Group HR, estates and facilities director, European Tyre Enterprise Ltd
All the HR people who work for me understand the business. They go on the same courses that a tyre technician would go on, and they can describe the impact of something in terms of bottom line profitability. It’s important to understand both your internal and external customer. Employees sometimes have to deal with aggressive customers, and if one tells a customer where to go and it ends in a disciplinary, we need to be able to see both sides of the story.
It can be difficult because this is a male-orientated business and the majority of my HR team are female. They have to understand that you are going to get an angry ops manager on the end of the phone shouting at you because you say they can’t dismiss someone. But that’s all about building relationships and ultimately understanding all sides of the story. HR staff are expected to go out with the ops managers visiting stores and attending regional meetings, so they are building those relationships.
The question I always ask at interview is: “Tell me about the cultures you’ve worked in, and the values and principles you like to find within a business.” As a group we have a duty to our customers to make sure we act with integrity in everything we do. We also have a duty to our internal customers to make sure they understand what “good” looks like. That’s particularly important for a company like Kwik Fit, which was slated on Watchdog in 2010 [before it became part of European Tyre Enterprise, which in turn is owned by the global Itochu Corporation].
In the early days there was a big turnover of people at Kwik Fit because they just weren’t living and breathing the Kwik Fit way. That’s not just about making money at any cost. As a business, we’re about longevity and being number one – but we can only do that when people take responsibility at every level.
Diversity is very important to me – promoting it and ensuring we are using the skills and ideas of a variety of people. Being in HR doesn’t mean you can’t go into supply chain, for instance. But you have to be willing to ditch your comfort blanket to get on. I will personally take time out to coach HR staff and I’ve seen one of my team work her way up from HR admin to head of HR and payroll in four years. She is now my number two but she worked very hard at it.