People and development manager, Logistik Group
I owe a lot of my career to Morrisons: the people there trained and developed me, and exposed me to a whole new side of HR. When the Safeway acquisition took place [in 2004], I led a team of ex-Safeway HR managers, travelling the country and converting four stores a week. We hadn’t dealt with TUPE and changeovers before, but it was something that cropped up again and again during my career in facilities management.
Logistik is a communication and events agency tasked with engaging people, but the question as to what we do internally for our own people, and how we engage staff who know all about engagement, really intrigued me. Originally, the group operated a low-level HR function and wasn’t really looking for anything different, but I realised the business had great potential. Now I am the HR representative for just under 100 employees, across two sites in London and Leeds.
I have some big plans. First on the agenda is people development. I want to bring down the turnover rate, so I’ll be looking at performance management, how we are managing career paths and training our people and leaders to really inspire each other. My main challenge is how we make an already fantastic place even better, and how we get top talent banging on our door. We are inundated with requests for placements, work experience, internships and graduates, which we are very keen on and are hoping to develop further over the next few years. Having big brands like BT, Asda and Harrods on our books is obviously a great selling point, but really our people, their work and what we do creatively is the biggest attraction tool. One thing that new recruits seem to really like is our stance on sustainability. Our CSR strategy has won awards and really does drive everything we do.
Culture and involvement is massively important for us. We have a ‘trumpet’ system that runs on our intranet, where people can nominate each other for their good work. Once a month, the three people who have been trumpeted the most win £100 in vouchers. And we have just installed a bar in the Leeds office, not to encourage ridiculous drinking, but to introduce a social space for people to come together and chat. It’s also somewhere we could watch England at the World Cup…
Potted CV
HR business partner, Yorkshire Water
UK HR manager, International Personal Finance
HR business partner, Europa Facilities Services
HR consultant, Alfred McAlpine
Various roles, WM Morrison