Navigating HR pathways

Kathy Catton, Human Resources magazine editor, spoke with five HR professionals at different stages of their careers to find out what initially drew them to HR and where they hope to go within the profession.

LETISHA WHITE: Rising HR Star

Letisha (University of Otago), Student Ambassador in 2023, and current member of the HRNZ committee, was the recipient of HR Student of the Year at the recent 2024 NZ HR Awards. Letisha graduated last year and is now working in Deloitte’s consulting team.

WHAT INITIALLY MOTIVATED YOU TO PURSUE A CAREER IN HR?

I liked the idea of working closely with people in different parts of a company. I found it exciting to think about how I could help the company do better by focusing on things like helping employees grow, developing their skills, and making the workplace a positive and supportive environment.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES YOU SEE IN PURSUING A CAREER IN HR?

One of the significant challenges in HR is navigating complex interpersonal dynamics and managing conflicting interests within an organisation. Also, staying up to date with evolving labour laws and compliance regulations poses continual challenges. Balancing the strategic aspect of HR with dayto-day operational demands can also be demanding but extremely rewarding.

HOW DO YOU DEVELOP YOUR SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES?

Because I am early in my career, I place a big focus on mentorship opportunities and actively seek feedback to refine my skills. I try to ensure that I deliver quality work and also prioritise networking and hearing industry updates.

LOOKING AHEAD, WHAT’S YOUR PLAN FOR THE REST OF YOUR CAREER?

Istrive to take as many opportunities as possible to challenge myself and broaden my skill set. Long term, I am endeavouring to make a positive impact through HR for many businesses and organisations. I also want to continue to grow my network and cultivate relationships within the industry.

CHELSEA MAPP: Moving Up the Ranks

Chelsea is a Senior HR Advisor at The Treasury. Despite not starting her career in HR, Chelsea demonstrates it’s possible to move across countries, industries and professions and still climb the corporate ladder.

WHAT INITIALLY MOTIVATED YOU TO PURSUE A CAREER IN HR?

After graduating from Massey University with a Diploma in Marketing, I moved to London. I secured a role as a Relocation Consultant, moving executives to London. My role was exciting, working with leaders at Twitter, ING Bank and Google. I fell into HR from there and ended up in Melbourne as a Mobility Specialist before returning to New Zealand and becoming a Generalist HR Advisor.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE KEY MILESTONES IN YOUR HR JOURNEY?

Going from an HR advisor role to a secondment as an HR Business Partner was a key milestone for me. I received great feedback on my secondment, which helped boost my confidence in taking the next step up.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES YOU’VE FACED IN YOUR HR CAREER?

To be honest, this was becoming a mum and juggling work and being a mum. I have been lucky in my career since becoming a mum, working at places that support me with work–life balance. I have just returned to mahi after having my second baby.

HOW DO YOU DEVELOP YOUR SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES?

Through HRNZ, I secured a mentor Karli Te Aotonga. We meet weekly or fortnightly and have become great friends. Since meeting Karli, she has helped boost my confidence and supported me to look into a secondment at a business partner level. Karli is also a mum and we talk through the challenges of being a mum and focusing on a career in HR.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE CONSIDERING A CAREER IN HR?

Build your support network. Join HRNZ and attend their courses. Through these courses, you can make great connections. Transforming HR in Aotearoa is a course I highly recommend to all HR professionals.

LOOKING AHEAD, WHAT’S YOUR PLAN FOR THE REST OF YOUR CAREER?

For now, I aim to be the best I can be in my current role. I have a great manager who is supporting my development. I will continue catching up with my mentor and connecting with other HR professionals at HRNZ events.

EMMA BENNETT: From Ops to HR

Emma is the People and Culture Leader at Home, a construction company focused on healthy and sustainable housing and community projects. Emma came into HR with an operations background and has never looked back.

WHAT INITIALLY MOTIVATED YOU TO PURSUE A CAREER IN HR?

Arecurring theme throughout my career has been a love of working with people. I started out in customer service roles, then operational roles with 25 direct reports. I loved helping these people grow, so it was a natural fit for me to move into HR.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE KEY MILESTONES IN YOUR HR JOURNEY?

