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“Get certifications. It actually helps in giving you more content and knowledge beyond the academic degree.” – Interview with Uduma Etea

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“The reality is that remote work is not the future.  It has to be a hybrid model.  There must also be the understanding that there is no template for the next phase of work post-pandemic.” – Uduma Etea, IHS Towers’ former Associate Director for HR, expresses his stand that hybrid work set-ups should be considered in this post-lockdown era. As part of our commitment to support candidates in developing fulfilling careers, we’ve invited HR Leaders from a wide variety of organisations to share their insights on building a career, the challenges they face and what advice they would share with those hoping to follow in their footsteps. This week, we had a great conversation with Uduma Etea, the former Associate Director for HR of IHS Towers, one of Africa’s largest telecommunications infrastructure firms.  Uduma has made his mark as an HR practitioner and leader in Nigeria and England, with 2 decades of working in diverse industries like financial services, construction and real estate, aviation, retail, telecommunications and management consulting. With his passion for people, Uduma firmly believes that his role is not just to help them land jobs but to support them to find their career purpose and fulfilment. Can you share with us your journey in pursuing a career in HR? I’ve always been told by my mom since I was a child that I have a compassionate spirit. And I chose to study psychology at the university because I believed it will give me the capacity to understand people better. After getting my degree back in 1997, there was no HR yet then; it was more personnel management.  My first jobs were more into banking operations but I was constantly looking out for the chance to move into personnel management because I really felt like that was my calling.  Within a short while, I was fortunate enough to get that break.  I got into personnel management (now HR) in 1999 and never looked back. My first big break was in the United Bank for Africa (UBA Plc) where I led the employee services team.  It was a global organisation and I was able to interact with employees across the group. From the UBA, I was headhunted to be the head of HR operations of Resort International, a firm in the real estate, construction and infrastructure sector.  The founder wanted to put proper policies in place because the HR admin system wasn’t really as fine-tuned at that point in time. From there, I was also able to join consulting firms like Phillips Consulting and later Total Business Solutions.  These experiences helped hone my rough edges because I felt like I may have the technical know-how but wasn’t as ‘refined’ in my presentation skills and HR theoretical knowledge back then. I was then again headhunted to join Aero Contractors.  This was an airline undergoing a labour crisis then, with the unions going on strike.  I was interviewed and the CEO found my ideas/ recommendation to be strong and powerful.  About two weeks after I came in, the strike was put off because we had an engagement on the ground and I was able to help resolve the union issues. What challenges are you currently facing in your career, whether professionally or personally? I think the debate about working at the office versus working remotely is a challenge, especially after the pandemic. The reality is that remote work is not the future.  It has to be a hybrid setup. There must be the understanding that there is no template for the next phase of work post-pandemic as we navigate the new world of work, and ways of working. We must look at the context of the organisations location and the circumstances. For example, there are those employees that are able to deliver their best when working remotely. But there are also roles where face-to-face interaction is more powerful. Like in the case of new hires, it would be better for them to do some face-to-face interaction to understand the culture and ways of working with their colleagues. New managers must also be able to build that personal connection with their employees. Also, there must also be humanity and empathy in the organisation as well as work design. I always tell people I work with that the first thing I do is to create initiatives to build an environment where employees can bring their whole, authentic selves to work. For example, if someone is not able to come to work at the designated 8 o’clock schedule, let us stretch our understanding to see and understand the reasons why they were unable to, not just invoke policy. When employees feel valued, understood and cared for, then they’re able to really thrive. And when employees thrive, the business thrives as well. Personally, I consider networking to be one of my challenges, especially in the early years of my career. I was the type to come to the office, sit at my desk and do my work. I don’t usually walk around to talk to people, or to put myself in people’s faces so to speak. That wasn’t my style.  But I realised later on that the higher I go on the corporate ladder, I should have done more of that; networked more in the office. I probably missed career opportunities because I didn’t have much interaction or engagement with more Senior Management. Also, I used to struggle with work-life balance. That was quite a dilemma because there was a time when I was away from my family for months on work assignment and I was not able to spend much time with my first child. I was having a hard time connecting with my son, and as you know teenagers tend to drift away pretty quickly. So I made sure to catch up and invest time to be with him when I came back. I was lucky enough to have another chance to reconnect with him, and I know others may not be

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Christmas Reading List: HR Leaders share their favourites

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“The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it.” – James Bryce In addition to physical and mental wellbeing great workplaces need to start making room for intellectual wellness. With 2023 fast approaching we thought it would be great to ask all our HR Leaders for their book and podcast recommendations to get you started on your journey for intellectual wellness.

