Installation Speech of New Master, Annette Andrews

Thank you, Past Master, it is an honour, to take up the role of Master Elect and, when circumstances allow – be installed, as the 6th Master of the Guild of Human Resource professionals.

Thank you to everyone for joining us this evening. I know this isn’t the installation event that we planned or anticipated, but I think that it is very indicative of the times we are living in.

Let’s just focus on those times for a moment; the pandemic has affected us all in very different ways, but it has impacted all of our lives. It has been, and continues to be, a challenging time for many businesses and individuals. We know that the impact is resonating around the world and is going to be long lasting.

For those that know me well, they will tell you that I am an eternal optimist and believe that out of tragedy and crisis new opportunities will arise. The world will never quite be the same again, but we have also seen how technology, businesses and people practices adapt and make transformative change; highlighting how creative and agile we can be.

Equally, we have to ensure that we keep moving forward, ensuring that employees and their families are supported during these challenging times; we have seen for example wellbeing, environmental awareness, home working all become more important and part of the norm. These changes will continue as we continue to explore hybrid and flexible working practice, and engage as HR professionals with the fairness and equity issues highlighted by people’s very different experiences of the pandemic and its impact.

Equally during these times, we have also seen the changes taking place within Diversity & Inclusion, with Black Lives Matter; been moved beyond words, with people stepping forward to speak from the heart about the changes that have to take place in society globally, and in business.

We have seen our profession, Human Resources, taking a pivotal role with crisis management and now with the rethinking of their businesses; the star has risen for our profession with People, Wellbeing, Culture and Black lives matter being top table discussions. This is actually a defining moment for our profession, we need to make sure that our star remains high in the sky, that that we keep shinning the light on these key topics – time to be known for the strategic thought leadership we can provide and for being integral to the businesses that we are part of. More than ever, our profession needs to be commercial, able to analyse data and use technology to inform the contribution that we make. It is a combination of using our heads and our hearts that builds strong organisations.

Before I summarise what I am going to ask the Guild and its members to focus on during my year in role as Master, I would like to take this opportunity to say a number of thank you’s and welcome’s as this feels like the appropriate moment to reflect on the leadership role that the Guild has taken, and continues to take, during the pandemic.

Firstly, my thanks must go Paul Hucknall as our outgoing Master; not only has Paul been in a key leadership role for a Company based in the City, he has also been our Master, a parent and partner during this time; with all the complexities of schooling and managing dual careers whilst working from home. Our thanks go to him for his leadership during this time, we look forward to continuing to work with him and appreciate his ongoing support & commitment to the Guild.

A huge thank you must go to our clerking team; John and Debbie have as ever kept the wheels of the Guild going behind the scenes. John has been our Clerk since the Guild was established, he is now going to step down from the role and join the Court as a member of the Guild’s leadership team. Thank you John for all the hard work and commitment, all greatly appreciated.

I am pleased to be able to confirm that John is being succeeded in his role by Karen Fulton; Karen takes over in this role with effect from this month and has spent the last few weeks getting to know the team. She is an experienced clerk and we will be sharing her as a Clerk with the Scientific Instrument Makers. We are really looking forward to working with her and I know that she plans to start meeting on an individual basis with all of our members.

Finally, we would like to welcome our new Honorary Treasurer Simon Russell, and to thank Heather Greatrex for her diligence in this role and for her support in setting the Guild up for success.

As some of you may be aware, the succession planning process for Master is an integral part of the way the Guild is managed. As I am moving from Senior Warden to the Master role, I am very pleased to be able to confirm that
Andrea Eccles moves to the role of Senior Warden; Aaron Alburey moves into the role of Middle Warden, and John Renz, our former Clerk, moves into the role of Junior Warden.

The Court is the ‘Board’ for the Guild, we will have a few opportunities becoming available to join the Court; more details to follow but all members of the Guild who would like to become more involved in the leadership of the Guild, and who might even be interested in the role of Master in the longer term, are welcome to apply. I look forward to more members joining the Court, to help continue to grow and develop the Guild.

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate one of our members who has just been recognised with a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list: Siobhan Sheridan, HRD at the UK Ministry of Defence. Many congratulations, fantastic news.

