The role HR plays in a successful business transformation is significant and increasingly important. On this week’s podcast, we are joined by Julie Digby who has led several successful integrations and transformations at Mars, including a two-year project which saw a merger of Mars and Wrigley. What struck me most from our conversation is the key triumvirate Mars forms for successful transformation, comprised of finance, HR, and the president of the Mars business involved.

You can listen below or by visiting the podcast website here.

In our conversation, Julie and I discuss:

• How HR is organised and works with the business in Mars

• The specific role HR plays in transformation projects, particularly in relation to organisational design, culture and change management

• The role that technology and data plays in supporting, enabling and speeding up transformation work

• The skills that HR needs to develop as it becomes a more strategic function within the business

• And finally, as we do with all our guests on the show, we ponder what the role of HR will be in 2025

This episode is a must listen for anyone in HR involved in transformation change and business partnering.

Support for this podcast is brought to you by OrgVue to learn more, visit orgvue.com.

Interview Transcript

David Green: So I'm delighted to welcome to the Digital HR Leaders podcast, Julie Digby, who's the global integration and transformation leader at Mars. Welcome to the show, Julie.

Julie Digby: Thank you.

David Green: It's great to have you here. Can you give our listeners a quick introduction to yourself and why you moved into HR?

Julie Digby: Yeah, of course.

It's great to be here. So, I'm a longstanding Martian as we call it. So, I joined on the management training scheme. And my history actually is more sales, procurement and then only latterly into HR. So, I spent most of my career in procurement and things like commodities, I was working in the cocoa team and came into HR about five, six years ago.

So, I was invited to join. I didn't say yes straight away, but I then did say yes because I thought it was an opportunity to come in and then do something positive in the business. And, essentially, I've done that for five, six years. And then about three years ago, there was an opportunity to join a team that was looking at a transformation of a business, so I volunteered for that. And I've been in transformations ever since.

David Green: And what were your thoughts when you first came into HR having not necessarily worked in this space before?

Julie Digby: Well, I think it's quite interesting because I almost think it's like a theatre, so you have the actors on the front of the stage and then there's a hell of a lot of stuff going on backstage.

So, I think from the outside you only really see part of it. So, I think it is a real place to be highly influential and help the business move forward. So, I think, it's quite a good place, but some of that is not visible, but it's a real lever for change and driver for change.

David Green: And certainly, it's something we're starting to see more and more people coming into HR who have maybe not had their career in there. I think it's good because I think that the danger in organisations is that our big functions do become quite siloed. And its people that just have careers that go vertically.

So, it's nice to have that kind of mixture of vertical and horizontal I think.

Julie Digby: Well, it's in two ways actually. I mean it's great to have that because you then get their perspective and you become slightly more generalist in some ways, but, but actually it means that, I've managed to stay in one business and have a fabulous career.

David Green: Which is fantastic, so you really are a Martian then.

Julie Digby: Yes, I am, totally.

David Green: I think a lot of people would think I was a Martian at times. So, moving on... How is HR set up at Mars and then importantly, how does HR work with the executive team?

Julie Digby: So, we've actually gone through our own transformation in recent years. So, we operate through a global service centre that runs all of the transactional stuff, talent acquisition, socio relations, rewards.

We have a relatively small centre of expertise, running some of the, things like culture and engagement. And then our business partners, our strategic business partners, are out in the segments. And they're playing a strategic business partnering role, and, the nature of it, they have got a seat at the table.

So, they're working with global presidents, regional presidents, all of the markets. Basically, they are working with them day in and day out, so would be seen as really almost being the right hand person of the presidents. So very much close to the business center. The strategic choices.

David Green: And I think that's important cause I think that, a lot of HR functions are sometimes very much centralised and quite far removed from the business, which means it's hard to actually... Because different geographies, different parts of the business obviously operate very differently, have different needs, different priorities.

And I guess that helps, the people that are close and working with the presidents to actually be very responsive to their needs.

