What inspired you to pursue a career in human resources, and how has your journey shaped your leadership style?
In my last year at school, I was unsure what I wanted to do when I left. I therefore decided to pursue an apprenticeship role within manufacturing which gave me the opportunity to go on a rotational programme giving me exposure into Sales, Purchasing, Finance, HR and Quality. However, in addition to this, it enabled me to continue my education on day release where I studied business studies. It was at the end of this programme that I realised HR was the field I wanted to pursue my career. No two days were the same, you worked within a team, you had exposure of working with everyone across the business and I found it generally interesting. I therefore started as an HR Admin Assistant. I then progressed over the years across a wide range of industries – Transport, Retail, NHS and manufacturing and went into a management role when I was working in retail. I became a Head of HR approximately 10 years ago. Starting at the grass roots enabled me to learn at an operational level. I was passionate that I wanted to learn everything, so I could understand how different roles fed into the success of a business and how together they achieved the overall strategy of a business. I was bought up in a family to work hard, be committed but enjoy what you do and that’s why I love HR. I could be seeing someone about their maternity leave one day to working on and delivering the people strategy the next. People are at the heart of every business. Without good people you do not have a business. I wanted to help people shape their careers, drive them to succeed which in turn delivers great results for the Company. As I progressed through my career, I also completed my CIPD through professional assessment. I also sit on the EAB for Guys Marsh Prison and am an ambassador for the Dorset Chamber of Commerce.
Can you share a significant challenge you faced in your career and how you overcame it?
Carrying out restructuring exercises that end with redundancies I would say are the most challenging because you are dealing with people’s lives. However, as an HR professional you need to ensure you balance your own emotions with achieving what you need to for the Company and the remaining employees post the exercise – whether that is a headcount reduction, organisation change or closing down sites. However hard or challenging something is, the way I overcome it is by being kind, treating people respectfully, being consistent but making sure I communicated to them and kept them updated constantly throughout the process and in line with the employment rights that they had. If you do all that, people then feel valued and a hard message is then turned in to a positive because they understand why the company needs to do what they are doing. I have heard some horrendous stories on how businesses deliver redundancy situations which is totally unnecessary, you can still deliver a hard message in a respectful way.
What are the key qualities you look for when hiring new employees?
Culturally do they fit? Of course, you need people who have the right skills, but you can teach people the technical part of the job, but people who demonstrate humility, personality and common sense from day one often makes great employees. I always make sure that the interviews I do are two ways, it is as much about us making the right decision as it is the candidate making the right career decision too. Getting them to meet colleagues, show them the working environment, tell them about your business and vision, making sure they are updated through the process helps you make sure that they make a decision that is right for them and hopefully by doing this you retain good people because they are clear on what sort of business you are before they start.
What initiatives have you implemented to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within your organisation?
- Ensure you have clear diversity and inclusion training policies and procedures.
- Train all new starters on equality and diversity in the workplace.
- Ensure you pay everyone equally for the job that they do.
- Write inclusive job averts.
- Foster open communication – two-way communication meetings.
- Ensure your management team lead by example.
- Recruit across a wide network of job boards to source under represented candidates – visit local job fairs to source charities and government funded communities.
What strategies do you use to promote employee well-being and work-life balance?
- Ensure that employees know what is expected from them on a daily/annual basis by setting clear and measurable goals.
- Ensure you know your employees – checking in on them is vital to ensure they are ok, and everything is ok with their families and their working environment.
- Promote work life balance – make sure employees take their holiday and time away from their desks.
- Encourage two-way communication – keep employees up to date on how the business is doing and hear their feedback.
- Provide comfortable and collaborative spaces.
- Create a positive work environment.
- Regularly acknowledge people’s hard work – thank you goes a long way. If we have a good month, the coffee van arrives, or ice cream van, burger or fish and chip shop lunch for everyone.
- Invest in professional development – build a future proof workforce and help employees carve out their career path.
What lessons did you learn from managing HR during a crisis?
Craft clear communication. Support your colleagues. Prepare for the unexpected. Lead by example – show you are in control (even though you may not be). Ensure you remain legally compliant.
What advice would you give to aspiring HR professionals looking to advance their careers?
- Set yourself a career goal. There is no wrong answer.
- Continue to enjoy your job. We spend a lot of time at work, it’s important we enjoy it.
- Do a skills analysis on yourself to identify your strengths and weaknesses in respect of knowledge and personality. 360-degree feedback is a great tool to help you with this. Do this with your peers, your team and line manager.
- Stay focussed on achieving that business goal and make sure that your HR strategy always feeds into that. Stay on the front foot with legislation and ensure your HR compliance is up to date.
- Network as much as you can and widen not only your HR community but business one too. You learn so much from others.
- Reflect regularly – especially projects – what went well, what could have been done better.
- Gain experience – don’t be scared to offer to run a project if you’ve never led one or lead a team that is outside of HR – this gives you exposure to other areas of the business. Not only that, it helps you ensure that your objectives are the right ones and also helps you understand the wider business and how you can support and influence that.
- Continue to learn – attending webinars on HR is a way to expand your knowledge and skills. Not only do they keep you engaged but also helps you keep up to date with emerging issues in the HR field.
Do you have any advice for anyone wanting to start a career in HR?
If you can, gain some work experience. Having a 6-month placement in HR as part of my traineeship definitely gave me the drive to want to work in this area of a business and gave me an overview as to the variety of tasks within it.
Find a mentor and coach who is a human resources leader. It can be a lonely job sometimes and it’s important to have that person that you can bounce ideas off in a safe and confidential way.
Network widely and don’t be afraid to ask HR professionals what they enjoy and what they don’t about their role, that way you will get a good insight into different companies. This will enable you to choose a career path where your passion and strengths can add value and with a company that aligns to your values.
HR is very varied as you are dealing with people daily. However, the compliance can be transactional so being interested in employment law is so important and how you then use this to ensure your Company is compliant.
Working in HR you need to have the view that every interaction matters. If you’re able to build trust and respect with everyone (leadership, management, and employees), you’ll be viewed as a helpful business partner, so I try to live and breathe that every day.
Stay humble, gain experience, you will learn this way and take your time in climbing your HR career ladder. There are many areas of HR from recruitment, retention, payroll, compliance, benefits, it takes time to build that area of knowledge so don’t feel you have to rush, enjoy it too.
