'I wanted to own the local cake shop… now I've got my heavy rigid driver's licence'

“I’ve got a special question in interviews,” Jane Humphreys, executive vice-president of people and culture at Volvo Group Australia, tells HRD. “I invite people to tell me what their one superpower is.”

Most people pause, she says. And who wouldn’t? What happens next is crucial…

“It forces them to think about the impact they have on people – what’s their differentiator. You can pick pretty quickly a cookie-cutter response from an authentic one.”

With about 600 staff in head office and another 600 at the plant, Humphreys recruits around 250 people each year, with a significant blue-collar component. She’ll always hire for attitude over skill and capability, she says. “That’s proven to be a good strategy in recent times.”

Some workers have been at the firm for decades – “They ‘bleed blue’, as we say” – and Humphreys’ job is to balance freshness and innovation with a culture of tradition.

Manufacturing stalwart in Australia

The Volvo and Mack trucks on Australian roads are made in Wacol, Queensland.

“It’s a source of great pride that those two brands are fully made locally,” Humphreys says. “It could be Brisbane’s best kept secret.”

The mainstream auto industry in Australia has largely shut down, following closures of Holden and Toyota in 2017, Ford in 2016 and Mitsubishi in 2008. That makes it harder to find qualified and skilled workers.

“We tend to be very fortunate that once the guys and girls are in the business, they tend to stay,” Humphreys says. “But we’ve got to think differently and make sure we have a value proposition that accommodates.”

Volvo, like all auto brands, is undergoing a significant transition to electrification.

“Having a fantastic cohort of diesel mechanics is one thing, but do we have the right skills and capabilities to build electric vehicles into the future? That’s an entirely different skill set,” says Humphreys.

It’s no time to stand still. The company is working with technical institutes to get an idea of courses needed to ensure supply of skilled workers.

 “An electric truck or an electric bus is an entirely different proposition versus diesel,” she says.

Manufacturing meets commerce at Volvo

The Volvo factory floor is a melting pot of 42 nationalities. Women make up 19% of the payroll, with about a dozen female technicians and apprentices “coming through the pipeline,” says Humphreys.

It’s a job in and of itself letting the world know the industry can accommodate females.

“I recently got my heavy rigid driver’s licence,” she says. “I’m out on the road driving these beautiful, big machines, just to show it’s not a blue-singlet [job] anymore. It’s something everyone can do.”

Manufacturing is different from commerce, with some very long tenures, and Humphreys admits it took a little while to adjust.

“What I’ve come to learn is because of the size and span of the organisation – 150,000 people globally, in 52 different jurisdictions – people join and have genuine multipath careers within the Volvo group,” she says.

Humpheys’ boss, Volvo Group Australia president Martin Merrick, started as a diesel mechanic 37 years ago. “Career pathways across the full enterprise are what make people stay,” she says. “They can reinvent themselves over and over.”

Learning and development is complemented with programs out of the Volvo Group University, in Gothenburg, Sweden. In Australia, a leadership development framework is offered and an academy model is in development, with streams for leadership, sales, commercial and technical.

Leading employee value proposition through HR

As at any global organisation, Humphreys must deal with a few layers of governance.

“There are a lot of stakeholders involved in most decisions,” she says. “It forces you to slow down and make sure you are making the right decision for the right reasons.”

The rise in inflation since 2022 has put the focus on real wages growth. Humphreys says Volvo Australia pays around the 75th percentile, which has sparked some challenges.

“We’ve stuck true to our remuneration framework,” she says. “What we’ve gotten better at is making sure we [emphasize] the value proposition around the edges: ‘How do we incentivise people differently? What are the non-economic or non-financial benefits of working for a brand like ours?’”

A little bit of churn experienced when inflation was near zero and salaries were “going through the roof” was followed by what Humphreys describes as a “boomerang effect”, where departed workers returned for “the family environment and what the brand represents”.

“The cultural footprint, the DNA of the place, is something that’s very, very powerful.”

Leading HR: ‘The psychology of people in business’

HR has changed a lot over the years as well, she says, with people and culture teams taken far more seriously.

“It’s fantastic to see the trajectory the industry is on,” she says. “Gone are the days where P&C was considered the problem-solving department. In big enterprise, we are seeing P&C roles reporting directly to the CEO or equivalent. We’ve got a seat at the table now.”

It’s a winding road that led Humphreys to HR. “I wanted to own the local cake shop,” she says, having started work with a masters in organisational psychology before finding “the psychology of people in business” really appealed.

“I’m energised by that combination of having a commercial mindset but also loving the craft of seeing people and organisations perform at their best,” Humphreys says. “I love the science of understanding how organisations function, how structures work – or don’t work.”

An early job writing psychometric reports at a consultancy led to a role in rehabilitation of people following psych issues or illness. Then it was off to brewer Lion Nathan, logistics firm Aurizon, airline Virgin Australia and the Queensland University of Technology.

“Planes, trains, beer and higher education – and I had some babies in there as well, which is always important,” she says.

Considering her tenure, does Humphreys have anything to share with other HR folk? Indeed, she does, recalling a stretch of significant organisational change at a tech company inflicted by the pandemic.

“We made that hang together simply through constant, consistent and trusted communication with our people,” she says. “If we had answers to questions, me made sure they knew about it. If we didn’t, we were honest about that as well.

“Communicate, communicate, communicate … and if you think you have communicated enough, go another round. That’s when you get the cut through.”