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Human Value Exchange: PTO Exchange Webinar

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At Human, we always try to add value and share insight by collaborating with people and organisations who will add value to our network, from different sectors. Recently, we recorded a webinar with Rob Whalen, CEO and Co-founder of PTO Exchange and discussed the right approach to building a healthy culture and bringing value back to the employees. PTO Exchange offers employees the opportunity to share the value of their annual leave with colleagues in need or use a portion of their annual leave allowance for something of value to them. You can listen to our conversation here: https://youtu.be/lrDKRiAwSUU  Would love to hear your thoughts. PS. You can also listen to Rob’s newest podcast episode here!

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Christmas Reading List: Human CEOs share their favourites

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“No two persons ever read the same book.” – Edmund Wilson Most people have a favourite book, one that taught them something, took them somewhere or introduced them to a new way of seeing the world.  With the success of last years’ reading list, we thought it would be a good idea to ask all of our Human CEOs for their book recommendations to get you started on your Christmas reading for this year. With the end of what has been another interesting year fast approaching, we hope you have some downtime scheduled.  We hope you find it valuable. 

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Daniel Fisher, Zenzero’s Group Head of People and Culture emphasises the importance of building actual and firsthand HR knowledge

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“Qualifications and degrees are great, but there is nothing better than practical hands-on experience.” – Daniel Fisher, Zenzero’s Group Head of People and Culture emphasises the importance of building actual and firsthand HR knowledge. As part of our commitment to support candidates in developing fulfilling careers, we’ve invited HR Leaders from a wide variety of organisations to share their insights on building a career, the challenges they face and what advice they would share with those hoping to follow in their footsteps. This week, we had a great conversation with Daniel Fisher, the Group Head of People and Culture of Zenzero UK, Bulgaria and South Africa.  Daniel found HR to be the niche he is most passionate about while working for different industries like construction, non-profit organisations and most recently, a market-leading Technology Services provider.  From managing teams to standalone roles, he has proven his capability and expertise, leading his organisations to achieve their business goals.   Can you share with us your journey in pursuing a career in HR? My first exposure to HR was in a wholesale distribution company, where I worked as a general administrator.  Over time, I got more involved in payroll and training.  I knew I wanted to do more along the lines of HR but found it difficult to get into a dedicated HR role with limited experience, so I went to university to take up Human Resource Management as an undergraduate degree. I’ve since followed on with my CIPD accreditation through experience assessment. My career-defining moment was my time at St Basils which works with young people aged 16-25 who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, to enable them to find and keep a home, grow their confidence, develop their skills and access training and employment.  I started as a HR Officer and they quickly created a new role for me as the HR Learning and Development Manager.  That was the first opportunity I had to lead my own team. I remember somebody commented that I changed the face of HR there because of the relationships I built with line managers.  