“Be flexible, work hard, and deliver above expectations.” – Interview with RoseMarie Loft
âI donât think a senior HR job is a job. Itâs really about where you fill the strategic gaps in the organisation for the benefit of the organisation and its workforce, which arenât necessarily the same thing.â â RoseMarie Loft – Head of People Services at The National Gallery, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership. As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, weâve invited some HR Leaders to share the secrets of their success. This week, we had a great conversation with RoseMare Loft at The National Gallery, who began her HR career as a HR and Training & Development Executive at National Grid. RoseMarie worked as a HR and Training Consultant for Look Ahead Housing and a Leadership and Development Manager at Remploy Ltd before becoming HR Manager at Millward Brown. In 2002 she became National Manager, Leadership and Development at HM Prison Service, later transitioning to Service Director, HR and Equalities at Solihull MBC. From 2005-2013 RoseMarie took a decision to go independent, providing interim executive and senior HR leadership to multiple clients. Unexpectedly, she says, she joined The National Gallery in 2013 as Head of HR, which has variously developed over the years through Director of Change and is now leading on a broader function of âPeople Servicesâ. Can you tell us how you got into HR and why? Like many great HR professionals, there was no structured career plan and I never had any intention of working in HR. My first job was in public relations as a press officer. I did PR for a number of years but it really takes over your life. My role was 24/7: I remember I gave a live interview to Radio 4 at one point, while in the bath! I decided I needed to do something else and since the part of my role I enjoyed the most was training other people to do interviews, I took a teaching diploma, expecting to go into teaching or training. At that time, I was temping at National Grid, and they asked me to stay and take on a training role, which I did. I worked as a training consultant and leadership development manager. A few years into my experience, my employer, Remploy Ltd, paid for me to do my Masters in Occupational Psychology and my career grew from there. To me, training and development is a very natural thing. In my career Iâve been mobile, moving between organisations regularly, effecting change and developing new ways of working for HR teams and organisations. I spent around ten years as an interim, doing projects at senior level. Iâve been with The National Gallery for over eight years now. I never expected to be there this long but itâs one of the most complex and challenging areas to work in. People think that if you work for an art gallery of a museum, particularly one with a level of guaranteed funding, it canât be that challenging. However, as an organisation we are both private, public and charitable – itâs very complex. At a leadership level, I donât think a senior HR job is a job. Itâs really about where you fill the strategic gaps in the organisation for the benefit of the organisation and its workforce, which arenât necessarily the same thing. Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that youâre seeing across the HR sector? Our sector has been very conservative and change resistant. Over the last 10-15 years organisations have started to find things more difficult; funding is a challenge, as is the changing workforce. In the past, this sector has been led by personal relationships, but that doesnât work anymore, a lot of changes have been happening. The National Gallery is a phenomenally complex entity. We have over 1,000 people working on the gallery site and we are managing a multi-faceted organisational design. As well as the gallery, my team also provides HR to a separate commercial entity that does retail, marketing and publishing. A few years ago I led a project to outsource a lot of our standard services. We were one of the first within the sector to outsource areas like front of house and visitor information as well as the more typical areas like catering and cleaning. The plan was hugely contentious, but ultimately we outsourced around 50% of our workforce and itâs been phenomenally successful. Even those who were against it at the time have come to realise that it was the right thing to do.   One of the unexpected outcomes of this was an incredible degree of agility when the pandemic hit. The organisational model we chose put us in a strong position and we didnât have to furlough a single member of staff. We were the first gallery to reopen in July 2020, and – I believe – are still the only similar national organisation that is fully open. All that is credit to our operating model and our expert partners who were able to manage their parts of the business for us. As with many organisations, weâre looking at what flexible working means for us going forwards. Prior to the pandemic we were already building new office accommodation and when COVID hit, we were at the stage of designing the interiors. We made the decision to make them fully agile workspaces, purpose designed to support hybrid working. A lot of credit needs to go to our IT department who, even before the pandemic, had been working to replace our equipment and implement a cloud-based system so we could work remotely in the case of a major incident like a fire, for example. When the pandemic came along, we felt quite well prepared. With the new agile office spaces, a lot of people wonât have to commute into central London every day. Itâs a well thought out shared space. Each floor in the office has been themed based on a painting in