Becoming an HRNZ Chartered Member was a significant milestone for me, especially given that I don’t have the classic route into or through HR. But what I have found is that my previous ops experience has been equally as valuable as the study route, and I’m very grateful for that.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES YOU’VE FACED IN YOUR HR CAREER?

Dealing with underperformance or conduct and disciplinary issues are some of the hardest things for me to deal with. It’s a heavy weight to carry because I want the best solution for all and you’re dealing with people’s lives, which is often hard. I have developed the skills to ask the right questions and look at the situation from all angles.

IN HINDSIGHT, ARE THERE ANY DECISIONS YOU WOULD HAVE MADE DIFFERENTLY REGARDING YOUR CAREER?

I wish I had taken the plunge into HR sooner! I thought I needed to know more before I made the transition. But I could have trusted myself more and realised what invaluable experience my people management was.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE CONSIDERING A CAREER IN HR?

Seek to get a good grounding in a generalist role and then specialise later rather than earlier. Also, if you’re a people leader, don’t doubt your skills as being non-transferrable. I think being a people leader moving into HR builds your credibility because you understand the frustrations and challenges of line management.

LOOKING AHEAD, WHAT’S YOUR PLAN FOR THE REST OF YOUR CAREER?

Ultimately, I’d like to grow into a bigger role and get back into running a bigger team, this time in the HR space. I’d like to continue to support someone starting out in their career, so perhaps become a mentor.

DEBBIE DAWSON: From Corporate HR to SelfEmployed Coach

Debbie’s career after university started in librarianship. This foundation has provided a thread of knowledge and learning throughout her career, from HR professional to leadership and management consultant and coach.

WHAT INITIALLY MOTIVATED YOU TO PURSUE A CAREER IN HR?

Like many people, I came sideways into HR from another profession. After university, I qualified as a librarian and worked in that sector for a few years. I got into HR by taking on what was essentially an administrative role relating to training. This morphed into a one-person ‘staffing’ role and then into taking on others to become an HR team and a full HR function. When I look back, this was a great opportunity to start things up from scratch rather than inheriting processes that may or may not be working and having to manage them, which is what it’s like for most people coming into HR.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE KEY MILESTONES IN YOUR HR JOURNEY?

Moving from professional librarianship to what was an administrative role. I remember colleagues asking me if I was sure I knew what I was doing, but it turned out to be the best thing I could have done. I am endlessly fascinated by the human condition, so HR has been an ideal destination for me to use my organisational skills together with my curiosity about what makes people tick.

Choosing to be self-employed felt like a big risk at the time after being a diligent corporate citizen for so long. As an employee, my experience was all in the public sector, so consulting has meant working with a much wider range of organisations. However, I have discovered that good HR practice applies everywhere no matter what type of endeavour. People are people.

Probably the major milestone for me has been the transition from working on big organisational projects to now working primarily with leaders and business owners at an individual level. As a consultant, I have completed plenty of organisational reviews but the biggest professional and spine-tingling rewards have come from witnessing the transformation of those whom I have coached. Our country needs good people who are willing to step up and lead teams, and doing this should not be synonymous with burnout or at the expense of their health and relationships. The usual pinch points for my clients are managing their big workloads and leading their teams, and it’s these areas where I add the most value as a coach.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES YOU’VE FACED IN YOUR HR CAREER?

One of the most challenging things for me both personally and professionally was knowing that the work of my HR team was to become part of a corporate shared service. Initially, I was required to make the best person I had ever recruited redundant, followed by the remaining positions, which were eventually disestablished. This is the very human edge of HR.

HOW DO YOU DEVELOP YOUR SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES?

I’m a learning junkie, which is probably a hangover from my first career in librarianship. I value my ability to think deeply and I love ideas and information. I read a lot of non-fiction, especially about leadership and human psychology.

Shortly after joining HRNZ (formerly HRINZ), I signed up for a five-day strategic HR course in 2000 delivered by a wonderful Australian academic Dr Roger Collins. This was a truly formative learning experience for me. I was completely spellbound, sitting in the front row, and writing furiously like a nerd for the whole time. Roger embodied for me the perfect combination of applied psychology and management. And that was when the penny dropped. I suddenly realised what HR could contribute to an organisation and how all the various functions work together.

