This is a landmark episode as it's our 100th!! Therefore a landmark episode requires a guest of equal stature and I'm delighted to be joined by Annette Andrews. Annette has an incredibly fascinating career story to share. From growing up and moving countries ( and schools) reguarly due to her Dad's job, she strongly considered joining the Army but a significant sporting injury meant that was no longer an option. Unsure of what she then wanted to do with her life, some summer work at a local hospital put her under the tutelage of the HR Director. He encouraged Annette to apply for HR graduat ..read more

Joining me on this epsiode is Caroline Oxley who works as Head of People & Culture for a property investment company and is based in Greater Manchester. In her early HR career, Caroline worked in Facilities Management. What I found interesting was that people in HR always talk about delivering bad news, such as redundancies in the right way and being empathetic, however, Caroline shared a further nuance where in industries where there are high levels of TUPE transfers, such as outsourced service delivery, and contracts changing hands every few years then it's even more important to 'do it ..read more

I'm delighted to be joined by Hayley Duckworth on this latest episode of the podcast.  Hayley is someone I've known in a loose sense for a long time and have watched her career flourish. Like many, she began in recruitment but didn't enjoy the sales aspect to it so made the logic move into HR.  Hayley has had some amazing opportunities to get exposure to some of the less-common HR activties such as mergers, TUPE transfers, and change/transformations. This leads us to discussing the HR Bingo Card (as I've defined it) and the benefits of either coincidentally joining organisations wh ..read more

This is the final episode of 2023 and I'm joined by Jo Mountney, who has spent the entirety of her career so far within hospitality and tourism, working for the largest theme park in the UK for 20 years. Jo initially began in operations before moving into L&D and then ultimately HR. She believes that her background in operations has been one of the most useful aspects for her career, as it has enabled her to understand the position of her stakeholders better. It becomes apparent that Jo has put herself into situations that have been way outside her comfort zone. From studying in France f ..read more

My guest this episode is Daniel Balshaw who has built a HR career combining his two interests - technology and people. Dan was working in his local Sainsbury's store when he was approached by the HR team (personnel back then) to help with letter formatting, as simple as that now sounds, due to his IT skills. This was the early days of computers in the workplace so having the ability to work his way around a PC became advantageous. Sainsburys were one of the first large organisations in the UK to open a Shared Service Centre and Dan was one of the first employees to start there. This was the c ..read more

My guest this episode is Natalie Ellis who is the founder of Rebox HR, a multi-award winning HR Consultancy business based in Daventry, Northhamptonshire. Natalie has spent over 17 years in the world of HR, working her way through the corporate world before deciding to start her own business in 2020. Originally starting her career in the travel industry, Natalie believes it was those lessons she learnt about tailoring the service to the needs of each customer that gave her the foundations for how her business operates so successfully. Although Natalie is essentially an outsourced service pr ..read more

This episode I'm joined by Alex Rose who is Group Recruitment & Media Manager for a cake manufacturer called BBF based in Blackburn. I wanted to invite Alex on as a guest as I helped recruit him into this position and it was an interesting brief that his HR Director wanted from the role. Over the past couple of years I've followed what he has been doing and, more importantly, the impact and results the business have benefitted from. Alex started out as an agency recruiter before moving internally. We discuss the key differences from the two sides of the recruitment fence and the transitio ..read more

Joining me on this episode is Wendy Macartney who is not only a Senior HRBP but also a coaching Psychologist. This is a fabulous conversation as we really go off-script and barely touch upon Wendy's actual career journey. However, what we do uncover is far more insightful as Wendy is such a fascinating individual. She gave up a position on a fast-track leadership programme, despite incredible pressure from her friends and family all saying she was crazy, because she believed deep down that it wasn't truly the right direction for her. It was a pivotal moment for her as it took her down a path ..read more

How do you get to the top of your game? What should you be doing, and more importantly not doing, to be a HR professional who is taken seriously and has a track record of success and impact? Well this is the episode that uncovers all that. I'm joined once again by Rachel Wilson Rugelsjoen who has worked for some of the most high profile, multinational corporations. Rachel was my guest towards the end of Season 3 and we didn't manage to get through all we wanted to that time so the plan was always to bring her back to dive deeper into some of the parts we weren't able to cover off last time ..read more

My guest for this episode is Gemma Ellison who currently works as a Senior Talent & Leadership Manager at Macmillan Cancer Support. However, Gemma didn't start her career within HR. She had studied Law at university and went on to become a solicitor. An opportunity presented itself when she spoke up about the culture within the law firm she was working at where she was told to 'do something about it'. Gemma subsequently wrote a three year strategy to drive the changes she felt were required. Interestingly, Gemma had always had an interest in Culture, Leadership, and the improving workplace ..read more