‘We put people at the core of what we do every single day’

When the HR Awards New Zealand returned as an in-person event last week, Douglas Pharmaceuticals’ people and culture team took home the award for HR Team of the Year > 500.

“We put people at the core of what we do every single day,” general manager of people and culture, Ceri Rowland, said after accepting the award.

“Whether it’s wellbeing initiatives, benefits or remuneration, or even the way in which we approach performance and employment relations issues we really do put people first and that ultimately leads to great commercial outcomes for us as well.”

The entire philosophy of her team, people, and culture “is that happy healthy people deliver sustainable high-performance,” said Rowland, who added her “whole team is jumping for joy” after receiving the award.

“We’re just thrilled! It’s really lovely to be acknowledged for all the hard work and the passion and the drive that this team shows every single day to make a positive impact.”

HRD’s HR Manager of the Year recently talked about focusing on EX design.

‘Challenge ourselves’

When asked if she could change one thing about HR, Rowlands told HRD: “Everything should be lead with context as opposed to policy or black and white rules.”

People get very caught up in knowing what they should do in every scenario and having one rule for different scenarios, she said.

“If we can challenge ourselves to look at everyone and every situation in its own context and respond to that, I think we would be much better human resources and people and culture practitioners overall.

“I don’t think there’s a silver bullet, but I think if we put people at the core of what we do, we will win every time.”