Leadership Stories Unveiled: Coleen Highfield
We sat down with Coleen Highfield, Global HR Leader, for the latest instalment of our Leadership Stories Unveiled series.
Coleen, over the past several years at WEX, you’ve operated as a CPO for the International division, leading HR strategy and transformation across 12 countries. When stepping into a multinational, matrixed environment, what are the earliest indicators you look for that tell you whether a people strategy is fit for purpose?
There are several things that I would look for in determining if a global people strategy is fit for purpose, those would include:
How does the people strategy enable the business strategy in different contexts? Many global organisations are made up of smaller businesses or different product lines in different contexts, and each may need something different, so this is a good starting point for review, as a one-size-fits-all approach may not be effective to drive revenue growth in different countries or contexts. It’s a cliché, but think global, act local.
How does the leader and employee experience of the HR strategy/service delivery model impact the business? To understand the business outputs of the people strategy, HR leaders can review the key metrics to get a good feel of whether the strategy is effective. For example;
- How is the business performing against its key metrics?
- What is the attrition rate in different countries/product lines?
- What are the absence rates?
What is the cost in each region of delivering the people strategy, and how does this compare to other functions in the business or competitor? Reviewing the cost of service is a good starting point for identifying whether or not the current people strategy is fit for purpose.
You’ve led the integration of three international acquisitions, managing complex restructures, systems harmonisation, and cultural alignment. In your experience, what are the most underestimated challenges in post-acquisition people integration, and how do you ensure the human element isn’t lost in pursuit of synergies?
This is a great question and, in my experience, the most underestimated people challenges when integrating acquired business and colleagues are (a) the cultural shift required to help acquired colleagues to feel they truly ‘belong’ to their new organisation and (b) the harmonisation lift on things like contracts, terms and conditions, benefits, etc.
These are both underestimated in terms of time, effort and cost and therefore, for anyone managing an integration, I would recommend that these elements are given a lot of thought and planning in advance.
To ensure that the human element isn’t lost in the pursuit of synergies, it is very important that an appropriate budget for achieving the best outcomes is priced into the deal model, so that the transition can be effectively managed.
Finally, significant planning of the time and effort it will take to truly integrate an acquired business is required to ensure a realistic roadmap for success – a buy the assets, hope for the best and move on strategy is unlikely to achieve the deal model metrics.
You led a transformation reducing attrition and boosting engagement whilst achieving substantial cost savings. What’s your philosophy on aligning employee experience with business performance during periods of organisational design or restructuring?
My personal philosophy as a leader is to lead with integrity and honesty to achieve trust, which goes a very long way when managing change. Modern organisations are continuously reshaping themselves to optimise for growth, and therefore, again, it’s another cliché, but change, particularly when it comes to organisational design, is constant.
In my view, the best way to lead through ongoing change is to be as transparent as possible with colleagues and over-communicate. It is important to repeat key messages a number of times to ensure that they are not only heard but understood. Sending an all-company email to communicate an important change, such as restructuring, just doesn’t cut it. Leaders should take accountability for their decisions and be front and centre in explaining the rationale of those decisions to colleagues.
Additionally, it is important that colleagues have a voice and are listened to, so leaders shouldn’t shy away from answering difficult questions. Being honest with colleagues can be uncomfortable, but it does bring significant rewards in terms of trust and co-operation when you are a truly authentic leader.
You’ve held HR leadership roles in highly regulated environments across multiple continents. How do you balance legal and compliance demands with driving cultural agility and local responsiveness?
In my experience, if you manage your business and people function by upholding integrity in its fullest sense, which encompasses always doing the right thing to ensure compliance with all legislation in all jurisdictions, you will be set for success.
Being fully compliant with local legislation and culture in all that you do in a country and remaining ahead of legislative changes are simply a foundation for HR practice in different jurisdictions. To achieve success in this area, a strong partnership between the HR function and the Legal function is critical, and these two functions should partner as one team to avoid any nasty surprises, which usually result in unplanned costs.
When working with senior business leaders who may not initially see HR as a strategic partner, how do you shift the narrative so HR is viewed as a driver of business success rather than a support function?
Often, leaders will see product, sales or technology as revenue levers, and I would challenge leaders to also see talent as a true revenue lever. Therefore, my personal approach is to partner with the leaders of the business to shift the narrative of people from ‘cost’ to ‘growth levers’. Believing that people are a core pillar of your growth strategy shifts the narrative significantly.
Forward-thinking leaders know that talent can unlock revenue growth, and HR leaders who can provide strategies to do so are more effective in helping business leaders achieve their objectives.