I loved seeing my team of three grow and our workstream excel.  That was the moment that I felt comfortable thinking I was good at this.   New challenges came and we conquered them every time. It reconfirmed to me that HR was where I wanted to progress. Eventually, I moved to the Kaleidoscope Plus Group as the Group HR Manager.  It was a standalone post with shared administrative support.  Moving to a standalone post was a tactical move so that I could showcase, mainly to myself (and my CV), that I could lead strategic and operational HR as Head of the function. What challenges are you currently facing? Firstly, salary expectations not being aligned with what companies are paying, is a common concern for HR leaders at the minute.  After the pandemic, the job market rocketed with candidates having the pick of opportunities.  Then inflation hit us, and recession is around the corner, and businesses are likely going to find it challenging to balance individuals’ expectations for higher salaries with the desire to support colleagues through the cost of living crisis, and the need to sustain their businesses financially in the short-medium term, at least until they have a clearer indication of what the future looks like. Another challenge for HR leaders is the availability of qualified talent for the positions that need to be filled.  Upskilling existing talent and ensuring that managers are accountable for the development of their teams is key.  A focus on Employer Brand and Employee Experience is also key. Further afield, within organisations I support in a voluntary capacity, I hear managers claiming that they don’t have the time to use the tools given to them by HR, or the time to develop their soft skills, which research and years of practice shows to be key to growing the bottom line.  A manager that doesn’t prioritise people management is the same as being a chef that doesn’t cook.  Rather than getting the best out of people and being able to focus on work that has meaning for them personally, whilst in this checkmate position, managers unintentionally become a bottleneck in the system and find themselves overwhelmed and detached from the work that has value for their organisation.  To counter this, there needs to be a continuous drive for management upskilling and an explicit commitment to leadership development. What advice would you give to those planning to pursue an HR career?  I think qualifications and degrees are great, but there is nothing better than practical hands-on experience.  Get exposure in as many different sectors as possible.  It’s about building your toolkit and having confidence in what you do, and continually improving your practice throughout your career.  Rome wasn’t built in a day… Take small steps, take all the opportunities that are before you. And learn to be resilient in your work as well.  Take things on the chin, and remember your role and what you are there to do.  There will be lessons learned and things will get you down, but as you progress through different stages in your career portfolio, you get the opportunity to reinvent yourself through each new opportunity. It’s also really important to make sure you have a balance of personal goals and career goals.  You spend less than a third of your week at work and you can only bring your best-self to work if you’re looking after yourself and are content in your personal life as much as you possibly can be! Daniel joined Zenzero in January 2022 as its HR Manager and became the Group Head of People and Culture after 8 months.  Zenzero is a Technology Services Provider that was awarded as the Next Generation MSP by the Europe MSP Innovation Awards 2022 and has a range of other accolades under their belt.  Zenzero brings market-leading insight and services to mid-market companies, enabling them to focus on their

