Reflections of a HRBP in 2014

This time last year I had just returned from spending Christmas with my family in Staffordshire, I was in work and thinking how 2013 had changed me as a person and as a HR Practitioner. In that year I had started work at a new company, taken on a new client group and was given the freedom to really maximise my creativity at work. It was a great year.

It's now the 31st December 2014 and as a result, it's time to reflect back on how this year has continued to shape my life.

At the start of 2014 I was working with my clients in finance, HR, legal, customer services, change management and property to help them to shape their strategic workforce plans. I had designed and implemented a new approach during 2013 and we were nearing the end of the cycle. Together we had created 7 simple yet solid workforce plans in place which would help to drive our business performance over the next 3 years.

During the spring I put myself in the firing line and up for public scrutiny by entering the PPMA (Public Sector People Managers Association) HR Rising Star competition. I had to attend 2 days of gruelling competition and as one of the finalists, was filmed presenting a business case for an agility programme I called Agility = Connecting Talent (A=CT) which then went to a public vote. It was a scary thing to do, and to be honest I still haven't watched it back...

Over the summer we entered the second cycle of Talent Profiling in my group, which allowed us to co-create a picture of our talent in a workforce of over 2000 staff. No mean feat! It was great to see that our talent pool had increased at the same time that our critical posts and people were reducing. When I implemented the approach in 2013 I wasn't sure whether it would gain momentum, my customers have many challenges, so to have them driving forward the profiling in 2014 was really a special moment for me.

In September I welcomed a new group of students (taking me over 100 now) on my CHRP programme which gives me a great opportunity to develop more future HR Practitioners of the future. It's something that really excites me. Seeing the development of knowledge and skills of others is great and it's super to see how their careers develop as a result. I'm still in touch with many students, so any that read this - I tip my hat to you!

Come the Autumn I was sitting at the Grosvenor Hotel in London awaiting the result of the CIPD HR Practitioner of the Year, thinking "nobody has won from this side of the room so I can be pretty sure it's not going to be me" so when I was announced as the winner the only thing that went through my head was "oh no, how do I get to the stage without making an idiot of myself!!". It was a great moment to win the award after 10 years working hard to develop a career that I never thought was possible.

Over the last couple of months I have been working on a culture change programme to help to develop a more commercial mindset for our staff and to really drive the delivery of our Workforce Strategy. This is proving to be a really challenging piece of work as there are lots of different professional areas working in many different ways, so developing and shaping one solid cultural development programme is tricky - but fun!

I also delivered my first public address in November for the CIPD where I talked about the role of a HRBP in identifying and developing talent, something I'm really passionate about. It went well and the feedback was great from a range of peers across the industry. I'm now lined up to talk about data in February (using my simple language and approach) which I'm looking forward to.

Earlier this month an ex-colleague asked me what I was going to do next, and it was great to think that I had achieved my ambition of getting the acceptance of a professional community after a very diverse career pathway (trainer salesman, mobile phone warehouse worker, cocktail barman, and door to door and telesales professional) without an A Level to my name, let alone a degree.

It's been a great year and I'm now looking forward to seeing how 2015 pans out!

Best wishes to all.

Craig