Julie Digby: Yes. Clearly, the service centres are absolutely critical to make the function work and make the business work. But actually, the strategic insight comes from being in the business.

And, so often, you hear this comment of what's it like being in the business or coming into the business. Well, HR is in the business.

David Green: So, you've talked about transformation and there's business transformation that's going on as well as at Mars, what were the driving factors and objectives behind the transformation that obviously you've been heavily involved in.

Julie Digby: Yeah. Well, it's transforming all the time. The key driver is, if you look at our consumers and our customers. It's changing constantly. What consumers want and what they want to buy and actually more importantly where they want to buy it.

So, we do a lot of transforming all the time. I was involved in one post acquisition merger. So we bought Wrigley and then a couple of years ago we brought those two businesses, Wrigley and Chocolate together. So I spent some time doing that and clearly that was about leveraging the power of those two businesses to make them collectively, more effective, combining innovation and driving some efficiency. But we're also doing things like, looking at going from DCOM to ECOM, move the shift that we have to make in terms of route to market and our salesforce. So, this is constantly evolving and transforming. So, there's a number of things that are fundamentally driven by external needs and our desire to grow.

David Green: And I suppose from a people perspective. That means that you continually have to evolve this mix of skills that you've got in the workforce, which I guess is where HR can play an important role.

Julie Digby: Yes, absolutely. I think one of the key things that the strategic business partner needs to be doing is this translation of the mission of the business, the strategy into how it connects really well, and capability building is one of those things and identifying the capabilities we need. 

David Green: So, on that as well. What was the specific role that HR played in the transformation? I know when we were talking last week, we talked about things like culture and operating model and other areas. So, it'd be interesting to hear some of those, because I guess there's a lot of moving parts.

Julie Digby: And the first thing to say is that a lot of things that are in this, clearly anything in the people space, HR would be leading that project. And are going to be the head on the horse. A lot of the transformation is actually sponsored by a president. So for the things that I've worked on the president is sponsoring and then your steer co is your HR lead, your finance president. The people who are really guiding the project. and so really, it's then taking the mission, the strategy and saying, what do we need in terms of ways of working, what do we need in terms of cultural shift, behavioural shift capability. And actually lastly, what does the organisation need to change?

So, do the boxes need to change?

David Green: So again, very much a cross functional approach rather than… You know, you're working very closely with colleagues in other business functions.

Julie Digby: Yeah. Absolutely. You can't do it in isolation, but I think the leader of it is generally HR if it's a people project, I mean, when we did the integration work there was a significant amount of IT and financial process change.

So, there was a people work stream and there was an IT work stream and there was a financial workstream, just cause of the nature of the complexity of that. But generally, when we're looking at how do we adapt our operating model it would be HR led.

David Green: So, what was the hardest part? What is the hardest part of driving transformation? Cause I think we agreed now transformation is almost a continuous thing, but what's the hardest part you find about it?

Julie Digby: There's lots of things that are hard, I guess generally you've got in transformation there's usually a lot of complexity, so there's so much going on.

So first of all, it's just distilling and cutting through that. I've learned that data, data transparency, it can be a challenge. And the scrabbling around for data. So we've been working quite hard to have more at the fingertips, data, and global transparency.

I think sometimes it's hard to make sure you keep focusing on delivery. So, we put in, regular every four weeks communication where we are on that. So really the follow through is really important people can get quite excited at the beginning, but actually it's about getting really to the end.

it can be quite hard in the sense of if you have long transformations, particularly when you've got very big ones, so with Wrigley and chocolate. When it takes a couple of years. The world doesn't stop. The outside world doesn't stop. You've got to keep a sense of the agility and actually at that point in time, are we still heading in the right direction.