Moving on now to the areas of focus for my time in role as Master of the Guild. At our last event in London prior to Lockdown, our charity dinner; I was talking to the former Lord Mayor, Alderman Sir Peter Estlin about the priorities for 2020/1 and he gave me some very useful coaching (always good for a coach to be coached, so thanks to him for that).

During the lockdown period the Court developed a strategy document for the Guild; this highlights the key areas of focus for the next 3+ years so that we are able to build up our membership and general purpose fund. Both aspects are critical if we are to achieve Livery status, which is the next stage in our development as a Guild.

You may wonder why achieving Livery status is so important. At present, the HR profession is not included in the governance of the City of London, becoming a Livery company would give us this access and a voice. We all know how key Human Resources is to a business; we believe that having HR included, in what is the centre of the UK’s economic activity, is critical to keeping people, employees and our profession at the heart of all the key decisions that are being made. This probably more true now than ever before, due to the leading role our profession has been taking during the pandemic – this leadership role is only going to grow.

So, looking at the strategy, let’s firstly focus on membership: We have made a huge amount of progress with the Guild since its inception, and in many ways the pandemic has brought our membership closer together, increasing the fellowship provided and the opportunities to share our knowledge and expertise.

With thanks to the membership committee, under the leadership of Freeman Andrew Trapnell, the membership process has been simplified and is accessible online via our website. There are different levels of membership; as per other Guild’s – new members need a proposer and seconder from the Guild membership to support their application. The fee payment process is managed by Direct Debit on an annual basis from January 1st, 2021. Going forward, on joining the Guild, new members will be introduced to another member to immediately provide them with a contact going forward and an introduction to the fellowship that we have and want to share.

The membership offering has also been significantly enhanced:

• The Pro bono Committee, led by Lex Verweij, are now involved in a number of significant projects and are also support other Guilds in the City.
• The Charity Trust led by Senior Warden and Freeman Andrea Eccles, continues to grow the charity funds and contribution. I am very pleased to announce at this time that we have just received an award from the Lord Mayor’s Appeal totalling £30,000. The Charitable Trust now stands at £100,000 which is two thirds of the way to achieving company without livery status. Our thanks go to all the work that has gone into this and the ongoing activity.
• The Communications and Events committee, led by Vitaly Zybin, have refreshed our website and LinkedIn page, and are developing a events calendar for our members integrating formal and informal events. During lockdown we have introduced a whatsapp group for our members, a fortnightly zoom call and launched a podcast series. More to follow.
• Our future HR leaders programme, led by Stephen Sidebottom, has been refreshed so that it too can now take place virtually opening it up to a wider audience and reducing the cost of the programme. We are now ready to launch the programme for the next cohort, there is still time to put forward any additional participants so please do reach out to Stephen or our new clerk for details.
• We are going to launch a Mentor programme, so that members of the Guild can either mentor, pro bono, or be mentored. Mentors can support mentees with the particular area of development that they would like to focus on. Mentoring can be traditional, peer or reverse mentoring. The details of the programme will be shared shortly with Chris Woodman taking the lead for us on this initiative.

Our ask of our members is to :

• Actively engage in one of the committee’s; there is plenty of opportunity to get involved, this immediately provides you with regular contact with other Guild members and is an opportunity for you to give back to your profession. Going forward new members will be asked which committee we can immediately connect them too; existing members are asked to let the clerk know which group or groups they would like to support.
• Membership is the Guild’s life blood, how it will continue to develop and grow. We are going to ask that each Guild member introduces at least one new members to the Guild during the next year; this will double our membership.
• Your feedback and input into what more you would like as a member is critical as we continue to develop and grow as a Guild; please do reach out to the clerk and court members with your insights and recommendations.
• If you would like to be a Mentor and support other members of the Guild, and potentially longer term members of other Guilds, Chris Woodman is leading this initiative so please contact him or our new clerk for more information.

Our second area of key focus is our Pro Bono work.

The committee is very active and great progress has been made on building the offering & supporting structure. We will continue the focus on supporting others by using our knowledge and expertise – such as Making the Leap Masterclasses – working with our members to optimise the benefit of our contribution.

We now need to focus on building the charitable funds for the charitable trust. This is essential if we want to achieve Livery status. As per the approach taken by other livery companies, Gift aid is being set up so individual elective monthly gift giving will help us get to the next hurdle. Details of this initiative are due to be launched shortly.

Annette Andrews