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Charlotte Park, Contino’s VP People – EMEA, shares insights about not letting the fear of making mistakes hinder one’s learning. 

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“I think the times where I’ve learnt the most are the instances where things have gone wrong…. that’s where I’ve absolutely developed most.” – Charlotte Park, Contino’s VP People – EMEA, shares insights about not letting the fear of making mistakes hinder one’s learning.  As part of our commitment to support candidates in developing fulfilling careers, we’ve invited HR Leaders from a wide variety of organisations to share their insights on building a career, the challenges they face and what advice they would share with those hoping to follow in their footsteps. This week, we had a great conversation with Charlotte Park, VP of People for EMEA of the transformation consultancy firm, Contino.  Charlotte’s career may have started with other industries, including construction and finance, but she realised that her true passion was to help people through her HR career.  In the 12 years since she made the shift, she has fully established herself, amassing knowledge and experience, helping her master the art and science of HR.  Can you share with us your journey in pursuing a career in HR? I absolutely fell into HR. When I started in the world professionally, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I started my career at a company called CrispInteriors, went on to Deloitte and then to KPMG.  I’d taken on a couple of jobs as an administrator and then I moved into the finance world. When I was at KPMG, the company migrated over to SAP, and it was actually in my finance role that I started to enjoy some of the HR or the human people aspect a little bit more. I found that I picked up the system quite quickly and I was also able to relay the tools and platform to the people I was working with.  I could connect with people and explain the system and why we were changing.  It turns out I really like people!  And so I ended up leaving that role and joined Saunderson House as their HR Executive. It was my first official HR role, and that was 12 years ago now – the rest is history.   About my current role in Contino, I saw the job advert and thought, this is exactly what I want. It almost seemed too good to be true, but a month or so later, it all became real.  The reason I love my role, is that moment when you see a triumph someone’s had at work, and you know you’ve helped them. It’s the moment someone gets a promotion, or the moment when someone’s been struggling with something and you’re able to step in and help, and know you’ve genuinely made a difference. It’s helping people develop and progress and become the best versions of themselves.  What challenges are you currently facing? I think the main thing that we have at the moment is about keeping our people engaged and happy. It’s about building a really strong and unique EVP, and embedding our values to show to our people that we have an offering that we will truly act as a career accelerant. We really want people to see the value that they get from having Contino on their CV. It’s an incredible place to work. We’ve got very ambitious people. One of our colleagues said the best thing about working at Contino is you’re never the smartest person in the room. And that’s brilliant because we want everyone to be intellectually curious to take on new challenges, new tasks and new roles. I think because we have such an incredibly bright driven workforce, the biggest challenge is finding ways to keep them not just ticking over, but developing and growing as they progress with us.   Our vision is to nurture and maintain a culture that enables our people to thrive and continue to grow, which absolutely has to come from the people. It has to be people led. I can then facilitate and create a platform to make that happen, and as rewarding an experience as possible. What advice would you give to those planning to pursue an HR career?  Keep learning.  Keep pushing. Keep looking for opportunities to learn and grow. Always keep learning if you can, and that can be through any medium you want – it doesn’t have to be academic. If you hated school, or struggle with structured learning, there are a myriad of platforms available to you.  If you can, find an employer that will sponsor you through stuff and push yourself.  Don’t ever be afraid to put your hand up and just give it a go, because the worst that can happen is you’ll get it wrong. As long as you’ve got the best intentions, and really try to do your best, that’s the best possible thing you can do.  I think the times where I’ve learnt the most are the instances where things have gone wrong. It’s in the process of fixing it or learning from someone who is helping me fix it, where I’ve absolutely developed most.  Years ago, I saw street art (graffiti!) on the side of the building that said, “fear makes the wolf look bigger”. When you get that fear in you, everything seems so much worse, and just the idea of getting started can be daunting.  Whether it’s in life or professionally, you get it into your head that it’s a huge, scary task, and the tendency to catastrophize it can creep in.  Whereas when you just go ahead and get it done, you often end up thinking, ‘Oh, what was I worried about?’.  Even if you fail, you learn another lesson.  The next time you face it, you’ve got a whole different set of responses and tactics that you can utilise to approach it. Charlotte indeed worked up the ranks since she made her career shift to HR 12 years ago. From being an HR Executive and HR Manager in the several organisations she joined in, she joined Contino

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Florence Carter, Fuse Universal’s VP of People & Culture highlights one’s adaptability as a key to a successful HR career

