Speaker’s corner – Will Serle

Will Serle is the group human resources director at Amec Foster Wheeler, a large engineering and project management company employing some 36,000 people in markets such as oil and gas, mining, environment and infrastructure and clean energy in more than 55 countries. He is also speaking at the Utility Week HR Forum.

I have spent nearly all my working life in HR, joining a hotel company straight from university where I traded 80 hour weeks and miserable pay for fantastic experience. I have been working in the natural resources and energy sector for the last 22 years, 16 of which have been with my current company.

As a kid, I was keen on the idea of running my own business – I always had some plan for making money – everything from breeding and selling rabbits, to earning money through buying and selling used school text books. During a placement year at university it became clear to me that the differentiation in any business was through its people and that HR was an area where poor leadership and execution was prevalent.

It is a sad thing to say but I am often disappointed by the quality of debate and business leadership during HR forums. It seems that many of the people I meet are still obsessed with arguments from the 1980s about whether HR is seen as a strategic partner, where HR reports or (my personal most hated) “HR has a seat at the table”. In my view, if the HR leader has a good understanding of the business challenges, sees themselves and their function as part of the business, has a clear plan that adds value, and delivers, then all of these things just sort themselves out.

I think HR has improved significantly over the last 20 years, although there are times when I think our thought leadership needs to be much stronger than it is. I would take the example of diversity, which is something I feel passionate about. I have five sisters so have never really understood why some people in society feel the need to treat men and women differently, although I am convinced they do. That said, I think as a function we need to expand the diversity and inclusion discussion. Too often the debate is seen solely as a gender one which, although critical, is not the only issue.

I would go back to business thinking. Why is diversity important to your organisation? In fact I would argue diversity is pretty pointless without inclusion, which is where the value is. We were very clear about this in Amec Foster Wheeler when we really started thinking about it a couple of years ago.

We did not start with metrics for success. Instead we said we wanted to understand the business benefit, which was a complete no brainer – access to the best people, the best ideas, quality of debate and decisions, better work environment and so on. Then we wanted to have a common definition of what diversity and inclusion meant to us. For us that meant we did not focus on just recordable or visible metrics of diversity, but instead focussed on all the elements that make our people what they are.

Lastly, we wanted people to start talking about it – everything from town halls and team meetings to blogs and yammer chats. The difference has been significant and it is our view that the company is the better for it, although there is a long way to go.

Will Serle is speaking at the Utility Week HR Forum in Birmingham on 13 September.

For more information, visit: www.uw-hr.net