“The real key for me is to get out with the businesspeople,” Hayden, who has a degree in psychology and economics, told LeadingCompany last month. “I spent a few years working for Tabcorp. We had a dummy games room and I spent a day playing the machines, getting a feel for what punters look for, and then going on the road with the pokie technicians. What do they face? It is about spending time in the business with the front line.”
Hayden worked in retail and general office roles before picking up an HR role.
Polglaze, who has a psychology degree, worked in workers’ compensation for an insurer before persuading an employer to give him a job in HR.
Scales worked in a variety of roles at the National Australia Bank before taking up human resources, and branded herself as a “people person” and a “change leader” rather than an HR professional.
For leading companies, HR is inextricably linked with industrial relations. Both Polglaze and Lucas manage unionised workforces and have managed industrial action.
Lucas, who studied HR and did a business degree, developed a keen interest in industrial relations. “I spent 10 to 15 years working in supply chain in industry – trying to modernise the manufacturing workforce – and in workplace reform.
“The challenge is to create a connection with workplaces, engaging with people to get the best out of them. Industrial relations in Australia is described as hard. It saddens me that employees, employers and unions can’t come together to be more futuristic in their thinking; it is more about protecting the past than possibilities for the future.”
Lucas has no aspirations to climb into the top job, but Polglaze would like to be a CEO one day. As the HR role becomes more entrenched in the executive suite, opportunities for HR directors to become chief executives are increasing. When GM Holden’s chair and managing director, Mike Devereux, is away, Polglaze is one of the executives who acts in the top leadership role.
The future of human resources
BCG’s report found that HR executives are not really abreast of some impending issues. Their survey respondents ranked of “low current and future importance” such issues as:
But all the HR executives LeadingCompany spoke to for this story are well abreast of the issues. Lucas is already automating and outsourcing transactional HR functions, and Polglaze believes globalised shared services and people management is on the increase as “not many subsidiaries do it well”, and says widespread outsourcing is just around the corner.
