced the challenge and were reignited back into the business. Their performance increased as a result of their employee engagement increasing, and all of them have subsequently gone on to live the life that they want to live. That 12-week intensive coaching got them to understand who they were and what made them tick. I have written a book about what that 12-week journey was for those individuals, and at the end of the book, I share their success stories. That’s something I can now roll out in other organisations. I did work with these individuals every day for those 12 weeks, but you don’t need to—it’s about starting that process off and following it up. My ideal client would be middle managers who I could help to develop those coaching skills and tools so that they can then use them with their team and other stakeholders, but I could even work with senior leaders so they could develop those skills themselves and share them with their stakeholders to increase employee engagement. What have you found to be the prevalent themes in employee engagement? What challenges have you seen your clients face? For me, it’s about staff retention. I’ve seen high turnover in some organisations because the staff are disengaged, they’re not happy, they’ve not had those regular one-to-one conversations they need, they may not have had structured development plans in place, they may not feel valued, or their personal values could be out of sync with company values. As a result, companies face high attrition and low retention. High absence would also typically indicate your employees aren’t engaged and there’s something going on. It’s important to understand what the root cause is. That then leads into the health and wellbeing of employees. We spend a phenomenal amount of time at work, so the challenge for employers is, how can you make that time employees are at work an enjoyable experience? How can you encourage your employees to be their best selves? I think a big part of that is your employees fully understanding their own health and wellbeing and taking responsibility for it, and having a safe environment where you can have those two-way conversations about what is healthy and what is unhealthy, whether that be physically or emotionally. Organisations facing these challenges need to be aware of their employee engagement problems before they can tackle them, but some tell-tale signs would be high attrition, high absence, and no increase in individual performance. When organisations recognise engagement is low or attrition is creeping up, it’s time to reach out and get help, whether that be from HR within the organisation or an external source. Sometimes, it’s better to go

“Sometimes, a company doesn’t know what a company doesn’t know.” Claire Cahill, Author and Founder of Accendo Coaching and Training, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

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It’s not enough to offer just a once a year appraisal anymore”. Sally Moxon, Head of HR at Proact IT speaks to us about her career in HR Leadership.

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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 Sally Moxon, Head of HR at Proact IT. Sally began her career in an Administrative role before realising her love of HR and L&D and developing a career as an HR Leader. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? “After university I went into an administration role with Barnsley Council, and from there I developed into a management role with a community based charity and that’s where I began getting more exposure to HR. I had to do payroll and there was a huge emphasis on the people; I was managing volunteers, making sure everyone had contracts. I wasn’t aware at the time, but the Office Management role had a huge amount of HR. From there I took the next step to move into an Engineering company and again, as PA and Office Manager, gained more exposure to HR. There was no dedicated HR resource in the Sheffield office. Part of my job description was around transactional HR and Employee Relations, always supported by the HR team in Surrey. When I reflected on my role, I realised the HR side of things was the part I really enjoyed. Our Managing Director then asked me to look into Investors in People and my work helped us through that accreditation. It was from then on that my sights were set firmly on a career in HR.” Can you tell me about the challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector? “The biggest thing for us is Culture and Employer Brand. We’ve done so much work over the last two years to get the culture of our organisation right. We hire for culture at Proact, we don’t just hire for skill. We are fiercely passionate about that because we have to bring the right people into the business. I think this has been a real change across HR in the last few years. The focus now more than ever seems to be on the culture of organisations and their employer brand. As we go through a phase of acquisitions our greatest challenge will be the cultural integration of newer businesses into our organisation. We don’t want to lose what we’ve built upon over the last couple of years. HR analytics and big data is also becoming increasingly important for us. We’ve always used our HR analytics to feed into our business models, and we report on that every single month. However, I’m aware from my networking with other HR professionals that in some businesses, data analytics is nothing but a concept, whereas we use it to influence every single part of our HR strategy and our wider operational business plans. Finally, Learning and Development is a key theme at a lot of the conferences I attend. Coaching seems to be everywhere I go at the minute. Businesses are investing in their teams at a higher level than previously. I hate to use the word, but you know, you can’t talk about HR these days without discussing millennials. There’s a lot of discussion about how millennials are a different type of employee and how we need to engage and motivate them.  As the workforce changes you have to appeal to them in a different way because they are money motivated but that’s not all that drives them. Increasingly employees of all generations want development. They want more. They want promotion. They want CSR. Proact’s CSR programmes have been a massive focus for the last 7 years. Partly because I’ve got quite a passion for it and I’ve been able to drive that forward! That’s really paid dividends with our millennial team members because they like the fact that, for example, they get paid volunteering days here at Proact, and we have a calendar of CSR-related events and initiatives going on throughout the year. They look at how they can make a difference, and they like the fact that, as a company, Proact wants to do that too. That’s also a big part of the reason we are so invested in our coaching culture. We’re hot on that because we need to be today. You need to develop your people, or they will just leave. It’s not enough to offer just a once a year appraisal anymore. People really need to start thinking differently about their learning, development and performance plans.” “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 get the opportunity to do something that has a people focus, then just embrace it. I would also say in HR you can’t get too hung up on job titles, because there are so many ways to say ‘HR Leader’.  I’ve been called all sorts: HR officer, HR manager, Head of HR, HR Business Partner. I wouldn’t ever get hung up on the title if you’re doing the job that you love. I started life as an office manager and I didn’t realize that, for about 60% of the time, I was doing HR! Nobody told me I was HR, and it didn’t say HR in my job title, but I was doing it and loving every minute. If you’re in a managerial role, there will be some element of HR that you can tap into. If you’ve got an interest in something, go and speak to somebody and see if you can get involved; the worst they can do is say ‘no we can’t facilitate that’. In terms of people who want to step up, again, same advice applies; if you can get that exposure, go for it. I have done work I haven’t been paid extra for, but it was massively beneficial for me in terms of my personal and professional career development.” Sally joined Proact in 2011 as