In recent years, I have focused on honing my coaching skills. I am part of the Life Coach School community, which runs out of the United States of America, and in 2016 I qualified as a health coach with the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in New York. My clients now benefit from a combination of management, life and health coaching.

IN HINDSIGHT, ARE THERE ANY DECISIONS YOU WOULD HAVE MADE DIFFERENTLY REGARDING YOUR CAREER?

Probably not, actually. I choose to believe that everything happens as it should. I feel fortunate to have had a blend of corporate life and also being self-employed. I chose to work full-time while my kids were at school. It’s a busy time of life and while I have always loved working, I realise now that having children was the best thing that ever happened to me. In my coaching work, I teach that leading and managing people is a lot like parenting, and investing in both is the ultimate life task.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE CONSIDERING A CAREER IN HR?

My advice to lessexperienced practitioners is to get intensely interested in the problems of the people you are supporting. They are not usually looking for policies and rules, they want to know that you care about what they are facing and will help them by coming up with practical and workable solutions.

Any experience in another sector, discipline or operational role is never wasted. It helps you understand the whole business, especially if you make it to the top table in an organisation, then your thinking and contribution need to be for the good of the entire organisation not just HR. Put yourself forward for projects that may not initially look like HR.

Focus on the outcomes. Good systems and processes are essential to HR, but they are the inputs not the outcomes. Performance appraisal is a good example of this, where we can focus too much on the forms and paperwork instead of the end result we want, which is getting team leaders to talk regularly and meaningfully to their people about the work.

Get involved in your professional association because you will learn a lot. I originally joined HRINZ because my qualifications were not HRrelated. I served on the national Board, was vice-president, was a judge for the HRNZ Awards from 2006 to 2023 and was the Convenor for professional accreditation before the current Chartering process.

LOOKING AHEAD, WHAT’S YOUR PLAN FOR THE REST OF YOUR CAREER?

I love working with younger professionals. I am a longtime mentor for HRNZ and one of the facilitators of HRNZ’s recently redesigned HR Foundations programme. I have wisdom to share, although I want to stay interested in new things and keep learning. I also love writing and creating professional content for my programmes. My husband reckons I should write a book, and maybe I will.

ERINA CLAYTON: Senior HR Leader Operating at a Strategic Level

Erina is a highly experienced leader. Starting her career in banking and insurance, and after a stint in notfor-profit, she now has almost 20 years of public sector experience, predominantly in People and Culture roles. She currently leads the People and Workplace Services team at Inland Revenue.

WHAT INITIALLY MOTIVATED YOU TO PURSUE A CAREER IN HR?

I always had roles that had ‘HR’ elements. But I was discouraged early on in my career from looking at purely HR roles because some of my leaders talked and acted in ways that suggested HR did not add value to an organisation. They had views that HR slowed things down or was to be avoided, even to the point that my job title would be changed prior to restructures so I wouldn’t be ‘found’ and moved into HR! My first ‘HR-titled role’ was during a significant organisational change. I put an expression of interest in for an HR manager role and expected to be made redundant. I got the role and it has been all on since then.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE KEY MILESTONES IN YOUR HR JOURNEY?

There have been technical milestones, like my first mediation, my first bargaining lead, my first head of HR role, my first pandemic. And also experiential milestones. Two in particular were very formative: becoming a people leader and becoming a business leader. When I became a people leader, my boss told me I was “too nice” to be a good leader and that I would not be able to do the “tough stuff” but that I could “have a go”. Since then, I’ve been motivated to be both a good leader and remain a nice person. To me, being a people leader is the ultimate career in HR, those of us in the HR domain are there to make it easier for all leaders to lead well. Getting closer to the business was another important experiential milestone: I moved into a few non-HR leadership roles (from as short as six weeks covering for someone on extended leave to as long as a year). Really getting to understand how a part of the business works, daily, is so valuable.

The most significant milestones have been lessons that have led to mindset shifts. For example, I’ve learnt big lessons about Māori–Crown relations and health, safety and wellbeing; both are very relevant to HR.

I went from learning about Māori–Crown relations to realising how much I don’t know, then starting to understand what it means to be ‘of HR’ (and a leader) in Aotearoa New Zealand then actively growing my understanding of te ao Māori, tikanga, te reo Māori and more.

