Clare Normanton
Now arriving at St Pancras International
Clare Normanton, Eurostar HR Director, is a member of the Future of Employment Working Group (FEWG). She talks about Eurostar’s move from Waterloo to St Pancras International andhow Eurostar is working to build a great employer brand.
Q Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you come to be workingin the field of HR and for Eurostar?
As a graduate in modern languages, I joined British Steel (now Corus) as a Commercial Graduate Trainee. I became involved in organising commercial training, which gave me a taste for training and development, and from there applied for the position of Training Officer at Llanwern Steelworks. From then on, I was a convert and never looked back! I took my CIPD qualification and moved into generalist HR within British Steel then on to LG Semicon, Sainsburys and GEFCO (part of the Peugeot Citroen Group). I was contacted last year about the position at Eurostar and thought it sounded too good to miss. It was such a great opportunity to be involved in a very exciting period for Eurostar, with some major HR implications.
Q Eurostar recently moved its headquarters and operations from Waterloo to St Pancras International. What challenges did this create from a staffing point of view and how have you coped with them as an organisation?
From a logistical point of view, it has been about moving our people from our existing maintenance depot at White City across to our new site at Leyton, our operational employees from Waterloo to St Pancras International (literally overnight from 13 to 14 November), staffing up a new station at Ebbsfleet in North Kent, and preparing to move all our office staff to new accommodation at King’s Cross next year. We have achieved this by workingclosely with our trade union representatives on all aspects of the move, including a relocation deal, rosters, work spaces, facilities and health and safety. This has been the practical challenge, ensuring that all needs are met to make the move as painless as possible.
Another key challenge was to make the transition a positive and exciting one. We carried out a comprehensive change programme, consisting of Change Forums, which were regular sessions run across the whole business, keeping everyone informed and engaged about the move. This helped to create open dialogue, giving everyone the opportunity to raise concerns and ask questions. ‘Leaders of Change’ forums were also held for Senior Managers to ensure they received communications to cascade totheir teams. In addition, we held a series of one-day workshops called Reintroducing Eurostar. Over seven weeks, more than 1,600 people attended a one-day programme, providing information about every aspect of the move to the new sites and the business strategy. This was a great way of ensuring everyone was up to speed and felt involved.The HR team also had to support each area in employee retention along with contingency and succession planning. Key people and roles were identified as ‘at risk’, one-to-one discussions were held with all concerned and comprehensive action plans were drawn up to mitigate any potential risk at such a critical time for the business. This process helped to reassure both the business and the individuals concerned.
Q What advice would you have for other organisations that might be undergoing similar change and upheaval?
Not surprisingly, communication and involvement are crucial from an early stage and throughout the process. Our success came from having a structured and co-ordinated approach so that the messages were consistent and that everyone felt involved. My advice would be to never underestimate the time it takes to undertake effective consultation and engagement processes. An important point is to keep it fun. It can be a stressful time so we took time out or added a fun element to activities to ensure that everyone was still enjoying their jobs and was motivated.
Q How would you characterise the Eurostar brand as an employer? What makes people want to work for you?
‘Our Ways of Working’ are the behaviours we promote and develop through all our people processes and this is closely aligned with our corporate brand so that we are consistent both inside and out. Our people are tremendously proud of our product and have a real passion for the uniqueness of our service and for our brand. The fact that we work across three countries, UK, France and Belgium, has a huge appeal, creating a diverse organisation. Personally, the first thing that struck me when I joined and met people across the business, was the incredible enthusiasm and friendliness that emanates throughout, which ultimately is why there is such a sense of loyalty to Eurostar.
Q Eurostar promotes the message that train travel is more environmentally responsible than flying – how deeply embedded is the idea of corporate social responsibility in your company culture and how do you involve your employees in this?
It is something that is completely embedded in our company culture and we have employees who have been working on environmental initiatives for many years. In April this year we launched our ‘Tread Lightly’ initiative, which commits to reduce CO2 emissions per traveller journey by 25 per cent by 2012, to ensure all our travellerjourneys on Eurostar are carbon neutral from 14 November this year; when we move to St Pancras International, and to deliver our 10-point plan, which is a series of promises to tackle our environmental impact right across our business. We have an Environment and Energy team to implement the plan, plus our tread Lightly champions – 33 individuals from all departments across the company. Their enthusiasm and involvement to date has been incredible and they have been a tremendous source of inspiration and change already. People are empowered to do the right thing locally when it comes to the environment as well as the larger corporate initiatives. Manyareas have already stopped using disposable plastic cups for the water dispensers, have set up schemes to recycle everything from CDs through batteries to spectacles, have put in place trials and business cases to change light bulbs to low energy light bulbs in buildings, cut landfill waste to zero from our depot and generally encouraged colleagues to switch off lights and equipment when not in use. In addition, we support our staff in their own carbon footprint reduction.
Q What skills or attributes do you look for in a Eurostar employee and how do you identifycandidates that possess these qualities?
‘Our Ways of Working’ forms the basis of our selection process. From next year we are launching a comprehensive recruitment process that incorporates this ethos and links it into our performance management process and our development programmes. The five headlines for ‘Our Ways of Working’ are:
- Be proud of Eurostar
- Think ‘customer’
- Be one team
- Get things done
- Respect diversity
We put candidates through assessment centres designed to identify these attributes.
Q What type of relationship do you have with the recruitment agencies you work with and how do you manage these partner relationships?
We recruit for the majority of our positions through the Eurostar recruitment website and then work with agencies for the harder to fill, more specialist roles. We don’t have a rigid PSL as our experience is that successful recruitment is down to individual account managers and their skills are not necessarily consistent throughout an agency. We have a flexible approach and like to work with those agencies and consultants that have demonstrated a real understanding for the culture and needs of our business. We recently held a Recruitment Agencies Breakfast, which gave us the opportunity to update some of the agencies that we work with most often, on the changes to the business and the move to St. Pancras International. It was also an opportunity for them to meet the team and ask questions. We will be doing the same exercise for agencies that help us recruit employees for our maintenance depot.
Q If you could change one thing about the recruitment industry so that they would serve your and Eurostar’s requirements better, what would that be?
For us it’s about the quality of service and not the hard sell. We need to see that agencies have taken the time to research their target customer. Ultimately, we pay agency fees to save us the time it takes to sift and short list – therefore we need an agency that will really take time to understand our nees and provide a list of quality candidates who match our needs. One of my team suggested ‘less schmoozing’, which I think sums it up!
Q What do you see as the key factors that will transform the way that Eurostar and other UK businesses find and retain staff in the coming years?
Employer brand will be one of the keystones for businesses in the future. Being able to portray and build a reputation on what an employer truly represents and demonstrates will be hugely important for potential recruits and existing employees. Another key factor will be the use of technology and different media, e.g. audio, visual and social networking sites. With these developments come a whole host of interesting and contentious challenges and questions, some of which may lead to the need for changes in practices and, potentially, new legislation. The great thing is, the recruitment industry is constantly changing and evolving, which makes it an exciting business to be part of.