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It’s not enough to offer just a once a year appraisal anymore”. Sally Moxon, Head of HR at Proact IT speaks to us about her career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“You don’t need to be an over-the-top salesperson; you just need to be personable and respectful. A ‘Thank you’ goes a long way in terms of getting things done.” Roy Douglas, Employee Benefits and Pensions Professional at Sony, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.

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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 Roy Douglas from Sony, who began his career in retail banking before working for an oil company in employee benefits. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? It wasn’t a conscious decision at all. More by default than design. I started out in the retail banking environment where I was employed as a Cashier. I then moved to a building society and eventually an oil company. After a few months at the oil company, I saw an opportunity in HR dealing with housing subsidies and employee benefits. Then as time went by, I got more and more involved, and as people came up for retirement, I started taking over their work, and so on. I came to the UK from South Africa 20 years ago, and my first UK role was for JLT, doing pensions administration. That was where I learnt about UK pensions, and then I moved on to Citigroup as Pensions Analyst, and then State Street, and now Sony. So, over the years my career in the UK has evolved to the role I’m in now. Can you tell me about the themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the sector? It’s probably easier to talk about the UK than the rest of Europe, simply because there’s more going on. In the UK, the Pensions Regulator is really starting to bare its teeth more, which is a good thing, making sure companies and trustees are compliant with the legislation. I think we’re going to see more and more companies appointing professional trustees to run their pension schemes, which is a direct result of the increased regulator involvement. The TPR is now also considering whether a professional Trustee is a requirement for all Trustee Boards and has launched a consultation around this and other Trustee duties and responsibilities.  Also, on the back of pension freedoms that came into force a few years ago, there’s been a lot of media publicity about people taking their ÂŁ400,000, or whatever it is from a Defined Benefit Pension Plan, and essentially managing that money themselves, or through a financial adviser. Sometimes this route may be better for the person, sometimes not. But this is something that has gained a lot of traction lately. On the defined benefits side of things, a trend we’re seeing is ESG funds (Environmental, Social and  Governance), so ethical investing, for want of a better word. The whole agenda is furthered by the recent demonstrations in London and all the coverage of environmental issues in the media recently. And pension funds on mass can actually influence corporate behaviour – in terms of, “Well, we’re not going to invest with you unless you change your outlook on the environment”. If they come together in the right way, pension funds can be a real force for change. We are already starting to see this impact with RSC and other artists wanting the relationship with BP to end. The National Trust has also decided to terminate their investments with companies they deem go against their ESG beliefs. On the defined contribution side, more and more schemes are moving into the ‘master trust’ arrangement, simply because of the increased regulation. There are obviously significant economies of scale to be had by doing so, reducing costs for companies and for members. Master trusts are now being authorized by the Regulator and there are a lot of small schemes out there as well, which can be consolidated into master trusts. Overall, my opinion is that this shift is going to provide better retirement options for members. From an employee benefits point of view, financial education and financial wellbeing is definitely gaining more traction. There’s a lot of media publicity around stress and depression at the moment and linking that into financial wellbeing. Therefore, more and more companies are starting to see the benefit of putting financial education, financial wellbeing and overall wellbeing initiatives in place. However, my personal opinion is that this is all too late in the day and education on this level needs to start in school as part of the maths module, teaching kids about mortgages, interest, savings, credit cards, loans, leases – real life examples which they can translate into their everyday lives when they’re adults. What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career? Firstly, I think you’ve got to embrace the fact that it’s not exactly the snazziest job out there! You do get the opportunity to act with a large degree of freedom though, which suits me. To be successful in this role you have to be able to build and maintain strong relationships both internally and externally and develop trusted advisers. People often say that a lot of decisions are made in corridors or on the golf course! It is really helpful to be able to talk to people informally and bounce ideas off them. Obviously, if you’re in a position to have a formal mentor, then that can be invaluable. In Sony at the moment, a lot of the Reward and Pension work has been outsourced to colleagues based in other parts of the EU. and so you have to rely on third parties to do the work for you. This is where the strong relationships really come into play. You don’t need to be an over-the-top salesperson; you just need to be personable and respectful. A “Thank you” goes a long way in terms of getting things done. It’s also very important if you’re applying to a company to fully understand the culture of that company, because going to work for an investment bank, may not suit your personality, whereas coming to work for a Sony or another technology company may well do.

