There have been few moments in Harvey Francis’ career which haven’t featured change of one kind or another.
Involved with organisations where restructuring was part and parcel of working life, moving between sectors as opportunities emerged and offers made, he now has an executive position at Skanska, where he helps to lead a company working in a challenging environment.
It seems a far cry from his initial roles in retail. Beginning in a store management training programme he worked as a buyer at a Canterbury department store, until he decided he would combine his passion for music with his work and switched to run a Virgin record store. In retrospect he admits this ended up being somewhat chaotic and unstructured, although successful, and it also taught him that working for your passion wasn’t always the best thing to do: “A hobby and work are two separate things,” says Francis. “I exhausted my passion for music as I was listening to it for 9 hours a day.”
He joined the House of Fraser as a departmental head and was promoted to assistant store manager. He then moved on to BT who at the time had a high street retail presence. Francis managed the company’s Southampton store – which enjoyed the highest turnover in the chain – and in doing so also took responsibility for training other branch managers.
This led to a more structured national role to help shape training across the business. At the time training took place at the company’s Stockport centre but this arrangement was seen as being detrimental to diversity in the business as some courses required participants to stay in the centre for two weeks. Francis’ role was therefore to devolve training activities making them more accessible but still consistent. This, then, was Francis’ first contact with an HR oriented role.
Indeed it was then a project manager within HR who identified a vacancy for Francis: ”I thought it would be enjoyable and something else for the CV,” he admits, “I thought I’d do it for a year and then move back to operations.” However, regular restructuring and new initiatives kept Francis busy with new challenges and projects to manage. From Investors In People to developing a coaching programmes to managing reward and head count, Francis’ work continued to help develop the business, identifying new ways of doing things and making them happen.
Francis then moved to Pfizer with a clear HR position and agenda. He took part in a global HR team which created a HR tech system to cover international markets, ultimately delivering across more than a hundred countries.
Back in the UK he implemented an Ulrich model of HR for the company, defining business partner roles and establishing shared services for the business. Perhaps unsurprisingly his work earned him internal recognition and an award for change management.
