Natalie Macinnis calls for HR to be seen as a 'strategic partner at the table'
Talent acquisition and management changes from person to person, industry to industry but overall, there needs to be greater collaboration between the C-Suite and people managers, according to the Head of Human Resources at Travelex. 
“Across New Zealand – and Australia to an extent – people view HR as an administrative function, and you go to that function when you have a problem, and you need someone to solve it. We need to start being seen as a strategic partner at the table,” Natalie Macinnis told HRD.
“We aren’t quite there yet, but there are lots of organisations that accept the high amount of education and experience that’s around and are allowing them to help provide a different perspective to problems.”
But how is that done? Macinnis – who has a career spanning over 20 years — said it’s down to the use of AI to enable People and Culture departments to support leaders of today and the future.
“AI and technology is golden for strategic workforce planning – but it’s not a magic wand that can fix everything. We need to pay attention to how we can harness this technology as it becomes available and evolves over time to help us do our job and take away from of the menial, less enjoyable tasks.”
“By training and supporting leaders to work alongside the likes of AI, we’re able to make the people and culture space better,” Macinnis added.
Unlike most, Macinnis told HRD that her transition into HR wasn’t conventional, having started off in the financial services sector before she “fell into” the profession while completing her degree at Deakin University.
“I started as an accountant before realising I really didn’t like it – so I went into recruitment where I stayed for 21 years and worked for a few very large organisations. I wanted to move into HR to broaden what I was doing, having run teams of people in the past.”
When she got the opportunity to move to Vodafone into a generalist HR role, Macinnis said she hasn’t really looked back.
“I then had the opportunity to focus more on managing projects and change the ways businesses were approaching their strategy overall,” she added.
Macinnis moved into roles focusing on building capability initiatives and readiness within teams following this – rolling out things such as digitalisation and 5G.
Throughout her career, she has worked for organisations such as Vodafone Australia and Optus, before moving to Travelex in March 2022. It was here, Macinnis said, that she was able to play an integral part of a people management strategy by rebuilding post-COVID.
“My focus was how do we grow and rebuild an organization that was quite impacted due to the restriction of travel and people not needing foreign currency. I think I'm very much what you would call a situational learner. I never really thrived in a university environment. What I enjoy most is going into an environment and learning.”
In a career spanning different sectors and disciplines, Macinnis told HRD the one thing she would change in the industry is increased collaboration with other in the C-Suite, which is something Travelex is already beginning to work towards.
“If a leader comes to me and my team with a problem, we will take that away and then come back with some ideas, guidance and direction. I think the key thing from a people and culture perspective is that we lean on one another.”
“No one person in the room, whether you're the finance director, whether you're the head of people, whether you're the head of sales, no one is singularly going to have that one answer,” Macinnis added.
A report from CFO highlights Natalie’s sentiment – describing success not being built solely on numbers, but people.
“Traditionally, CFOs have been the “left-brain” leaders of the business world — deeply analytical, grounded in logic and focused on financial rigor and business outcomes. CHROs, conversely, have occupied the “right-brain” space, where empathy, culture and people-centric strategy reign”, the report states.