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“You may not start your career doing what you exactly wanted to do.  But if it is in an environment where you could potentially move up or more opportunities open, take those chances and make the most out of them.” – Florence Carter, Fuse Universal’s VP of People & Culture highlights one’s adaptability as a key to a successful HR career.  As part of our commitment to support candidates in developing fulfilling careers, we’ve invited HR Leaders from a wide variety of organisations to share their insights on building a career, the challenges they face and what advice they would share with those hoping to follow their footsteps. This week, we had a great conversation with Florence Carter, the VP for People & Culture of the learning and knowledge platform, Fuse Universal.  Florence has 17 years of generalist Human Resources experience, having led the People agenda globally across EMEA, APAC, the US and UAE regions.  She mostly gained her expertise through start-ups and scale-ups within EdTech, SAAS, digital technology, marketing and professional industries.   Can you share with us what made you decide to pursue a career in HR? After doing my A levels, I was really interested in psychology.  I was fascinated with how the human mind works and what motivates people to do what they do. I initially wanted to earn a psych degree, but my parents ‘persuaded’ me to study law because it is a strong foundation and ‘serious’ degree. To be fair, it was the right decision. It is indeed a good foundation for most careers, especially a People/ HR-related role. When I gained my law degree, one of my options was to become a lawyer, which wasn’t really my calling. I really wanted to do something that fulfilled my deep interest in psychology. A family member who had a successful career in HR at the time recommended that I look into HR, since it might suit my passion for psychology.  So I completed a Master’s Degree in HR and actually fell in love with it!  There are a lot of fields in HR.  You learn what makes people tick, what motivates people and how you can support them to grow in their careers and look after their well-being.  It was like a light bulb moment for me. After I gained my HR Management Master’s Degree, I have worked in HR or People functions for SMEs within start-ups and scale-ups.  I enjoy the challenge of being able to think on my feet and just love being around people. Learning the ins and out of HR theoretically, I discovered that a lot of it is related to psychology.  I found it very significant and rewarding that you can contribute to the success of a company by helping people to flourish.  It just clicked for me that in the business space, I can empower and support people in their career journey.  It was just so rewarding for me.   What challenges are you currently facing? The focus now has shifted for most businesses.  Fuse has adapted well since dealing with lockdowns due to COVID.  We listened to our people and went from an office-first to a remote-first company.  Our people really valued the time being at home and the flexibility that comes with it.  When things started to ease up with lockdown, businesses realised that things changed because people’s priorities and wants had shifted. There was also a bigger focus on well-being.  We are navigating through that and making sure we are putting people’s well-being at the forefront.  It’s about ensuring that with every business decision, we have our people’s well-being in mind.   Things are very competitive now in the labour market and the war for talent is real.  So we are really honing in on our EVP and employer brand to ensure we are attracting the best people.   Thankfully, we haven’t struggled too much with attracting great people to Fuse because of our remote-first, flexible and inclusive culture. It means that we can hire from pretty much anywhere across the globe, which increases our talent pool to find the best talent. That’s been a real positive for Fuse. When building out our employer branding strategy, we spoke to our people at Fuse who had been in the business for quite a while. We have a good handful of people with long tenure of 10 years+.  They were the key people to understand what our value proposition is.  Likewise, we asked people who joined recently and understood from their point of view what attracted them to Fuse and what they were looking for when they applied to work with us.  It was a combination of the seasoned Fusers and the recent joiners to understand what the company is really about and what we can offer. It has been an insightful project. Developing and motivating people is an ongoing focus for many businesses and particularly for us at Fuse. We are proud to have created an environment at Fuse where our people can learn a tremendous amount.  We are big on internal mobility, so there’s an opportunity to progress through the ranks and move across different functions. We are small enough that you can have an impact and instantly feel rewarded for the work you’re doing, compared to being a small cog in a larger company. Ultimately, we put our people first and their well-being is very important to us.  It is a way to ensure our people are at their best and are able to bring their ‘whole’ selves to work.  Inclusion and belonging plays a big part in our People strategy and it’s something we are looking to continue with and learn more about. What advice would you give to those planning to pursue an HR career?  When I finished my studies, I did not fall straight into an HR role.  It was very competitive 17 years ago and I know even more so now. My first role straight out of uni was as a recruitment resourcer to

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Christine Reynolds, Head of Human Resources at Hachette UK, shares what’s helpful to have a fruitful HR career. 