For health, safety and wellbeing, it has been about understanding risk management systems versus people’s lived experience and dynamic risk management. It has also been about appreciating the significance of mentally healthy work and wondering how to move towards a situation where people go home more well than when they arrive at work.

WHAT WERE SOME OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES YOU’VE FACED IN YOUR HR CAREER?

Personally, it’s been hard at times to support leaders through change, especially change I’ve disagreed with the pace of, the process for, or the thinking behind. It’s an ongoing challenge to support leaders to plan with a longer term focus, more as a steward of their service who is looking to leave something in better shape than they found it, than a manager of today’s service. It’s also a challenge getting leaders to see value in spending more time exploring a variety of changes with an open mind and a wide variety of views.

Organisationally, one of my biggest challenges was maintaining employment for a workforce at risk of significant job losses. A workforce I supported was affected by a 95 per cent drop in demand, affecting more than 200 roles. We committed to redeploying as many people as possible, ideally internally but with some external roles, to avoid making anyone redundant. And we did it. For another workforce, it was a challenge to develop a collective agreement for them. For 20 years, it was seen as ‘undoable’. I took on the challenge of running that assumption to ground, and we achieved a collective agreement for that group.

Professionally, both individual and union mediations have been tough: it’s where I’ve seen people who are at their most frustrated, least resilient or, in some cases, broken. Some of the feedback I am most proud of was from a mediator who told me I was one of the best leaders they had seen in action. Knowing they’d seen me in some of the trickiest situations I’ve been in, and where no one else has been watching, was wonderfully reinforcing about being able to be a leader and a nice person.

As an HR specialist, I’m currently challenged by three things: simplifying HR, shifting our models for work and role design, and focusing on operating models and ways of working, not structure charts.

Put simply, with simplifying HR, it could be simplifying the data we collect or how we write employment contracts or how we think about, and enable, leaders to support and manage their people throughout the employee lifecycle.

We also need to shift our models for work and role design. I think we have done wonderfully on flexible working, now’s our chance to challenge our thinking on the more-than-100-year-old average 40-hour work week, which is largely Monday to Friday. And to challenge our thinking about roles as a unit (usually one role equating to 40 hours). To move from remote working to flexion –flexibility and connection –better equipping our leaders to enable work to happen in the best way, not hybrid by default.

I think we also need to focus on operating models and ways of working. Focusing on structure never delivers change or results. People work within operating models and ways of working, not in structures. How do we help leaders to put effort into getting those humming? That’ll drive much greater value than almost any formal management of change.

HOW DO YOU DEVELOP YOUR SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES?

My number one development opportunity is to continually seek diverse views: I spend time listening to others and reading about a lot of different subjects (including tax and social science). This also includes listening to other HR practitioners, public service colleagues, all parts of my organisation and wider New Zealanders’ thoughts and opinions, not all of whom it’s easy to listen to or read about. I think it’s incredibly important to seek to understand others, and I love sifting and sorting new information all the time.

IN HINDSIGHT, ARE THERE ANY DECISIONS YOU WOULD HAVE MADE DIFFERENTLY REGARDING YOUR CAREER?

Yes, I would have backed myself to make more decisions and take more action instead of waiting for someone else to decide or to act. I also would have sought a broader range of views earlier in almost all the work I led or delivered.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE CONSIDERING A CAREER IN HR?

Two things: one piece of advice I’d give anyone considering any decision, like studying something, moving somewhere, or hanging out with someone. Nothing you choose has to be forever. Why not give it a go and, if you don’t enjoy it, change it. Find a leader you’ll learn from and enjoy working for and go for it! The second is specific to HR. Don’t let ‘HR’ keep you in a functional silo, context is critical. Connect widely with people in your business, sector and function and understand what drives them all.

LOOKING AHEAD, WHAT’S YOUR PLAN FOR THE REST OF YOUR CAREER?

I’m not motivated by money, status or job title. I would like to – from within HR or any other leadership role – keep helping people to love their jobs and do great work. I’d like to do that by leading simply and with joy. I’m going to be part of discussions and kōrero, as well as work, that supports wellbeing outcomes for us all in Aotearoa. Including what we leave for future generations.