21 February 2025
Is it possible to move sectors, particularly in professional services? Az Ahmed spoke with Alan Fitzgerald, a seasoned HR Director with over 30 years’ experience working across organisations in the private and public sectors, making him the perfect HRD to ask his thoughts on changing sectors, challenges, and higher education.
This conversation with Alan highlights that, with the right approach, immersing yourself in a new sector and understanding the organisation’s drivers it is possible to move sectors, particularly in professional services. We would like to thank Alan for an enjoyable discussion – you can follow him here.
You’ve worked in a number of sectors, from the media (Trinity Mirror), FMCG (Premier Foods), and Health (St Andrews Healthcare) through to Higher Education (BCU) – when moving sectors, how do you get up to speed with a new environment and sector-specific differences?
Whenever you move to a new role, there are a number of aspects to consider, particularly the team and the agenda of work, but my starting point is understanding the organisational culture – this is key; even in the same sector, this could be quite different.
With a new sector, it’s a case of trying to understand the macro vision and how it all works. Gaining an understanding of what the organisational drivers are, what the balance sheet looks like, what are the business opportunities, the threats, etc.
And, importantly, how can HR, in particular, align to this, drive the agenda forward and gain a perspective of the broader organisation, how it is funded and what the opportunities are for potentially improving that financial position?
Is HR a field which is conducive to moving sectors with perhaps the same overall objectives around attraction and retention, compensation, training and development, performance management and policies and procedure etc found across sectors?
I think there are a few professional fields, including HR, which lend themselves to moving sectors such as Finance and, to an extent, IT. It can take a bit of time to get up to speed learning the terminology, but the transition, in my experience, works well. I can think of a few examples where staff haven’t settled, but in fact, in my current team, there are comparatively few people who have come from within the sector.
Our Recruitment Manager is one positive example of someone who joined us from within the sector, and their experience has been very helpful. We have also hired reward expertise with sector knowledge and experience, but in the main, we’ve taken on people from many different sectors, and this has given us great breadth and diversity of insight.
What are the key differences you’ve noticed between sectors?
Culture – which covers a multitude of areas. Leadership and decision-making vary; the scale of organisations you’ve worked with in the past obviously makes a big difference.
Experience of working in larger organisations can lead to a better fit when moving to HE. I’ve worked in many sectors and seen lots of different leadership styles. The sector that most closely resembles HE is healthcare, in my view. They are very similar in many respects and culturally quite similar as opposed to the media or FMCG, for example.
The NHS and other large independent healthcare organisations have a more corporate approach, are large in terms of scale and are obviously centred around patient decisions, so similar to HE with students replacing patients at the core. Decision making typically isn’t quick in either, with governance and process to navigate and a number of groups and bodies to gain approval from.
This is in contrast to much of the private sector where decisions are made more quickly with fewer internal stakeholders to engage with. It can, therefore, sometimes be a frustrating experience for staff coming from the private sector into HE.
Is there a particular role which stands out in terms of the level of challenge it’s presented to you?
I think when I moved from Premier Foods to St Andrews Healthcare that was a big cultural change for me personally. I was used to moving forward with ideas comparatively quickly at Premier Foods, which had quite an autonomous decision-making process at divisional level, so there was some adjustment at St Andrews – which is an organisation of around 4,000 staff. It was a good step for me to make personally, though, and with hindsight helped me to acclimatise more easily when I joined the HE sector. For example, they had a core set of governors so it’s not dissimilar to the HE sector governance arrangements.
At Birmingham City University (BCU) I look back with great pride on the past 18 months with the new Vice Chancellor, who has wanted to work at pace, and we’ve been able to do a complete rewrite of our local pay structures, put in place an employee reward platform and we are developing our employee value proposition.
For the past 6 years you worked in HE – what has kept you in the sector?
I enjoy working in a sector where I can support staff and students and can make a real difference. A couple of years ago, I was a little frustrated that I felt I was able to introduce only incremental changes, but I feel re-energised and invigorated over the past 18 months. It’s a really good environment to work with a supportive approach from the Vice Chancellor, who wants to move forward with the people agenda.
The financial pressure the HE sector is under is considerable – what impact does that have on an HRD in terms of your role?
It is significant. There is a trade-off in terms of where you can make investments. It’s important to have a strong business case for any spend. I’m also conscious in terms of the HR function, it’s my responsibility to make sure that we are balancing the books in terms of staff numbers and we are managing structural change effectively.
While HE is challenging, I’ve experienced more pressure in the past; for example, in the newspaper industry in eight years in the last 90’s, we hardly recruited with constant restructures. There wasn’t a year that went by we weren’t focused on stripping out cost.
Has the headcount in HR shrunk in the last six years?
It has been a steady environment. When I started the team was comparatively small, in terms of headcount we’ve probably grown slightly over the past six years, and I think this is because we’ve been able to demonstrate our value.
Over the last 18 months, I’ve been proud of our achievements, such as introducing a new pay structure. It involved negotiating with trade unions and liaising from professional services through to academic departments. Trade unions obviously seek to protect their member’s interests, so discussions around performance related pay or, more broadly, performance management are sometimes challenging.
Finally, what do you enjoy about being an HR leader?
Being able to see positive change delivered. We have numerous metrics and measures in place, and a key one for me is the employee engagement survey score. Over the past few years, there has been a clear trend upward at BCU.
Our response rate is also up to 82%. When I joined BCU, it was around the mid 50’s, so we’ve made significant progress, both in terms of response and the engagement score itself. The changes we’ve made have also led to a low attrition rate – and introducing schemes such as loyalty awards to recognise staff, some of whom have 40 years of service, I think help in showing people that they are valued. These improvements motivate me, too.
While HE is undoubtedly under financial pressure, the challenges faced around reducing staff for these reasons are not sector specific, Alan’s example at Trinity Mirror a testament to this. Successfully leading in financially restricted times can be achieved through demonstrating value and working with people who believe in your mission. If you’d like to have a confidential chat about your future career path, Az Ahmed would be happy to connect.
Az is a Senior Consultant with over eight years supporting the public sector in local and central government as well as higher education, and is guided by his desire to help individuals join the interim sector and to support organisations to appoint credible, transformational leaders who drive forward change. Contact him at az.ahmed@andersonquigley.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Read more about the changing landscape of executive recruitment in higher education here.
