Five Minutes With...Bruce Ross-Adams, executive general manager HR, at St Ives Group

How would you sum up HR professionals?
Constantly struggling to find their place on an equal footing with their peers.
 
What is the best advice you’ve ever been given?  
Have some fun, take a long view – “Illegitimi non carborundum” is a mock-Latin aphorism meaning, "Don't let the b’s grind you down”!
 
What are some of the biggest challenges that HR deals with? 
Building credibility, communicating who we are and where we are going – and then doing it. Doing what we say we will do, when we said we would do it.
 
How do you see the role of HR changing in the future? 
Leadership, engagement, technology solutions, and becoming more connected – increasing skill requirements, become business people who can communicate the value outcomes of investment in people.
 
What’s your favoured style of coffee? 
Boring – flat white, one sugar
 
If you could invite three people to dinner, dead or alive, who would that be and why? 
Nelson Mandela – the resilience,  Ghandi – the vision,  Penny Flett – a friend and leader who truly cares about the aged care industry and the people in it.
 
Complete this sentence: If I wasn’t in HR, I’d be...
Avising and consulting to leaders about how to do better with their people and HR. They are both equally challenging but in different ways.