Revealed: NZ's hottest HR leaders

The HR professionals mentioned on this year’s Hot List have demonstrated an ability to engage with people, and convince others of the value of their ideas and initiatives.

Anyone who has worked in HR in any capacity can tell you of the difficulties faced as part of the process. 

It doesn’t matter how brilliant their ideas are, there are stakeholders who will object, both internal and external.

The ability to unite and drive an idea from fruition through to completion is a powerful skill indeed.  

Another recurring theme among their notable achievements involves being people-centric experts with strong business acumen.

Under their leadership, they drove cultural and digital transformation across the organisation, leaving impact on the local, regional, as well as global level.

For 2020, HRD has chosen to recognise:

Jo Copeland
GGM People & Culture
Douglas Pharmaceuticals
Jo Copeland joined Douglas Pharmaceuticals (an international business with 760 staff)18 months ago.  The company has recently been through an enormous period of growth (doubling in size in four years) and it was time for the HR practices to evolve.  At that time, the business had a small largely administrative HR function that was good at managing ER issues but that was about it. In the last twelve months, Copeland and her team have established the Douglas Learning Academy, developed a strong employment brand, reimagined policies and contracts, introduced a wellbeing program and introduced a continuous learning tool. Consequently, the People & Culture team is now one of the most engaged teams in the business (engagement at 90%) and engagement across the company has gone from 76% to 84%. Copeland has a very simple philosophy for HR: Be kind; and Do the right thing (no matter what).

Diane Edwards
General Manager People, Foresight and Innovation
Ports of Auckland
Diane Edwards is a leader who has paved the way for women in her industry. The first women to ever hold an Executive position at the Port (in over 178 years), she has become a role model for other women who credit her with giving them to confidence to aspire to senior management roles in an industry not known as female friendly.  In the last eight years, female representation on the Executive has gone from one (herself) to now four.  Moreover, 28% of management roles are filled by women and 67% of high potentials are female. Currently the General Manager People, Foresight and Innovation at the Ports of Auckland (POAL), she led the organisational redesign and transformation processes that helped change the culture and practices on Auckland’s waterfront. When Edwards arrived at POAL in 2011, it had the lowest productivity of any port in Australia and was not making cost of capital. By 2015, POAL ranked top in productivity across the entire Asia Pacific region on many measures.

Alan Davis
Deputy Vice-Chancellor (People and Culture)
Massey University
Alan Davis is a mentor to many. With his caring, empathetic and values-based leadership style, he inspires members of his People and Culture team to continually strive to make a difference in the lives of those whom they support. As an industry leader, Davis specialises in HR strategy development, mediation, employment investigation, and executive coaching. He also fosters a culture of innovation. In the past five years that Massey University has been upgrading its suite of HR tools, Davis has been the main force driving the university’s digital transformation initiatives and sustaining its momentum. Apart from his focus on technology, he also puts an emphasis on wellbeing in the workplace and encourages his staff to cultivate their personal and team values. As a mentor, he provides weekly enhancements to members of the People and Culture team. His commitment to growth and development has left a positive effect on the people he works with.

Belinda Allan
Head of People Culture & Safety
Ceres Organics
Belinda Allan is an HR professional passionate about building great workplaces using culture as the vehicle for engagement. Since joining Ceres as the first HR professional in the business in 2016, Allan has been able to take the philosophy of putting the health of people and the earth at the heart of it all and translated this into a strong purpose and mission-led culture for the business. She has also led the internal focus on health and wellbeing at work, which naturally improves safety incident performance. Allan is empowering the workforce to protect themselves day to day through proactive health management. A great culture and a healthy workforce result in high performance attendance and engagement, great participation and inclusion and strong cultural alignment. Allan, as a leader in her field, has been a key contributor to the growth and success of Ceres.

Ryan Ghisi
GM, Global People Programs
Xero
As General Manager of Global People Programs, Ryan Ghisi manages Xero’s global initiatives, including its graduate program, mobility program, workforce planning, people systems, reporting and analytics. Ghisi believes in empowering staff to do the best work of their lives by underscoring the value of being human – an idea that is ingrained in the culture and lexicon of Xero. For Ghisi, it is about belonging, being yourself, and bringing your own perspective. With the HR team renamed to People Experience, Xero is committed to mapping out a great employee journey and has made it one of its top strategic objectives. As an HR leader, Ghisi’s own approach is to support the staff who, in turn, provide excellent products and services to customers. Engaging with employees and ensuring there is ongoing feedback have been critical to the success of the people initiatives at Xero, and Ghisi has been at the forefront of this development.

Roz Urbahn
Chief People Officer
LIC
Roz Urbahn has overseen a significant focus on turbocharging the people strategy at LIC forward over the last 12 months. Well Aware is a centralised health and wellness strategy incorporating physical, mental and social wellbeing.  The flagship initiative under the Well Aware banner has been the rollout of mental health awareness workshops, Mental Wellbeing at Work. They have also launched a Diversity Policy, run focus groups, had speakers on the topic and have been establishing a Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Another great initiative is the New leadership development programme which was launched successfully for people identified as having potential and aspiration to take on a leadership role. This used a blend of internally developed online training modules and face-to-face group workshops. Senior leaders in the business were used as speakers for these workshops to talk about their leadership journey.