“Don’t let fear hold you back. Just because people are in positions right at the top of the company doesn’t mean that they’re superhuman, they’ve just decided to cure the fear by doing it anyway.” – Kelly Jackson, Chief People Officer at Luno, speaks to us about developing a career in HR Leadership.
As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, we’ve invited some HR
Leaders to share the secrets of their success.
This week, we had a great conversation with Kelly Jackson at Luno, who began her HR career working as
an HR Advisor for Experian QAS UK before moving on to Stemcor to ascend the ranks there, transitioning from Head of Business Partnering to Director of HR in July 2013. In November 2014, Kelly joined the team at WorldFirst, now part of the Alibaba Group, adding responsibilities as Chief People Officer to her existing role as Group HR Director in September 2017. In August 2019, Kelly took on her current role at Luno.
Can you tell us how you got into HR and why?
I joined Experian QAS pretty much straight from university, having no real idea about what I wanted to do, but joined them because I liked how they described their culture and values, and track record of promoting people from within. I was originally a Sales Coordinator for the Telesales team, and I loved the banter of the team! Fortunately, I also had a very supportive boss, who after about six or seven months in the role encouraged me to look around the business, speak to people to find out about their careers, and see if anything interested me. When I did that, I found that the HR team were the most interesting to me, partly because I’m quite nosy! I like knowing what’s going on within the business, and the HR team is a good way to do that. I’d also done a psychology degree, and the blend of knowing everything that’s going on and having an influence on the people in the business while using my understanding of how people think and work from my degree meant that HR was my natural home.
joined the HR team to set up their Recruitment function, which was quite a specialist role that I felt it was too early in my career to stick with for long. When an opportunity came up, I moved into more generalist HR, and I’ve continued in the People space because I enjoy knowing that the work I was doing was having an impact on the success of the business. I love being able to make a difference to how people experience work, and I’m still really passionate about that now. I think that if companies get it right, they can unlock an awful lot more passion and achieve more amazing things than they could by sticking to “the ways things have always been done”.
Even at the start of my career I understood that People teams could have a level of influence on how
people felt about their jobs and the company, as well as seeing the satisfaction that came from knowing
people were having fun! I like people as well, but I’ve always known that you don’t go into HR if you want to be liked back—that’s the number one rule. Don’t go into HR for popularity, but if you like people and you’re curious about how they show up and behave and what you can do that might change that, then it’s a really interesting place to be, especially right now.
Can you tell me about the key themes and challenges that you’re seeing across the HR sector?
Within the last two companies I’ve had roles with, my career has been about scaling businesses working
with the founder CEO, which is a really interesting challenge. In terms of what Luno specifically is facing at the moment, our biggest opportunity relates to designing what our future ways of working will look like in a post pandemic world. COVID has of course presented most businesses with a unique and unexpected set of challenges, but also an acceleration of the flexibility that people have now become accustomed to and want. That’s a really big but exciting challenge, because at the moment remote working seems to be effective, but a lot of that is perhaps because everyone is forced into it. When people do want to go back into the office for those social connections or collaborative spaces, or just to get a change of scenery, that’s when you can quickly get yourself back into a position where the hybrid model doesn’t work so well because you haven’t deliberately designed it to.
Another area we constantly look at is whether our employee experiences and systems are fit for
scale—finding a way to take the our culture and practices that worked with 100 people and adapt them so that they will work with nearly 400 Lunauts and are scalable beyond that too.
We’re also focusing heavily on leadership and leadership identity—establishing what a Luno leader looks
like, how they show up for their teams, and what they need to do and understand in their role, especially
now through the lens of a business that was always global but has the added complexity of being fully
remote. We need to support them in navigating leadership in the way it is needed today and specifically find a way for them to build the same intensity and trust in remote relationships there as they have with
someone who might be sat opposite them.
Once we establish that, it’s about passing that knowledge and those skills onto managers in a very different way than just the normal classroom-based training, which can quickly be forgotten especially if it isn’t relevant to them at the time. So, we have introduced a ‘micro-learning’ approach. We do fortnightly learning sprints with smaller groups of managers where we focus on a particular area for one hour a week in the hope that the information is digestible, relevant and more importantly, focused on conversation between the managers, and the learning they get from each other as peers.
At Luno, I genuinely believe we have very progressive People policies. We have recently changed our
Family Leave policy to be more inclusive than the traditional models of maternity and paternity leave by
introducing one policy which offers the same provision for all staff who are starting families, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or how children are brought into their family. It’s the ability to bring in policies like that that I love about Luno, and my wish for all companies is that people are brave enough to question existing policies and change them if they are ‘just the way things have always been done’ when that’s not the way the future has to be. People can derive such a sense of self-worth from work that it’s up to companies to create environments where that sense of self-worth and pride can grow rather than work feeling like a relentless grind.
What career advice would you offer to someone either working towards a career like yours, or someone just getting started in their HR career?
My own career has been a fairly rapid series of steps forward, but I’m not sure I would suggest that that’s
the best way to do it! I often get a touch of imposter syndrome because I haven’t had that training that you get in a larger company where you master lots of different areas and then work your way up. I wouldn’t change it now, but it certainly feels like I’m learning as I go a lot of the time.
My first piece of advice would be to find a company whose values align with your own, because it’s really
miserable if you don’t. Once you do, you are much more likely to be motivated to go above and beyond and get involved, to do different projects and put your hand up for opportunities. I would also say that if you’re looking to take the next step up in your career, you absolutely can do it. If you look at people above you, most of the time, even they are winging it in some way. Don’t let fear hold you back. Just because people are in positions right at the top of the company doesn’t mean that they’re superhuman, they’ve just decided to cure the fear by doing it anyway.
If you can find a mentor or someone who will champion you, that can be really important, particularly for women. Even if you’re more junior in your career, I’d encourage finding a peer group that can help you validate your thinking. That can help your confidence, because then you can bounce ideas around and get feedback from people who may have already done similar things themselves.
Once you’ve got that confidence, you’re more likely to put your hand up and suggest things, and that’s when you get noticed. For those who are specifically looking to reach the Director level, I’d say it’s really important to have a good relationship with the CEO. Do your due diligence to really understand what it is that they think a People team is there for and what they have in mind for their business from a cultural perspective. One of the main reasons I came to Luno was having my own conversations with the CEO and discovering his passion for the People and Culture functions. He’s heavily involved in them because they’re so important to him, and for me that partnership dynamic has made all the difference.
Kelly has been working as Chief People Officer since August 2019, and provides global leadership
for all aspects of Luno’s People function with a view to creating a more inclusive, progressive
People strategy for the staff within the organisation as it continues to grow.
If you are interested in having a confidential conversation about your career or would like support
growing your team, please get in touch today.