“You don’t need to be an over-the-top salesperson; you just need to be personable and respectful. A ‘Thank you’ goes a long way in terms of getting things done.” Roy Douglas, Employee Benefits and Pensions Professional at Sony, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. Read More »

“There is no manual teaching you how you go from ÂŁ1 million to ÂŁ5 million, ÂŁ10 million to ÂŁ20 million and so forth! Every revenue or staff milestone presents you with a completely different set of challenges as a leader”. Chris Johnson, CEO of JJS Manufacturing, speaks to us about developing a career in Leadership.

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 As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, we’ve invited some Leaders to share the secrets of their success. This week, we had a great conversation with Chris, majority shareholder and founder of Paragon Electronics Ltd, whose main brand is now JJS Manufacturing. Chris began his career as a junior at Texas Instruments before moving into sales and leaderships roles at component distributor Polar Electronics Ltd. Can you tell us how you got into Leadership and why? In 1978, I started in the electronics industry with Texas Instruments, before moving on after 12 months to join a small start-up called Polar Electronics, where I stayed for 12 years. My first role was in field sales and from there I set about climbing the ‘greasy pole’! My father had run his own business, and from an early age, I had always assumed I would do something similar; in order to achieve that goal I needed to develop as a leader. As I have said above, Polar was a very small business when I commenced my employment with them, and a much larger business when I finished; we had also been through a public flotation. At the beginning, I was one of only three full time staff. The company grew massively during my time with them, and my role got bigger and bigger. Over the years I’d gone from Field Sales, to Sales Manager, Sales Director, Managing Director, and I was Group Managing Director when I left in 1991. However, titles can be fairly meaningless in my view, it’s what you do that is relevant. The simplest way of explaining it is that I was in some sort of leadership position almost from the very beginning of my career with Polar. Looking back Texas Instruments and Polar were my ‘apprenticeship’ in the electronics industry and my introduction to leadership roles. I was in my early thirties when I thought “if I’m going to do my own thing, I need to do it soon or I’ll be too old to have the energy and the drive to lead it effectively”. So I resigned, sold my shares in Polar, and spent the summer of 1991 setting up my own business, Paragon Electronics Ltd. I was literally putting my money where my mouth was! Can you tell me about the themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the sector? The journey we’re on at the moment is very much a ‘scale up’ journey. The business I originally set up in 1991 has completely transformed from ‘a few blokes in a shed’ to one of the largest Electronics Manufacturing Service (EMS) providers in the UK, employing over four hundred staff across four sites and two countries. As a business grows and more particularly when you are scaling up, and move from what had been a small entrepreneur-led business, there is a constant need to reinvent yourself as a leader. If you’re going to maintain your position at the helm, you have to be able to grow as an individual and grow your skillset. In recent years, as the business has become significantly larger and more complex, I’ve joined an organisation called Vistage. Vistage supports CEO’s of SME’s and helps them address the challenges within their business by providing mentoring and leadership support. One of the primary reasons I joined Vistage was to find new ways and ideas and to challenge our established ‘wisdoms’ within the business. To go out and learn different ways of doing things, and to look at how other businesses were addressing their challenges. There is no manual teaching you how to go from ÂŁ1 million to ÂŁ5 million, ÂŁ10 million to ÂŁ20 million and so forth! Every revenue or staff milestone presents you with a completely different set of challenges as a leader. Addressing these waypoints on your journey is a combination of experience, and taking advice from people who have been through similar experiences, and in some cases, gut instinct. It’s very easy to get it wrong at lots of different stages, and really quite difficult to consistently get it right. Look at the changes over the years since we’ve been in business: there was no email when we started out and no internet, but we did have mobile phones and computers! As innovations occur you have to assess and embrace technologies that add value to your business; social media (love it or hate it!) being a case in point. If you don’t pick up on these things, you are increasingly unable to relate to customers, suppliers and certain strata within your employee profiles. Today you could well have four different generations within the workplace, and every one of them wants something different. That’s part of the learning journey. We’ve embraced our staff challenges with a range of options, including listening days and staff satisfaction surveys, as well as regularly consulting our teams to help ensure we engage with everyone in a meaningful manner. What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their Leadership career? I’ve got four sons, they are all different, but I say similar things to them: personally I don’t believe in family businesses and therefore an ‘automatic passing of the baton’ to the next generation. So I’ve said to them, and it would be my advice to anyone at their stage in life, you need to go out and ‘learn a trade’. I don’t mean purchasing or engineering as such, I mean learn a business, find a sector that excites you. If you can get into it, you can learn and understand it, which is what I did. I learned an industry and a number of roles within it. I also had an entrepreneurial side to me, and after 14 years in the electronics industry, I had a very good idea how it all worked. Other factors you need to consider? No one has a monopoly on good ideas;

“There is no manual teaching you how you go from ÂŁ1 million to ÂŁ5 million, ÂŁ10 million to ÂŁ20 million and so forth! Every revenue or staff milestone presents you with a completely different set of challenges as a leader”. Chris Johnson, CEO of JJS Manufacturing, speaks to us about developing a career in Leadership. Read More »

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