On the move

As many will know by now, I’m due to start a new role soon. Here’s my thoughts on what’s happening. 

I’m taking up the role of Associate HR Director at the Disclosure and Barring Service in Liverpool and I start on 1 August. I’m excited by the challenges ahead and it promises to be great for my own development and is a really good opportunity to make a noticeable difference to an organisation that wants to transform itself and sees HR as critical to that transformation and overall journey. 

I joined Trafford College as HR Director since February 2016 and learnt an awful lot in my time there. I shall miss the HR team, who I really enjoyed working with and who are a talented and enthusiastic team who anyone would feel lucky to lead. They are partway through their own transformation and are well placed to see it through. I shall also miss several of the Leadership Team with whom I’d forged good, strong relationships, and I hope to keep in touch. 

That was also where I was lucky to undertake my Personal Trainer qualification, which will be the subject of a separate blog, and I can highly recommend that particular course and the staff involved in teaching it. My PT qualification is 99% complete with just one assessment left and that’s to be done next week. It’s been a great learning experience.

But there comes a time in any role when it’s time to move on, and it has been an interesting time leading HR within Further Education, a sector which has its own share of challenges and many from an HR perspective. 

Just as when I left my role before this one, I thought long and hard about going self employed / freelance, something I have blogged my thoughts on before HERE. I had the same debates with myself again and reached pretty much the same conclusions, although confess I got closer this time than previously. 

I still want to work within an organisation, with a team around me, and help to change and improve people, processes and organisations from the inside. I still feel I’ve got a major contribution to make to organisations as an employee and as a senior HR leader. I know I can make things better. 

And that’s what I’m doing from 1 August. 

Let’s get started. 

Till next time. 

Gary

Ps in other news, I turned 42 today. I remember my Dad turning 42 and he finished work at that age through ill health, so me getting to this age and about to start a new role has made me quite reflective on where I’m going and so on. I wouldn’t mind retiring at age 42 though…