I grew up on a farm, in the middle of nowhere and for a variety of reasons, including I was the youngest, I was never going to be a farmer, but I enjoyed the ‘commercial’ aspect of farming and this was the beginning of something I needed to explore.So that journey of exploration included being a salesperson, working in an ice cream factory, running my own ‘entertainment’ business whilst at university and then complete a HR internship. The internship was my ‘light bulb’ moment. I realised that the success of any organisation, regardless of size, capital or technology, is 100% linked to how you recruited, retained, compensated, led, motivated, developed, communicated, included, engaged and respected the team working within it. I knew I wanted to understand more about this ‘magic’ and how I could leverage it for others, hence the pursuit of my HR career.Throughout my career I have been privileged to work and grow in a variety of large multinational and private equity organisations. I have travelled, enjoyed and been responsible for teams across the UK and operated in 6 different continents across the globe. But throughout my career I have also developed my thinking and realised that organisations can do so much more with a proactive HR team as opposed to just an admin / ‘tea and sympathy’ personnel department. I fundamentally believe that unless the HR team understands the organisation, including how we design, make and sell products / deliver services, then we can only be defined as ‘commentators’. Our job as HR should be to partner with the organisational leaders, employee bodies and the members of the teams so we can add value and make a difference. I personally believe that we add value if we can help through ‘ENABLING’, ‘SUPPORTING’ and ‘PROTECTING’ both the organisation and the teams we work with. The reality is many HR teams spend far too much time on ‘protecting’ and not enough ‘enabling’ or ‘supporting’ and hence after 25 years working in large organisations, I grabbed an opportunity to create my own HR consultancy business called the Resourceful People Group (RPG). So it is no surprise at RPG we focus on those 3 words: ENABLE, SUPPORT and PROTECT. How we achieve this is a little more complex but for me it starts with working with my clients, understanding the real business issue and we work together in implementing a cost-effective solution.You might gather I’m passionate about this and if you want to see what HR can do in your business then I would love to explore how we could do things differently.