Our business has doubled in size over the last five years; our HR team plays a pivotal part in creating the circumstances for our teams to feel supported during this period of growth. We checked in with our HR director Valerie Steadman, to see how she helps make SEA a great place to work.
Thank you for joining, Valerie. How did you become the HR Director at SEA?
When I left school with my A-levels, I didn’t really know what to do. I took a temporary job at BHS, and all I knew was I wanted to work with people. They happened to have a vacancy in their in-store HR team, and they asked if I wanted to try it. I took it. 35 years on, having achieved my professional qualifications and master’s in the subject, I’m still in HR.
I joined SEA almost four years ago, and one of the main reasons is that our MD’s philosophy aligns very well with mine. For example, he published a blog recently about how important it is to put our people first, and they, in turn, look after our customers, and that really resonates with me. When I was being interviewed, we aligned well in terms of how we lead, manage and develop people.
I talk about looking at an organisation as an inverted organisational structure chart, where rather than being at the top, leaders are at the bottom of the page, supporting, engaging and inspiring people, as well as removing barriers for their teams so they can deliver the best results for our customers. It’s been lovely to be able to get into an organisation and shape it, which isn’t an opportunity you get in every company.
What are you most proud of in your four years here?
I’m really proud of the engagement score we received in our last companywide employee survey. We scored 83%, which is a high score that everyone at SEA can be proud of. Whilst we have areas to work on and are looking to continually improve, this score shows the whole company pulling in the right direction, a fabulous whole company team effort. For new starters, we host a regular ‘Meet the leadership team’-session, and what I hear all the time is people saying this like: “A lot of companies just talk about this people stuff, and how important people are, but SEA really lives that value.” It’s important for me that people really see our approach in action.
Developing culture is also a big thing for me. One thing that shows the community we’ve created is when people recommend us as a place to work, and particularly when people recommend us to their family members. We see a lot of family members applying for our apprenticeship schemes, for instance. It’s such an endorsement for us as an employer that they think this is a good place for their family members to start their career.
How do you balance that people focus with the company strategy?
We have an HR vision that we work to, and we continue to evaluate how that fits in. We look at what actions we need to put in place to get people where they need to be. For example, if there’s a skills gap, we look at how to fill that gap, is it something we can grow internally, or do we need to recruit more? Our demographic profile has changed quite considerably since I joined, and that’s been a concerted effort to promote from within and then recruit more junior levels where we can grow their skills through things like graduate and apprentice schemes.
Our team works closely with the leaders and managers in the business to help them develop and give them the tools they need to engage their people. We want to support great, and honest relationships between team leaders and their teams, if those relationships are strong and focussed on giving meaningful feedback that encourages proactive discussion about their development needs and goals, which can be worked on and eventually takes the business forward.
How does that translate into your role?
There’s no such thing as a typical day-to-day in HR, which is one of the reasons I like doing it. Every day is different, and it can vary from answering questions, chairing resource meetings, writing or assessing policy changes, or even keeping up to date with our legal requirements.
Even 35 years into my career, I still come across new things regularly. Areas that might not have been a focus 10-15 years ago, such as Neurodiversity in the workplace, which are a focus now, and applicable to our workplace. That can really shape how we work with our people.
We have strong values in the company, and it’s fundamentally important to me that the HR team operate with honesty and integrity and lead by example.
One of the important things to me in fostering our culture, is that we treat our people like adults, and we have guidelines and frameworks that support them rather than endless detailed policies and rules that dictate everything. Clearly, we need some policies and must ensure quality processes, but my ambition is to keep HR policies and processes as elegantly simple as possible. We want to get the best out of our people and hired them because we believe in them and their abilities. We want to support them to grow with us and encourage feedback, not stifle their development by not allowing them to think for themselves.
What’s next for HR at SEA?
Our continuous goal is to develop our line managers and leaders, but that’s becoming an even bigger priority the more we grow. When you get bigger, it really changes the dynamics, as you can’t do the line-of-sight type of management you used to be able to do when you were smaller. Now there’s almost 500 of us, we really need to make sure we have skilled line managers and people leaders in place.
Good line management is not easy to do, and it’s something people traditionally don’t get trained in, you get trained in how to do your tasks, but you don’t necessarily get trained in how to lead and manage people, and what good management looks like.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?
One of the common misconceptions is that HR is very black and white, but actually I would say it’s not the best role for someone who likes to work that way. We work with people, and each set of circumstances has its own nuances – we work with a lot of grey.
My biggest advice stems from a quote from Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” You need to live and breathe your culture, because you can undermine it very easily by your behaviours. When you get to the leadership level, the “being” part of knowing, doing and being becomes a lot more important. You have to be able to model behaviours that you want to see in your organisation.
People engagement is very important in HR, and I think you get that by developing the employee experience, so knowing how to do that is very important.
Thank you, Valerie.
You can read more about our Culture & Values here.