At WEX, you helped drive a unifying ‘One WEX’ culture. In your experience, what does it really take to evolve disparate global teams into a unified culture without erasing local identity or values?
Again, this is a great question. Building on my previous comments, I believe bringing disparate cultures together requires openness, transparency, and simply making the effort to talk to colleagues and listen to them.
Engaging employees requires leaders to be respectful of different ways of working in different regions and to develop strategies to ensure that all colleagues can be their best selves in the workplace.
From your early days as a graduate trainee to VP-level roles, how has your personal leadership style evolved, and what’s one leadership lesson that took you the longest to learn but now defines how you lead?
In the earlier part of my career, I was learning to master the craft of HR, and as a leader of teams, I was more focused on how my team were executing tasks rather than the purpose of the work and how it contributed to the business strategy.
However, as I have evolved as a leader, I have come to recognise that each person brings something unique to the team and has unlimited potential. I truly believe that team members come to work to do a good job each day.
With that belief, helping team members unlock their potential by giving my team space and safety to learn from their experiences, including things that may not have gone well, is critical to building a high-performing, resilient team. Combining that with a clear vision of the purpose of the work we are doing, now defines how I lead others.
What originally drew you to a career in HR, and how has your passion for people and organisational development evolved as you’ve taken on more senior and global roles?
My first passion was always business, but I undertook an industrial placement as part of my undergraduate degree at Shell and worked in the HR department there. I was truly inspired by my experience there. I was able to witness at a very early stage in my professional journey just how much as how much difference the people function can make to the business.
This passion and belief have only grown stronger as I’ve taken on more senior and complex roles. The people function is critical to the success or indeed failure of any business, and in my experience, organisations that recognise that and truly take responsibility for their people achieve far greater performance than those that are run primarily through the lens of numbers, spreadsheets and the P&L.
How do you stay current and continuously learn in a field as dynamic as HR, especially with the rapid pace of technological change and evolving workforce expectations?
Again, yet another cliché, but it has never been more important to be a dedicated lifetime learner, simply because the pace of change in the world is accelerating, not decelerating, so as a leader, I see it as my responsibility to keep abreast of the latest developments not only in the people function but also in industry and the world more generally.
Personally, I am a big fan of structured study (because it holds me to account), and I have completed four formal 4 qualifications throughout my career, the most recent being the Chief People Officer Executive Development Programme at Cambridge University (which I would highly recommend).
For those who don’t enjoy structured study, keeping abreast of changes and developments in the people function through attending seminars and webinars is very useful.
I have also found networking and participating in groups that get together to discuss current challenges to be critical to keeping my knowledge and thinking up to date. Learning from others who are thought leaders in a particular space is super helpful.
Finally, another great source of up-to-date thought leadership is podcasts, and for those short on time, you can listen to one whilst you’re getting your steps in or even on the commute to the office.
It is important to prioritise time for ongoing learning as it helps with strategic thinking to have different perspectives on the challenges that we are all facing in the people function.
You’ve successfully implemented a new, AI-enabled global HR operating model. What did you learn about the intersection of technology, change management, and service delivery?
One of my key learnings from several HR transformation projects in different contexts is that knowledge management is key. Documenting key policies and procedures is a game-changer when it comes to implementing technology-enabled tools, as the tools are only as good as the information that they are using to provide outputs. Therefore, managing data and knowledge well can give you a head start on transformation projects. Future-ready HR functions would see this as a given, as we all know that bad data in means bad data out.
The other key learning I have experienced is to be patient and sharpen the tool, as Richard Covey would say. It can be very tempting in agile organisations to keep changing things in the ongoing quest to ‘make things better’, but in my experience, giving time to allow things to bed in really helps with change management. Leaders in today’s world are overwhelmed with the demands placed upon them; therefore, keeping processes as consistent as possible for several cycles helps them to become accustomed to the tools we are asking them to use and become more sophisticated at managing and activating the outcomes those tools provide. Constantly changing things means leaders need to be constantly re-educated, and the behavioural change that you are seeking is less likely to stick.
You’ve had responsibility for talent acquisition, development, and succession across regions. What are the most common pitfalls you see in leadership pipelines, and how have you designed interventions that ensure readiness, not just identification of future leaders?
It’s my philosophy that managing talent is critical to business outcomes, but that requires organisations to understand not only the talent they have today but also the talent they need for the future so that they can not only hire great talent but also build talent internally to future-proof the organisation.
