Leading the people agenda for Colleague Experience; Equality, Inclusion & Development; Learning & Development and Talent Management, including our future talent programmes - Growing Greatness.

As Head of OD & Talent I have group level accountability for multiple priority areas across OD, L&D, EDI, HR and Transformation, with shared SLT responsibility for the achievement of our corporate people objective, delivery of our people strategy, and shaping our ability to continually provide the right people, with the right skills, at the right time for the organisation. Within this role I have reinvigorated the OD and L&D service to enable us to create a learning ethos to support increased people development opportunities that are aligned to roles and led a number of priority workstreams to enable us to -* bring our corporate values to life and refocus on our organisational purpose and identity; * develop leadership and management capability through delivery of a comprehensive development programme; * create a strong employee voice to maximise employee engagement and empowerment; * provide insight into cultural change and organisational transformation; * increase organisational focus on equality, diversity and inclusion;* establish an environment where leaders and managers are enabled to support organisational and people development;* provide comprehensive redeployment and outplacement programmes to support restructure and transformation;* develop and embed a competency framework to establish behavioural expectations;* increase internal learning provision to maximise value and return on investment;* ensure and maintain organisational compliance regarding training and competence levels.

I led CGA’s Learning and Development function to achieve alignment with corporate & HR strategy, to firmly embed a learning and development culture across the organisation, and to ensure that all employees are equipped with the required skills and capabilities to deliver the organisations vision & values, achieve customer excellence standards, and to fulfil the requirements of their individual roles. Within this role I was responsible for;- Organisational development strategy and activity company wide.- Reviewing the current Learning and Development Strategy, and developing a further strategy that is reflective of CGA’s forthcoming needs.- Creating and delivering an innovative, and accredited, leadership development programme.- Providing and developing a coaching & mentoring programme across all levels of employees. - Developing the CGA Internal Learning Academy through the introduction of a new company wide development programme.- Developing the in-house training team, through train the trainer delivery, coaching, mentoring and the management of training delivery and standards. - Producing and maintaining a workforce development plan.- Develop and run 360˚ assessment tool for managers ensuring identified training needs are met and learning plans are in place. - Developing and maintaing a succession plan within the organisation.- Forcasting, agreeing and managing the organisation’s training budget.- Delivering, developing and maintaining the ILM programmes, and centre status, including review and evaluation of the programmes CGA are accredited to deliver, and management of the process to add additional ILM programmes to the CGA learning provision as needed.- Involvement with developing and delivering residents training programme with focus on increasing employability and the skills within the CGA community. - Introducing and Maintaining an apprenticeship scheme.- Identifying funding opportunities & ensuring a value for money approach is taken.

Established and operated a L&D Business Partner model working with the Sales, Professional and Technical Services, Channel, and IT departments from Director level down to ensure development plans and activity were aligned to strategic and operational plans.Management of Microsoft competency achievement including all training plans for attainment of relevant MCP certifications, sourcing the best value training solutions and establishing key relationships with the leading providers to ensure maximum discounts were secured. This included managing the relevant budget, making recommendations on the best approach for achievement, ensuring compliance in non-training related requirements, and providing monthly updates on this to the board. Full training cycle delivery of a leadership development programme, Outstanding Leadership, and talent management programme, Outshine, which were both designed to improve leadership capability and drive a culture of excellence across the organisation.Management of skills training, including Insights Discovery, as a client practitioner. Design, delivery and evaluation of a range of soft and technical training programmes to meet the requirements of the customer operations, sales and organisational support functions.Supporting the Operational Coaching Team, including annual development planning, training delivery and mentoring. Institute of Customer Service (ICS) award practitioner coaching, ensuring delegates achieve the requirements of the ICS framework.Training needs analysis including skills auditing and performance gap analysis.Review and redesign of the on-boarding and induction process for sales and implementation of a remote learning programme suitable for field based roles.

Responsibilities* Induct all new staff to the centre and deliver various training workshops (on both technical and soft skills development)* Directly improve individual and team performance through the development of new materials & workshops tailored to current and future operational requirements and business objectives* Co-ordinate all internal development, external training and professional qualifications (i.e. Work based NVQ's and BTEC's)* Conduct one-to-one or group coaching to improve individual performance for agents, advisors, coaches & managers* Act as a central advisory point for line managers and employees to create & update PDP's, role specific development plans and provide guidance on professional qualifications* Support project implementation through establishing training requirements through detailed TNA/ gap analysis, design of materials, scheduling of delivery and 3 stage evaluation producing statistical review of training effectiveness and return on investment.* Compile management information for the departments balanced business scorecard which includes the total training delivered by hours/method/cost, educational sponsorship & evaluation related to training quality and ROI. * Management of 2 Training Assistants ensuring the team was highly motivated, completing all review processes, ensuring team productivity & service levels were of a consistently high standard and all training requirements were successfully achieved.* Lead on, and facilitation of, a range of working parties including representative members of the HRSS leadership team.

Key responsibilities in this role included - * The introduction of various new processes and management controls in relation to the national advertising & e-Resourcing strategies* Recruitment responsibility for selection of branch managers, assistant managers & graduate schemes * Designing and running management assessment and development centres * Reviewing in-store recruitment procedures, manager training & talent management processes and implementing improvements* Management of centralised advertising, agency management, centralised recruitment budget's * Co-ordinating multiple projects and workstream's on retention, induction, development & recruitment* Ad-hoc support of the wider retail HR team within a generalist role and providing supervisory cover for both roles during manager absence* Call coaching and the up-skilling of HR colleagues* Management training on recruitment, selection and retention practicesAchievementsSecondment into the Recruitment & Retention manager role following her resignation Implementation of a national recruitment/selection process for all retail front line and supervisory applicationSuccessful delivery of recruitment process training for all Store Managers, within tight timeframes and with exceptional results Re-design of recruitment advertising campaign with Bartlett Scott Edgar Launch of web-based recruitment processIntroduction of an electronic process for recruitment administration and CV

Review all company practices against the IIP standards, make and implement recommendations for achieving IIP accreditationEstablish clear communication processes, open up internal development opportunities, introduce retention programs, rewriting the company handbook, reviewing all training processes (operational & sales) including the re-design of the Induction process. Relationship management of various recruitment agenciesAchievementsSuccessful implementation of improved development packages including a 2 week induction programmeCreation of new company handbook, including policy & procedural guidelines for line managers & employeesNegotiation of new improved value agency contract for both temporary and permanent recruits