Career background
I am one of the HR Business Partners at the University of Portsmouth, and I’ve been in this role for six months. Prior to that, I had worked in HR at the University of Southampton for 20 years. At Portsmouth, I work with a group of stakeholders in different areas of the University; some professional services and some faculties. I work on their people strategies and priorities, ensuring they’ve got the right structures and the right people in place. My job involves a lot of coaching and mentoring.
When I was a student, I was working in Burger King restaurants, as a lot of us do. I decided at the age of 23, after finishing college, that I wanted to go into an office-based role. Every time I thought about leaving, they promoted me, until eventually I was managing one of the restaurants and took on a lot of the HR training developments. A role came up at the University of Southampton, and I went for it, without even considering it as any long-term career prospect. It was very much that I wanted to get out of the catering industry and this was the opportunity.
I came into the University of Southampton and did a year-long Administrator role in one of their medical faculties. From there I moved into another role in the training department, then another role in the same department. Eventually, I found my niche in HR and after being there for around 11 years, the University restructured and I was moved into the central HR department. I had young children at the time, and the University was so flexible and amazing for families. It was easy to move around and experience different things whilst still maintaining that work-life balance.
When I first started at Southampton, my eldest child was about 16 months old. I hadn’t realised at the time, but you get quite good holidays and good terms and conditions. You get some time off at Easter and at Christmas, so you don’t have to consider what you’re going to do with the children during those holidays. There were lots of bonuses in terms of flexibility, which was really good. The flexible working helped when I needed to go to a school meeting or one of those awful nativity plays! I’ve got a nine and a half year gap between my children, so flexibility was an important consideration when other opportunities presented themselves.
A meaningful job
At Southampton, I was able to see and experience a lot of the research that they were doing. They used to have science days, so you would see first-hand what everyone was learning and what the University was giving back to the community. I also used to participate in promotions for academics. Annually, the academics get an opportunity to apply for a promotion and when they would come for an interview, candidates would talk to you about their research. It was wonderful to see that they were so passionate. I loved getting involved in graduation ceremonies at Southampton because I don’t have much to do with students. I always asked if I could be involved in PhD graduations because the PhD students used to do some teaching for us. Actually seeing them graduate was lovely and it gives you real sense of purpose watching that.
At Portsmouth, I work very closely with the senior leadership teams in all of the areas I support. I’m there to support the Deans or the Directors of the centres. I will meet with all of them on a regular basis to help plan what their workforce is going to look at, but also to challenge their thoughts. It’s great to be able to help these academics who are amazing at research with their management remits as well. I’m doing quite a lot of work with them at the moment to identify future leaders, and then working with them to scope out some training plans, so that when it comes them stepping down they can step down. A lot of academics do it for a short term, but they do then want to take the time out to focus on their research. If there’s nobody else ready to go in post, they can’t do that.
A supportive employer
As I was at Southampton for a very long time, I got a lot of development opportunities. Whilst I was there, I did a certificate and a diploma in Business Administration, as well as my CIPD. The University funded all of these courses, but they also gave me the time in order to be able to do them. I did my CIPD online through distance learning and sat my exams at the University. They were really accommodating. We also used to have internal training which was available to us. I implemented a training budget and process where people could apply for this.
At Portsmouth, we’re doing apprenticeships here so I am considering doing my MBA. We’ve got three or four apprentices in the Department already. Both Southampton and Portsmouth have been really good and having worked in HR, I’ve seen a lot of people get to develop quite a lot within the universities.
Southampton has a really pretty campus and they have so much going on. Of course, you’ve got the cafes and the sports facilities with lots of classes available, but there were also a lot of networking opportunities. Having been there for a long time, I got to meet a lot of different people and network with different departments. Every year, Southampton hosts a science fair for National Science Week, where family and friends are invited and it gets really busy. It’s really good for kids.
Portsmouth is based in the city centre, so our buildings are scattered around. We have the sport and recreation department here, and they allow you to use the showers if you want to run on your lunch break. Portsmouth do an annual sports day for all of the staff in the summer which I haven’t experienced that yet. It’s great because they try and get everyone together to do all of these different sporting events.
In terms of health and wellbeing, Portsmouth have just done a mini MOT health check for people, free through occupational health, which is really positive because they can see how people are doing and then signpost them to different departments or facilities. Last week I attended a dementia awareness session, where volunteer members of staff came in to deliver sessions and spread awareness. They’re really trying to build up people’s knowledge by putting on these different sessions.
Career highlights
Last year when the University of Southampton restructured, I was seconded into the project team to look at the restructure from an HR perspective. It wasn’t easy; the University went from eight faculties to five, which meant we were losing three Deans, three Faculty Managers, etc., so we had to go through a big consultation process. But what I really enjoyed about it was working so closely with the Chief Operating Officer and the University Executive Board, and seeing how they worked. We were meeting on a weekly basis with project updates and it was quite interesting to see the dynamics of those groups, how much detail they go into, this meant that it took them a long time to agree some of the job descriptions.
It was a real sense of achievement because when the Vice-Chancellor announced the change, we had to make it happen in a short timescale. The new structure came in at the beginning of August and due to procedural constraints, I was only in a position to confirm who the Faculty Managers were about a week before. The Faculty Managers really needed to be in place because they’re so crucial to building up the faculty teams. So I did learn a lot from that and really enjoyed it. It was very busy, with lots of long hours, but a fantastic sense of achievement when we got through it. It is a huge change and you don’t normally appreciate the scale of it is until you actually do it.
Advice for aspiring HR in HE professionals
It’s an amazing opportunity to experience HR done differently. As in any role, there are certainly challenges, but there are opportunities to do things you might never have done before, like coaching academics in management, or interviewing researchers. There are policies and procedures that you’ll need to work within, but the outcomes are hugely satisfying.
This interview was conducted before the Coronavirus Pandemic. Working arrangements on university campuses may have changed due to social distancing measures.