And sometimes it can be a question because people are really resisting change, or it can be right to change the direction. So, I think just keeping an eye on that and the sense of not getting outdated with your transformation if it takes too long. But probably the biggest thing that I've learned is the people side of change it's actually how you change hearts and minds. You can change the logical stuff, but actually, when you're... even if you think about the transformation  of  our function, HR, you can put everything in place for strategic business partners, but you have to convince every single line manager, that they go to the service centre now that they don't go to the person that used to be the generalist help for them. You've got to go and persuade and make people confident and train strategic business partners with strategic business partner skills, which we are, because they're actually, if they've been generalists before, they're naturally more comfortable there, and therefore we've got to put that investment  in skills.

And we've done work on the innovation and trying to do more global innovation. And so, we've got markets where historically they did the innovation themselves and so their identity was, I make for myself. I do everything for myself and from an efficiency perspective, that doesn't make sense.

And so, you're changing really their identity from. I'm in control of everything to actually, I need to be a brilliant executor. And therefore, what you need to do is take them on that journey. And that needs sponsorship. It needs the leadership continually there. Line managers knowing their role and training, it needs constant communications with the corporate affairs teams.

And it needs actually celebration of what is happening? So actually, it is that part that's the hardest thing, the sort of logical stuff.

David Green: Yeah. It's not just moving people into different boxes.

Julie Digby: It isn't, it isn't at all.

David Green: And what are some of the practical things that you've done to help win those hearts and minds?

Both for people who are maybe changing their roles, but also customers in the business who actually, are having to go to the service centre, for example, instead of the HR Generalist.

Julie Digby: Well the first thing we've actually done is actually recognised change management as a real skill in our business. so, we've got a way of doing it.

We've adopted a methodology, but we've actually trained the HR people to do it. So, the first thing is recognising you need it. And, the second is in, when we've done the transformation projects, we will have a change manager. So, what's critical in the makeup is you have clearly a sponsor. You have to have the project manager that's controlling it, and then you need a change management expert as well. So, bringing in those change managers both globally, regionally and then in the markets. And then they go through the methodology, which essentially starts from engaging, who's going to lead this? Who's going to sponsor the it? And what is the training plan. So, developing the training plan, what's the comms plan? How are you going to assess in a way, where you've got tensions, creating heat maps of areas of resistance, and then going in and doing that? So that's really now the way we're operating the business. And I personally believe actually it is the core capabilities of the strategic business partner of the future. So that's where we're clearly driving that through our organisation.

David Green: Which can be quite different to maybe how they've operated previously.

Julie Digby: Sometimes I think that there's an intuitive nature of sensing the organisation that people have. but I think what you need actually is to recognise this needs to be very structured and it isn't just the first day. It's actually the thing that probably lasts the longest in a transformation, you need to keep the change management going. So yes, that's what we've been doing.

David Green: So how do you measure that you're on track? So just an example, which will probably resonate with some listeners. Let's say you're bringing two teams together, maybe from, from Mars and Wrigley, the red team and the blue team, how do you measure and make sure that they're becoming purple?

Julie Digby: Good question. Well I guess looking at measurement even more broadly, any transformation you go into will have a whole load of measures and usually it's about top line and ultimately, it's about top line growth. Which as you know, comes after, and then there's bottom line efficiency.

But then you really need to look at all the other things that you're trying to change. So, when you're bringing two businesses as we were together and with a slightly different background culture, way of working one slightly more centralised, one slightly more decentralised, then you really need to just say, well, look across all of them against the culture against the engagement, what are the measures you have? Now sometimes we have immediate measures. Financials, you generally have immediate measures. On things like are we changing the sense of the organisation, we've got engagement measures of how does it feel? So, we do regular engagement scores and then within change management you could do pulse surveys. You can do that with technology. You just send out relevant questions based on the journeys. Get a sense of how the organisation and individuals in the organisation are feeling. But clearly what's really important is the line management as well. Is how their sensing the organisation. So, it is a matter of some sensing, some data, some measurement, and it's a whole mixture of that.

But again, given its people's feelings in some of this, but it can be challenging when it's actual delivery you can probably see that.