The most common pitfalls I have experienced are succession planning on paper but not in reality, and maintaining the status quo because it is easier and safer for organisations to do so.
Like many talent-focused HR leaders, I have been ‘succession planning’ for many years, but unless those succession plans are truly activated, they are frankly not worth the paper that they are written on. In my view, the identification of potential successors for key roles in the organisation is only the first step in identifying future leaders.
The harder part is getting clear on what skills, knowledge and experience the organisation and potential successors need to have to be truly ready to take on different or more complex roles, but the fun part is that once you are clear on what you need for the future, HR leaders can get creative!
What kind of projects, secondments, or assignments can emerging talent take on to build a broader portfolio of skills? What brave moves can the organisation support, such as moving people into different jurisdictions, job swapping or moving a successful person out of a critical role to make space for someone else to learn? Organisations need to be willing to tolerate some level of discomfort and not just protect the status quo if they are truly willing to develop their talent to be ready for bigger and more complex roles and to future-proof the organisation.
You’ve been deeply involved in multiple restructures, saving millions in operating costs. What’s your approach to leading change in a way that is both financially responsible and emotionally intelligent for those impacted?
For me, a key part of managing restructuring in a fiscally and emotionally intelligent way is to think about the work and where the work goes. It is not helpful at all for those that remain in the organisation if restructuring is approached simply as a cost-out exercise, as the work done by those leaving will still need to be done and is generally distributed to those remaining, creating resentment, confusion and burn-out for the survivors.
I am a huge advocate of work being done in the right place, by the right people at the right price point, and therefore, being thoughtful at the outset of restructuring, not only about the target operating model or organisational design but also about how work is structured so that the organisation can be more efficient, is absolutely critical. This does take more time and more upfront planning, but ultimately will result in better outcomes, such as greater engagement from those that remain, as well as a more efficient organisation.
You’ve operated in high-change, high-pressure environments. How do you personally sustain your resilience and clarity of purpose through long, complex transformations?
For me, there are two things that are critical to sustaining resilience and focus as an executive: (1) forward thinking and (2) health and fitness.
It is an ongoing joke amongst my family and friends that I am super organised, but I find that in thinking about the bigger picture and working backwords to think about what needs to be done in the short, medium and long term not only means that have less ‘fires’ that you have to deal as you are able to anticipate road blocks and manage them proactively but also that you can remain clear about the purpose of the work that you are leading which helps you to lead others through the change.
Personally, I am also very focused on my health and fitness, as being an executive with continuous business travel and working in multiple time zones requires a lot of energy, so ensuring that my health and well-being are well looked after helps me to be resilient. My colleagues will attest to the fact that I’m the one who will opt out early on the work nights out to make sure I can get enough sleep to be sharp and focused for what the next day holds. I am first off the dance floor, not last on it!
Looking back over your career, what’s one career decision or leadership moment that, at the time, felt risky but in hindsight was transformational for your growth or impact?
One of the riskiest decisions I have taken in my career was to take a career break at the pinnacle of my career. After 25 years of non-stop working and climbing the ladder, I decided to take a career break to spend dedicated time with my son and work on some personal projects that I hadn’t prioritised the time to do, but that were important to me.
The uncertainty of not knowing what my next opportunity would be or when I would go back to work was extremely uncomfortable, but taking that time out to recharge and reflect was transformational for my growth as I gave myself the time and space to really reflect on my learnings and experiences to date and make some important changes to my own personal ‘operating model’ that were right for me, for my next chapter.
Taking that short break enabled me to return with much more clarity on how I can add value to an organisation.
From your vantage point, what’s next for HR as a discipline? What will distinguish the next generation of CHROs and international HR leaders from today’s incumbents?
I truly believe that the most effective CHROs of the future are able to enable the business to unleash talent as a growth lever for organisations in the same way that sales, product or technology can.
HR is no longer just about compliance, ER, payroll and performance management. Those are a given.
HR leaders of the future understand that acquiring, growing and retaining the best talent and ensuring they have an environment in which they can be their best selves and operate at the highest levels of performance unleashes growth for organisations. Optimising organisational efficiency through impactful organisational design and the utilisation of technology also enables this.
In a global context, this does require CHROs to have a deep understanding of cultural norms in different parts of the world and a respect for adapting practices to meet the needs of local markets.
With over 25 years of experience, Coleen is an FCIPD-qualified global HR Leader with a strategic and commercial outlook. A true partner to business leaders, Coleen has a track record of adding value by developing and executing HR strategy and customer-focused solutions to enable the business to meet its objectives and drive growth through talent and culture.
