In discussion with Remuneration Management expert Alison Kennedy – Part 1

Pivot Software is proudly supporting Alison Kennedy, in her upcoming presentation at HR TechFest 2016 in Melbourne, one of the biggest industry events in Australasia.

Alison has spoken at many industry events and comes from a diverse background in the Rem space where she has worked with many credible brands. She possesses a sharp mind that is forever interested in seeking challenge, change and growth.

We take the opportunity to discuss with Alison the current HR landscape, the use of technology to solve human capital challenges of today and what potentially lies ahead in the future for HR. So, let’s get to know Alison a little via an interview conducted by Arishma Singh from Pivot Software.

Arishma: Alison, what role does an MBA play in an HR career and where you are, in terms of assisting and advising organisations in their Remuneration related challenges?

Alison: For me personally, I think having the broader type of education was more important. I think if you want to develop HR career and end up consulting C suite and boards and really being able to nail the link between business strategy and what HR do, I think you have to have a more broad business background and business degree to be able to make those connections and understand what the business might need or want.

Arishma: What pulled you to the Remuneration space, from all the other aspects of HR? What fascinates you most about it?

Alison: I think, generally, it was joining Cullen Egan and Dell, I guess as a HR consulting practice firm, you know 70% of their practice back in the day was remuneration based. They were very much the leader in data provision and remuneration thoughts, strategy, application for organisations. So I think it really was the environment that I was in certainly.

And as part of HR, it’s the only part that has to interact with every other part of HR. You have to have an understanding of L&D processes to implement remuneration or to build reward strategies and frameworks for managers to apply. You have to have an understanding if there is a competency based framework, got be able to touch that.

With recruitment, you have to have great strong connections with how you position market data and how bring people into the business, what’s the pay point for that.

There is the life cycle question of how employees are going to grow and expand and how you going to continually reward them, whether the rewards are regular or whether they are more ad-hoc to do with performance, you get to connect with performance management!

If all the areas of HR, rem is this great central piece where you have to have at least knowledge awareness and some practical understanding of all the other parts of HR and the business for it to be as successful as it can be. Whereas, I think for some areas you get to sit in there as a silo and you can effectively operate there without interacting too much with the other area of HR, so it’s a nice way of being a social butterfly in Rem.

You get to play with everybody!

Arishma: So, over the years, what sorts of organisations have you worked with?

Alison: Its actually a really broad set of industries and organisations I have the opportunity to work for. So, in the early consulting days under the Mercer banner, we had lots of private and public sector organisations.

So people like Sydney Trains, Sydney Ferries and Buses, the education system, tempered with private organisations such as the Anglican Retirement Village, American Express, some smaller credit unions, even someone like British American Tobacco.

There is an interesting set that comes with the big consulting groups as opportunities are few and far between turns to work with such a broad network of organisations.

It really helps set you up, consulting point of view early on. And then when I moved out to the workforce, I went into Westpac, at PWC and then I moved back into private consulting and they were organisations like Vodafone, MBF.

When I, in 06 to 09 I went and lived in Hong Kong and I was internal there, I worked for an investment bank and most of my time I spent with this company called Equity Trust as their HR Director and that was private net worth individuals were our clients and working on private equity pieces of work was the focus for them.

And once, I came back from 09, I spent a bit of time in the Engineering space with places like SKM and Coffey International and then moving into a bit of media with NewsCorp and most recently then with Ventia.

There has also been a few small weird ones like working Rockwood cemeteries, you know peppered in there that keeps things interesting.

I have been really lucky in having the chance to walk in the door of so many different types of industries and organisations and I think fundamentally for me I believe thoroughly that you can practice remuneration anywhere and your skill set is all about understanding the industry and the business as quickly as you can, getting your head around how the business works and the space it operates in is more important than sticking say a Financial services career to be successful.

I think you can be successful across multiple industries as long as you’re adaptable, you are flexible, and you can ask the right questions to get up to speed quickly in terms of what the environment is that you are walking into.

This interview podcast is one in a 5-part series in the run up to the event.

In the next segment, we get to hear what are the issues that Alison feels HR needs to address. Click here to read the next segment.