David Green: And culture is a hard thing to change and a hard thing to measure as well. I mean, have you got an example of some of the things that you've done to move that along?

Julie Digby: I mean, just simple things we did when we did the integration to help in terms of the culture was it was really important that this was a merger. A post acquisition merger. So having the right representation of the red team and the green team, in the leadership team at the end was really important that you didn't end up with everyone from one side of the business so you really got a mix of those.

And actually in the markets we're doing work where we'll actually talk about culture. So, workshops on what's different, and recognising there was a difference and they had to then talk it through and understand to find the best of both worlds.

David Green: And you said that you were measuring as you went along through pulses. So, you're getting information on a regular basis as to how people are feeling, what's working, what's not working. So you can adjust the plan if necessary.

Julie Digby: And I think with all those things, that you start at the global level when you're doing it if it's a global program, but actually at the end of the day, it depends on how someone's feeling in Russia they might feel very different from how they're feeling in China. So you really need to have people on the ground, helping with the change management, and the program. You can't just do it from the centre, as one size does not fit all.

David Green: No, definitely not. And as you said, you could have people in different parts of the world or different parts of the business feeling very differently.

Some people in the UK, for example, might think the transformation is going extremely well. Others may feel in Russia to your example that it's not. So it's having that mix between global and local resources to support that process.

Julie Digby: Exactly, even when you think about things like capability builds, or if you want to make a shift in terms of, how you work within the trade it is very different in China than it is in North America. So everyone's starting point is different too. So you've got to recognise that. So it's really important to have networks in the places where you are making the transformation, it isn't just something you can just do from the centre.

David Green: And I guess this is where communication is so important.

So I was actually involved in a merger and acquisition at one point, and then it was presented to the business as a merger. And it was very much an acquisition and it was clearly one company taking over another, and that shone through in leadership team and ways of working and everything else. Whereas I think if it had been presented in the right way initially, then it probably would have worked better. And it took this company a couple of years to really sort itself out and actually become that one company that it had intended to be within a six-month period.

Julie Digby: I think what's really important is when you're setting out, I think the role of strategic business partners is to say what's the strategy of the business? What's the mission? What's the strategy? And how are we going to get there? And there's many things that we need to think about. So you need to think about culture, you need to think about capabilities, you need to think about all these things upfront and you need to have a plan for them. Because there's a risk if you tend to go one dimensional if you're not careful and it's just focusing on one thing or rushing too quickly to organisation which actually is a part of it, but it's an output of the rest.

David Green: What is the role of technology as a key enabler in a transformation change process? Both from a planning, but also from an execution perspective?

Julie Digby: Well, generally technology for me is speed. And anything that you can do on a piece of paper or an Excel or Powerpoint. What technology does, is it really speeds it up. And, what we've been doing is we've got, a system now that helps really visualise an organisation globally.

And, visualise in the sense of, I sat down a couple of weeks ago with one of the functional leads and being able to play with the tool and see and do what if, and I think that what technology does is it would have taken us weeks exchanging data. But it's also the sense of creating the story and being able to interrogate it live and test a hypothesis.

We also use the same technology and what would have taken a couple of days to do in terms of organisational design, people are doing in hours now, they can say, well, what if I did this, what would it do to the organisation. So I think we've used technology in the sense of, almost I think two things, one is it's great to have data right at the beginning and sometimes at the beginning we probably didn't have it in quite the format. As we've invested in more tools now, having it available so that you can keep this live, it becomes an evolution not a transformation.

You can have a hypothesis of changing stuff. You can go and have a look at a system and see all the data there.

David Green: So this technology helps you effectively do scenario planning, bring the data from different parts of the organisation together and maybe run an org design model.

And then maybe make some changes to that, but you can see those changes live and that helps you with that conversation you're having with the president of a business, for example.

Julie Digby: Equally, it tells you where you are in terms of have you actually done what you said you were going to do?

