An accomplished HR professional for over 30 years, Heather has a broad range of experience working across both private and higher education sectors.
Beginning her working life in 1983 for Marks & Spencer as a sales assistant, she progressed on management career path working in both commercial and human resources roles for 23 years. HR became her favoured discipline, and she fulfilled a number of regional HR Manager positions for M&S across the Northwest dealing with all aspects of the HR function from managing store salary budgets to payroll, from recruitment to training and supporting and coaching managers with employee relation issues.
A move to higher education in 2007 was a significant change in sector. Working as a Senior HR Advisor at the University of Cumbria and then moving to Lancaster University as a HR Business Partner gave Heather exposure to the culture and the day to day operating life of an academic institution. Acting as the HR lead supporting Deans of Faculty and Directors of Services her role was to align HR practices with the institution’s goals, helping leaders understand and implement appropriate strategies tailoring them to the needs of the different business units. During this time, she experienced dealing with complex employee relation matters, and gained greater knowledge in job evaluation, organisational design, TUPE, change management programmes, union engagement, conflict management and resolution and policy development.
Heather returned to the private sector in 2015 as Regional HR Manager for Story Homes where she was responsible for the people strategy in delivering a new Northwest region, setting up the HR processes, deliver the workforce plan and recruiting over a 100 office and site staff to resource and service 15 new housing developments across Lancashire.
She then moved to the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) as HR Business Partner and undertook various projects including the HR lead for the organisational design and restructure of academic schools and services, including managing and coordinating voluntary redundancy applications and significant employee and trade union consultation.
Heather has a genuine interest and desire to support people in business. A natural energy and enthusiasm for delivering through building strong relationships at all levels whilst providing focus on delivering practical and compliant HR solutions to meet customer and business needs. Having engaged in consultancy roles over the past 3 years this has enabled her to share her broad and professional expertise in supporting businesses with all aspects of HR.
