Trust your instinct, says HR star

By VICKI JAYNE

If there's one thing that 26 years in the business has taught Vodafone's director of human resources, Jan Mottram, it's to "go with your gut instinct".

Her worst recruitment decisions have been those where she let reason overrule a deep-down feeling that someone wasn't right for a job.

"You can put a tick in all the boxes but that gut-feel one," she says.

"And if you do recruit someone who is not a good fit with the organisation, it tends to be a case of marry in haste, repent at leisure. It can be incredibly hard to remove them."

And her most effective HR initiatives have also grown from an instinctive sense of rightness, like the journey towards turning Vodafone into a values-based organisation.

Roughly speaking, that's an outfit where internal and external policies, decisions or directions can be lined up against a consistent set of agreed values.

"When we made that decision, we didn't spend a lot of time rationalising, analysing, or doing a business case for it," she says.

"It was just the right thing to do. And that's about trusting your gut instinct and making decisions based on what feels right."

Having more trust in her own instinct is part of being older and wiser, says 50-year-old Mottram. And if recent industry accolades are any judge, she's hitting her stride.

Vodafone NZ's success means her advice is now being sought by the company's international community, and she recently became the first recipient of the Human Resource Institute of New Zealand's HR person of the year award.

This kind of recognition helps vindicate her approach that HR is not just the "toilets and teatowels" department, but a business partner around the board table.

That is where she sits, and why she has been able to help create competitive advantage for the company through its people culture, she says.

"I think the great thing about Vodafone for me is that mine is not the only voice championing the people side of the business. There is a genuine belief that the way we are going to compete in the market is by being different, and the thing that makes the difference is the people."

Technology gains are too quickly replicated, says Mottram. Competitive advantage gained through company culture is a lot more enduring.

With her easy warmth, direct manner and air of casual but business-like elegance, Mottram in many ways characterises the new face of HR - people-centred but business-focused.

It is professional without losing a sense of fun, strategic without losing track of everyday operational needs, and encouraging without being paternalistic.

The organisational model she has helped to create at Vodafone is an inclusive one which knits people values into business needs in such a seamless way that employees feel they are the company.

Mottram relates with obvious delight a recent incident highlighting that sense of identification.

An external safety auditor was prompting a panel of Vodafone employees to name the third entity in the safety partnership of ACC, Vodafone and ... who?

The answer was employees - but the employees didn't get it.

It was funny to watch, says Mottram, because the auditor saw the company and employees as being two different entities and the reaction from the employees was: "But we are Vodafone."

That was a real buzz, says Mottram, "because it's something you can't contrive".

It also highlights the huge changes that have affected her chosen industry over the past 2 1/2 decades. Not that she exactly chose it.

When British-born Mottram graduated from Bristol University in 1974 with a degree in microbiology, HR as such did not exist.

No one did degrees in pure psychology and even one in economics would have been regarded as a bit suspect. A degree was more a passport to join a company than a vocation in itself.

Her accidental entry into HR actually came via an interest in food. That prompted her to join a British catering company as a trainer. From there it was a fairly obvious move to personnel and the die was cast.

She moved Downunder with her NZ-born husband in 1976 and now lives with him, two cats and a goat on a lifestyle block north of Auckland.

After stints with General Motors, DFC and the Digital Equipment Corporation, she joined BellSouth/Vodafone in July 1992.

Since then, she and the company have pretty much grown together.

The first thing Mottram did was put in a wide range of HR systems and policies more suited to a much larger organisation. Vodafone grew to fit. The company now has 1200 employees and is still expanding.

The best advice she would give today's new HR practitioners is get to know the business.

"That means getting a good handle on how the organisation interacts with its customers.

"For me, a great HR person would really understand what the customer proposition is; what is it that the organisation or business is trying to deliver to the customer; and therefore what kind of culture you need to make that happen.

"That should be the focus for HR programmes rather than one of compliance with various rules and regulations. It is not much more complicated than that. I think people make HR overcomplicated."

Not that it's easy. Dealing with basic "human stuff" - the common foibles, frailties and personality collisions you get in any community - is never a doddle.

Probably the toughest calls for Mottram are the value-fit failures. People may perform okay but rub uncomfortably up against a value system where fun is important, clothing is casual and self-accountability the norm.

That's one reason Mottram urges caution in trying to transfer HR initiatives that work well in one company to another. Each piece of the puzzle has to be consistent with the cultural whole.

"You have to have that alignment between policy initiatives and overall culture."

* vjayne@iconz.co.nz