So, the global transparency you can have to look across the organisation and say, we intended to invest in strategic revenue management, whatever it may be, but actually have we? Just in terms of capacity. Can we see those roles and those people who've come in to do that work? And equally in our function in HR, AI, the use of bots, really making the service centre super-efficient. That's clearly a route to that.

David Green: And you're using some of that AI and machine learning type bot technology in Mars at the moment for the service centres?

Julie Digby: They're working on that. I wouldn't say I'm the expert, but clearly what I see is I see it driving efficiency, we're using some in Talent Acquisition, early stages of Talent Acquisition, the service centres as well.

And that makes a difference. And even pulse surveys, talking about getting a sense of where is the organisation now it's almost like in 10 minutes you can create a survey, send a pulse out and get people to, feedback. So, everything, it's all about speed.

David Green: Yeah. It's very different from some of the rigid processes that we've had in HR for years. Before you came into HR , you know, things like  checking pulses and engagement you can do on a much more agile basis now. I think it's important, particularly when you're thinking about transformation and change.

Absolutely.

So. I think you've shared some of these already, but what are some of your key learnings from let's take the Mars and Wrigley transformation for example, what worked well, what didn't, what would you do differently next time?

Julie Digby: Yeah, I think there are probably three things that spring to mind, one is I think about sponsorship.

So the key thing is having the sponsor who is with you throughout and it's usually the president or it may be a functional leader for some of the smaller transformations. And really then being clear about their role as well. So actually, spend some time explaining the role, having simple things like weekly SteerCos, connections, keeping going throughout the projects is really, really important, that experience sometimes can lead to change. So, you start with one sponsor and then the other sponsors. So, you need to make sure you're going back and understanding where they sit on the particular thing. And also making sure they're clear with the role, so without that, I think there's a stat, an industry stat, that says 80% of transformation fails because of lack of sponsorship. And so that's...

David Green: That tells you how important it is!

Julie Digby: So yeah, and all this stuff feels really obvious but actually if you've just got it as your checklist. I need to do this. Because there is a risk sometimes, you'd want to go off and just make it happen. But actually, you need that leadership and you need that sponsorship. I guess the second thing would be, there's a lot around clearly the data, being able to get access to that, visualise that, making sure that that's happening.

And I think that it's really important, some of the capabilities you need in a transformation, they're different, they're actually different from strategic business partnering actually, so you need brilliant PMOs. So project management, and I probably didn't appreciate that until I got in and saw the real power of doing that. We've talked about change management. You've got to have great change management. So great sponsors, great project management, great change. Access to data, investment in as much in change. And the one thing that strategic business partners I think need to get better at and we need to invest in, a bit like the change management piece, is, I think we've got to be great at building operating models. And that for me is this translation of here's the strategy, but how will you, how are you going to operate, and you need to be to have the skills to do that. And I think if you miss any of those, within any transformation, you have sub-projects, we've got examples where essentially we didn't put the project management in early enough, or the sponsors, weren't playing their role, or we thought about change management, not in its holistic, but spent too much time on one facet of it, and so, transformation's been there, but just one thing can easily...

David Green: A lot of moving parts,

Julie Digby: Lots of moving parts. Yeah.

David Green: And I suppose as you said, one of the early comments really, two-year transformation process. That's a lot of... As you said, things are changing quickly, so you're having to revisit the plan. And I guess since you said that's where a great PMO comes in because you're able to have that agility to be able to do that, and having that sponsor to say, okay, we need to change X and Y, what's the impact.

Julie Digby: Absolutely.

David Green: So in our call, you said that finance and HR essentially are the core of the business which I quite liked. So as someone that has come into HR from the business. What are some of the practical ways that you feel that HR and finance can work well together?

Julie Digby: Yeah. Probably some context, so I feel quite lucky in almost the context in which I can... We work within Mars. So there is a core team, or what I would describe as a core team, which is the president, the finance head and the HR head. So those three are seen as almost the core team. So if there was a segment review with the globe, it would be that team. If there was a regional review, it would be that team.

