REAL HR – with Paula Jones

In this, the first episode in a new series for The HR Uprising – REAL HR, Lucinda chats to real-life HR professionals about their career and lessons learned. Thus discovering the many ways we can raise each other up through shared experiences. This week’s guest is HR professional Paula Jones, Head of People at tech firm, Leighton, who discusses the challenges she enjoys, the benefits of smaller HR teams, and the outlook and mission that drives her own innovative thinking there. KEY TAKEAWAYS The key to driving change is to establish good relationships, and getting to know individuals on a bespoke basis. Only then can we ascertain the best and most direct route through conversations. Working as part of a larger team of HR professionals can have its benefits, such as the ability to communicate and discuss various issues with likeminded professionals. But the larger the team, the less agency we personally find ourselves with. Change agents work best in smaller teams as it allows them the freedom to implement new measures and communicate more freely with higher levels of management. Depending on the area in which you work, the talent pool can be smaller. It is therefore even more important to attract and then retain the best that we can find. BEST MOMENTS ‘I like to see the things that we can put in place that are aligned to our business strategy, and which will make a real difference to people’ ‘I embrace change. It’s what makes the world go round’ ‘You’re always a smaller cog in bigger organisations’ ‘One of the biggest things I’ve found in HR is just having that real belief in yourself' VALUABLE RESOURCES The HR Uprising Podcast | Apple | Spotify | Stitcher   Host of The HR Uprising Podcast, Lucinda Carney, is also the founder and CEO of Actus Software, where you can find additional free HR Resources: https://actus.co.uk/free-performance-management-resources/ The HR Uprising LinkedIn Group Change Superhero Resources Book: How To Be A Change Superhero - by Lucinda Carney Free Change Toolkit: www.changesuperhero.com Latest Performance Management Blog               ABOUT THE GUEST   Paula Jones is head of people at Leighton. Having worked in HR for 25 years she enjoys the full variety of what HR can bring on a day to day basis.  Paula is responsible for creating and overseeing the full people agenda, whilst continuing the develop Leighton’s culture, engagement and people focus through what has been a very difficult time due to Covid-19.  Furthermore, Paula is in a standalone role and this provides her with a lot of variety. Paula says that it is important for HR Professionals to support the creation of a great place to work for all colleagues by focussing on the experience they have through the employee life cycle.  It’s particularly important as it is such a competitive market.   Paula Jones on LinkedIn Leighton     ABOUT THE HOST   Lucinda Carney is a Business Psychologist with 15 years in Senior Corporate L&D roles and a further 10 as CEO of Actus Software where she worked closely with HR colleagues helping them to solve the same challenges across a huge range of industries. It was this breadth of experience that inspired Lucinda to set up the HR Uprising community to facilitate greater collaboration across HR professionals in different sectors, helping them to ‘rise up’ together. “If you look up, you rise up” CONTACT METHOD Join the LinkedIn community - https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13714397/ Email: [email protected] Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucindacarney/ Twitter: @lucindacarney Instagram: @hruprising Facebook: @hruprising HR podcast, The HR Uprising, Diversity, Equality & Inclusion, Learning and Development, Culture & Change: https://hruprising.com/hr-podcasts/