Leashley Arrowsmith

A leadership role partnering all the corporate functions to develop effective people plans to attract, retain and develop talent. Also, accountable for the delivery of corporate specialisms including Reward, D&I and Gateway Programmes.

• Business Partner for the EMT and functional Directors to support Finance, IT, Sales & Solutions, Strategy and Company Secretariat functions.
• Successfully led on the acquisition and integration of the Invar business (circa 130 colleagues with a revenue of circa 50 million for FY25.)
• Successfully led the acquisition of technology owned by Zeus and the establishment of a support agreement to enable Wincanton to deliver is own fully managed digital transport solution.
• Provided strategic HR leadership to aid the development of the Finance Transformation operating model and strategy.
• Supported the Head of Reward and Head of D & I to formulate plans for FY25.
• In collaboration with the CPO leads, champions, and drives the business agenda on diversity and inclusion across all levels of the business, promoting Wincanton’s commitment to D&I.

Accountable for the delivery of the People Shared Service team (circa 72 colleagues) who are responsible for all employee lifecycle activity including onboarding new starters, employment changes, leavers and Payrolling of 20,000+ colleagues. In addition, the function is responsible for system support, including developing and optimising applications.

• Accountable for creation and updates of all company people policies.
• In conjunction with the People Director - Operations, successfully led the transformation of the People Operations model in readiness for the implementation of Oracle cloud (HR, Finance, Procurement and Payroll modules), achieving a reduction in 20 net heads.
• Partnering the Operational People teams to agree the service delivery model and service levels to ensure customer satisfaction.
• Led of the restructure of People Services function in readiness for the Go-Live of the new HRIS, including forming a new support desk and payroll team and winning the hearts and minds of the team to work in line with the improved ways of working.
• Successfully, managed the exit of our third-party supplier, Zellis, working with procurement and finance to agree a short-term extension to de-risk the programme
• Led the team through two challenging stages of hyper care for the implementation of Oracle cloud ensuring that the impact to our operations and colleagues was kept to a minimum
• Accountable for ensuring that all people and payroll data was cleansed before the implementation of Oracle cloud.

HR lead for one the business units in the Retail Consumer division of Wincanton, circa 5000 employees, working collaboratively as part of the Business Unit Director’s leadership team to run the operation effectively and support business growth.

• Leading all ER, IR and TUPE activity.
• Produced and presented monthly metrics and reports to the EMT.
• Coached and supported managers to think strategically and have plans in place to enable people development, talent management and succession planning.
• Partnered the operational teams, senior management, and the customer to develop people strategies in line with business objectives such as the annual pay strategy.
• Effectively built working relationships with recognised trade unions, ensuring that a good industrial relation climate was maintained
• Developed and delivered plans to improve engagement, reaching an increase of 0.3+
• During the pandemic, working with our union partners furloughed over 800 colleagues within a two-week period in order to avoid redundancies during the pandemic without any grievances, industrial disputes or ET’s being raised.

A HR leadership role partnering the Managing Director and leadership team of the largest division, Extra Care (c 2500 employees) to develop and deliver its people strategy ensuring best use of its investment due to it being a not-for-profit organisation.

• Led a large program of work to transform the organisational design of the care division to improve service quality and successfully reduce turnover by 5%, this included a restructure of each care scheme.
• Developed and delivered people plans in partnership with the senior management team to meet corporate objectives.
• Successfully worked with the central recruitment to improve onboarding times, improving the average 6 months attrition rate.
• Improved the working relationship with the trade union, resolving historical, long standing dispute of terms and conditions.
• Improved the engagement and communication with off line colleagues working in care through the launch of an interactive intranet platform.
• Led on a project to consolidate and standardise premiums and introduce a new pay structure to pay more competitively within the market and reduce turnover by 5%.

HR Partner for two towers (c1200 employees) within IT Services Ltd; working with the leadership team to design and deliver a people plan to improve turnover and employee engagement.

• Led the project to implement a policy and process to support Shared Parental Leave across the Capita Group in line with the introduction of the legislation.
• Successfully supported the business in a large-scale restructure to introduce a tower model structure to enable clearer areas of accountability in achieving business performance within timescales and on budget.
• Led the consultation and integration of a four incumbent, complex TUPE transfer including the integration of employees from local government.