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“Look for the right inspirational leader to work with; I’d be less worried about the industry sector, as finding the right leader will give you game-changing HR experience.” – Christine Reynolds, Head of Human Resources at Hachette UK, shares what’s helpful to have a fruitful HR career.  As part of our commitment to support candidates in developing fulfilling careers, we’ve invited HR Leaders from a wide variety of organisations to share their insights on building a career, the challenges they face and what advice they would share with those hoping to follow in their footsteps. This week, we had a great conversation with Christine Reynolds, the Head of Human Resources of the publishing company, Hachette UK. Christine’s expertise came from her experience in creative and tech industries in Australia and England – including broadcasting, digital services and printing solutions, recruitment and HR consulting.    Throughout her 18-year career, Christine has acquired her proficiency in various HR competencies like organisational and cultural transformation, training and development, talent management and much more.   Can you share with us what made you decide to pursue a career in HR? Throughout high school, I was keen on becoming a Business Analyst as I was interested in understanding how to turn around failing companies. I wanted to know the levers to pull to return a business to a position of strength. Through my studies, I realised that the most significant lever for any business is its people assets. So, naturally, it felt like the right direction to go into HR if I wanted to be that linchpin of an organisation. My career commenced at IPC employment, where I performed a recruitment role managing a large caseload of individuals who had long-term barriers to employment. This role chimed with my passion for diversity and inclusion, which has remained a key focus throughout my career. My caseload required my support across a broad spectrum of blockers, such as gaining employment with a criminal conviction. Helping each person find the right role and connecting them with a great employer was endlessly rewarding. I progressed within IPC Employment into their Regional HR Consultant and, after several years, left to start my own tech start-up, The Fruit Guys. My driver for this was to test my HR skills and put in practice a number of initiatives that felt too ‘wild’, including allowing staff to work from home, having an international remote workforce to provide 24/7 customer support and utilising government subsidies to employ staff with long-term barriers to gaining employment. These don’t sound as ‘wild’ now, but this was 2007 in Australia. Working from home was considered taboo! This endeavour was hugely successful. I learned a lot along the way, which still proves fruitful in the advice I provide to CEOs and MDs I partner with today. Fruit Guys changed many lives in the employment opportunities offered to ex-offenders, staff with disabilities and staff with significant barriers to employment. Many team members remain friends for life. I sold the company after I received a fantastic offer from an organisation that the Australian government was backing at the time. It felt like the right time for me to travel and secure a visa to move to England. We all parted ways on good terms, and they are still in operation.  Upon moving to the UK, I secured a great role with Ricoh Europe. I commenced as their HR BP, quickly moving into the EMEA Strategic HR Projects Manager role working on large-scale projects across their 29 operating companies across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.  I then moved to Channel 4. As their Head of HR, we were always looking to make bold moves in our HR projects, such as launching the industry’s first Menopause Policy in 2019. Our most challenging project was meeting government demands to open four new sites across the UK to spread our London workforce and commissioning into the regions. It involved large-scale change management, collective consultation and relocation aspects but was hugely successful.  What challenges are you currently facing? Retention and attraction of talent are our key challenges reflecting the impact we are all experiencing of the ‘great resignation’.  Our big game changer has been implementing a tool called Talent Mapper. This tool enables large-scale, real-time talent assessments – something we couldn’t achieve using excel and PowerPoint. We wanted to gain talent intelligence of the entire organisation through talent mapping but found our manual processes really slow and labour intensive. It hindered management engagement and our speed to remedial actions. The great resignation requires a speedy response; we didn’t have six months to map our talent. We needed talent intelligence now and to be able to update this information quickly and regularly. Without the tool, we would have only focused on our top 1-2 tiers of the company, which wasn’t where we saw our churn. The talent mapper tool highlights critical roles, flight risks, succession gaps, top talent, horizontal moves, org design impacts and inconsistent and underperformance. It then recommends learning interventions managers can select to support performance improvements against each behaviour. We are enabling managers to create robust individual development plans and to have a language for development discussions. The Talent Mapper tool provided us with powerful talent insights, which was the crucial data we have been missing as HR and Managers. It’s been essential in helping us with retention and our internal and external attraction work.  What advice would you give to those planning to pursue an HR career?  Try not to pigeonhole yourself too much in a particular industry. Look for the right inspirational HR leader. I’d be less worried about the industry sector, as finding the right leader will give you game-changing HR experience. Seek someone who is inspirational, quite strong, but a very empathetic manager who is implementing game-changing HR projects. I’d recommend seeking someone who is pushing the envelope, especially within the diversity and inclusion space. A breadth of industry experience will help you move into different roles and give you

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Chloé Foster, People Director to the Valorum Care Group, explains how they shifted their recruitment strategy to deal with the social care exodus and the recruitment crisis