So, HR actually is... It's almost got more than a seat at the table. It's got a seat at the inner table. Which is great. I mean, we've got to make use of that. But I think I'm lucky in that sense. But what I see is each of those three bring different things to the table. So the leader is bringing, clearly leadership, and usually demand focus. Finance is bringing much more of the numbers and HR is more the people side. And that sounds a little bit stereotypical, but the reality is all of those people need to be great at the strategy, they need to be able to understand the business. So yeah, it's part of the job to bring something unique to that.

So I guess in terms of Finance and HR working together, we bring in complementary skills. And so if you're in a transformation, then you can be sure if you've got a finance person sitting next to you, they're more on the numbers than the HR person is, even if the HR person likes numbers, it's almost a bit more... It's in their job description, like DNA. So I think together it's so much stronger.  I think the key thing is to realise what you can do as HR and what Finance can do and basically go ask for help. So the projects you need the help of the finance person, to be much more on the numbers and the tracking bit.

But equally, if you just did that and you didn't have the bits of HR, then you wouldn't take the people with. So, for me, I think in terms of working with HR, it's just so obvious. It's kind of the context in which I work. But I really value, all the work I do with my finance and we talk about being joined at the hip almost, but we can talk on each other's behalf, and it is critical. But I think you just got to be clear about what you are going to deliver to the project and then ask for help from finance for the bits that they're much better at.

David Green: I think it's an important relationship.

I think a lot of organisations don't get that relationship between finance and HR well. Sometimes I hear stories of HR being in the room presenting some numbers and finance saying we don't agree even something as simple as headcount. So actually, by working well together and playing to each other's strengths so you can present that whole story as it were to the president that you're working with

Julie Digby: Exactly. And I think equally, things like the way in which you set your business up. So if you have a finance system with headcount, and you have HR system with headcount, that's already a problem in itself and needs to be resolved.

David Green: You want the same number.

Julie Digby: You want the same, one number.

David Green: So, the word transformation does tend to imply a start and an end. I think we've already talked about how it's probably more continuous than that now. That is something you're seeing at Mars, but just reflect on that. But if so, what does this mean for HR professionals in some of the skills that they need to develop, particularly I'm thinking when working in close cooperation with the business.

Julie Digby: I think it should be evolution rather than transformation. I think that's mostly the reality. I think there are times clearly with mergers and acquisitions. They become, big bang things, but really, unless the business evolves, that's an issue. And even as a CPG business, CPH has been tough over the last 10 years.

David Green: That's Consumer Goods

Julie Digby: Yes. and so it was a fight to growth. So, we've been changing how we do business. For example, now we have two and a half thousand vet hospitals we run, so we've been going beyond our core businesses. So, there will be mergers and acquisitions still. But technology is going to change. Day by day it's changing the roles that people are doing. So we really need to adapt. So, I think what strategic business partners need to be, is really close to strategy, they need to be really close to the mission of the business, of the strategic priorities and how that's changing.

So really an ear to the ground in those conversations and understanding that. I think actually there needs to be listening. We need to be out there. I think sometimes we can be a bit insular as a function and we need to be understanding what's happening, what's going on in the external world. Trends in terms of talent.

I think we need to get more data and data driven, more comfortable with it and when I say that I don't necessarily mean that we need the data manipulation in the hands of the strategic business partners. But we've got to have the tools and we've got to have the specialists who are by the side of the strategic business partner that can access and show them the data and test their hypothesis. So they need to have the ability to constantly be saying, okay, what's happening to our organisation? Does that still fit the strategy?

I'm doing that on a constant basis and that's hard because actually to invest in becoming more data savvy or comfortable, you've actually got to invest the time.

And usually we're so busy trying to do the day to day we actually, we need to just step back and invest to get over that discomfort hump to get the speed later on.

