I business partner our Marketing and Product Development Directors to lead the people agenda in these areas and drive our transformation and turn around plans. I lead the talent agenda across foods ensuring we recruit the best and develop our own great teams too. I am also currently accountable for our Learning and Development team. Our Building Winning Teams strategy is focused on driving our key metrics for the coming year which is all about back to basics.

I business partnered the Executive Director of Marketing and Plan A and the leadership teams in those areas. I was accountable for the delivery of the strategic people plan to drive business performance with my keys areas of focus being organisational development, talent management and creating a winning culture. I have recently led a significant Marketing Transformation project to devolve marketing accountability across the business and re shape the operating model, refocus the talent strategy and become more cost effective.

I looked after UK stores, offices and distribution in the UK. I was accountable for 5 key areas. Policy strategy and development either as a result of legislative changes or business requirements. Working with external networks and organisations. Supporting business change which was my main area of focus; I regularly led both TUPE and redundancy exercises. I was also accountable for the business relationship with our internal Works Council and worked closely with our employment legal team on all our employment tribunals to agree our approach.

I led the newly formed employee engagement team for M&S UK and International. My main areas of responsibility included running and interpreting the annual engagement survey and establishing an employer brand and the people aspects of Plan A. This included volunteering, fundraising and Marks & Start an employability programme. Plan A is the Corporate & Social Responsibility programme for M&S.

I was responsible for ensuring the design of our new people system supported the existing policies and procedures in M&S as well as simplifying our ways of working. I was the HR Manager support in the consultation exercise that proposed c.600 redundancies. I consulted with National BIG, the employee representative group.

I played a key role in setting up the People Policy Service at M&S. I was responsible for leading a team of policy specialists and ensuring that they gave consistent and commercially sound policy advice to line managers. This role enabled me to specialise in implementing our employment policies and practises across the business. I personally completed a number of complex cases and supported business initiatives such as the Cost Improvement Programme which to date has saved the business over £5mn. I attended and prepared Employment Tribunals and was responsible for our HR analytics as a People Policy Service.

I have held various HR Business Partner positions both across London and the South East.