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“It’s now a new PR piece of why do you want to stay in the sector? What can we offer? How can we attract people to the sector?” – Chloé Foster, People Director to the Valorum Care Group, explains how they shifted their recruitment strategy to deal with the social care exodus and the recruitment crisis.  As part of our commitment to support candidates in developing fulfilling careers, we’ve invited HR Leaders from a wide variety of organisations to share their insights on building a career, the challenges they face and what advice they would share with those hoping to follow their footsteps. This week, we had a great conversation with Chloé Foster, the People Director of Valorum Care Group.  Chloé’s 24-year career is quite interesting, as she initially studied Fashion Styling Hair and Make–up. But after courageously conquering opportunities that came one after another, Chloé eventually found that her passion lies in carrying out HR functions and being of service to the people.  While she catered to multiple industries and a wide range of companies, from big corporations to SMEs, Chloé realised that her heart was in social care services.  This was a career path she never planned, but one that has given her much fulfilment and satisfaction.   Can you share with us what made you decide to pursue a career in HR? From a young age, I’ve always had an interest in the business.  But for my actual career, I started as a makeup artist.  And I loved it. Being in London back in the late nineties, you had the option where you could almost jump jobs overnight and guarantee yourself the job.  So I initially became a secretary, then grew to be an executive assistant at Barclays in London. A couple of years in, my boss said, you are a great EA, but you’re going to get bored. Why don’t you join the HR team?  So I did and went through their HR internal program. I was just so in love with it. I realised that the reason why I loved doing all of the previous things that I did was that people absolutely fascinate me.  I loved learning about people, what makes them tick and about bringing the best out of people.  So HR was something that found me rather than I found HR.  In 2007, I moved locations, and it was a culture shock.  Career-wise, I went from a corporate giant such as Barclays to little family-run style businesses.  I would say even smaller than what you would class as an SME, but very entrepreneurial. And for the next 10 years, that’s where my HR career really flew.  I joined small companies and became their only HR personnel, while still in the executive assistant function.  I supported the businesses to incredible growth, to mergers or to acquisitions. There were specific reasons for me joining a company.  But all of them gave me an enormous breadth of knowledge and somewhat threw me in the deep end because on day one, I was literally the only person in HR, so I had to be able to cover everything enabling me to become a real HR generalist. Initially, I never viewed myself as an HR person, although I had an HR job title.  But then I worked for a fantastic company called CN creative, and they were one of the first UK designers of e-cigarettes.  We were sold to a big FTSE 50 company and this company that acquired us mapped our roles. I was actually mapped as an HR manager, and I thought, so I’m really doing this now.  I was no longer just this organisational person that came and did everything and was given whatever job title.  I was a real HR manager at that time. What challenges are you currently facing? I don’t think it’s just the social care sector.  But specifically for the social care sector, it’s the hardest recruitment crisis we’ve ever had to face.  Along with that, there is a big issue with retention, I call it the leaky bucket.  People are burnt out after the pandemic, which is why they are leaving the sector.  In the beginning, in all honesty, COVID was our best PR agent ever because social care and the NHS were two of the most recognized sectors where you could get a job and any overtime you wanted during this period.  We had floods of people coming in, and we thought it was great.  Looking back, yes, people were joining us because they wanted to make a difference.  But also, we were one of the only people offering jobs.  So once the world reopened and the other industries such as retail, tourism and hospitality offered jobs again, we saw mass exits in the sector.  It’s now a new PR piece of why you want to stay in the sector.  What can we offer? How can we attract people to the sector? From a recruitment perspective, if you ask someone who does not work in the sector, they would not be able to tell you the difference between health or social care. And we are trying to educate about what social care is. We are also emphasising that it may not be the best-paid job in the world, but the satisfaction and the rewards would be difficult to come by elsewhere. Also, there are amazing career opportunities. Our current CEO started as a volunteer. We’ve got regional ops managers who started as care workers and are now in senior management. So we’re doing that education piece externally to encourage people to be able to make a difference.   I’ve also worked heavily on an internal academy.  The goal was to provide career opportunities for anybody in the social care sector.  One can develop their social care career or pursue an operational or management role, which is also a brilliant career opportunity.   One of the things we did was to honestly and openly review our recruitment campaign.  Obviously, I wouldn’t

Chloé Foster, People Director to the Valorum Care Group, explains how they shifted their recruitment strategy to deal with the social care exodus and the recruitment crisis Read More »

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