David Green: So it's kind of working hand in hand with the people analytics team and data specialists and then for the specialist business partners, that ability to take that data. Translate it into a story that's going to resonate with their partner in finance, with their president and the business that they're supporting.

Julie Digby: Yeah, absolutely. And it is a different capability. So, the work that we've got, we've got data analysts, analysts actually sitting out in the regions, because it isn't what you want your strategic partners or business partner to be specialist at, but they need to be able to do that translation.

So that's really, really important. And then the other thing, I think I've talked about it, I think this sense of we need to invest in change management, in that capability, in order to be able to get these changes. Cause if you've got as every business has now, there's a change every week and a lot of associates are facing two or three different changes. Either based on what their customers are saying... There's lots of things that are going on for people. So we need to get good at that portfolio change management.

David Green: Really in some areas, HR needs... Probably in the past, HR may have been guilty, probably has been guilty of being a bit too insular looking, just looking at the function. Certainly, it needs to have a more outward focus to the business and really be there to try and drive business value. And as you said, operationalise some of the strategy from a people perspective.

I was interested in what you said about being more externally focused as well and understanding probably, as you said, some of the talent trends that are going, but maybe also what the competition are doing and what that means for Mars as well.

Julie Digby: Absolutely, a d really w thin the operating model that we have. We've moved from generalists over the last years to specialists. So, we have to get much more honed for each of us, for each of those skills, and how technology can help us and what the trends are in those areas. Yeah.

David Green: Perfect. Well, that lends it on very well to the question that we ask everyone on this show. And we're nearly in 2020 so we might have to extend this to a bit beyond 2025. So, what do you think the role of the HR function will be in 2025?

Julie Digby: It's interesting. I've read quite a few articles cause this is kind of the whole spectrum from, obviously we're going to be irrelevant through to it's really optimistic. I'm really optimistic because, people, the people part of our business. It's a massive competitive edge. Getting the best o t of the people is always going to be a means of delivering more. So we've got to be really good at doing that for the business, but I think the opportunity exists for it.

I think in terms of, what we need to do is we need to be really great at understanding the capabilities we need to build in order to do what the business wants to do. And I think getting really good at that is going to keep us relevant and getting even better than we are. And doing it and following through.

The second is I think it’s really important we create the environment for, employees we call them associates actually, but for our associates that, we actually want them to do their best work with us. We want them to be the best that they can be.

And it's really important that we create that because that then becomes an attraction and people want to come and work for us because of what they hear about, what it's like to work and how great the jobs are and how I'm treated. So really creating that environment that is right and is moving, is relevant for today. And clearly what we need to do is, if we don't have the right focus as a function, we need to be super-efficient. So our service centres need to be super-efficient and that's really important because we need to create space for the strategic business partners and enable us to be able to invest across all of those pieces.

So, that's a really important lever too.

David Green: And I guess some of the technology that we spoke about will take away some of the more repetitive aspects of HR by using technology and bots and stuff like that too. Because let's be honest, most of the requests that the service centre get, are probably the same.

So if you can automate some of that and free up resource to actually focus on stuff that's more strategic or more personal and actually helping develop that associate experience.

Julie Digby: Yes. And that's the journey we're on. So where that service centre is driving it is really important. And I think in terms of what we need to do, as a function. We have to invest in our skills, sometimes it's the last thing that we think of, but to stay relevant we've got to be the best we can be, we've got to invest in skills, we've got to get comfortable with technology.

A nd we've really got to make sure that we are role modelling the things that we're telling other functions to do. So we need to be evolving and developing ourselves. And if we've got culture shifts or other things that we're trying to do then we're part of that role model. So those are the three things that are really important next year.

David Green: Great. Well, Julie it's been great to have you on the show. How can listeners stay in touch with you?

Julie Digby: It's been great to have the conversation, so thank you David. People can get in contact with me through LinkedIn.

David Green: Great. Well, Julie, Happy Christmas. As it's not that far off there and thank you for coming on the show.

Julie Digby: Thank you.