Case studies

I have had several HR roles, starting my career in the UK and then moving to Australia where I have lived for 18 years.

I have a first-class honours B.Sc. in Management studies and undertook at Diploma of Personnel Management in the UK. More recently I have completed a 12-month Advanced Leadership program with Women & Leadership Australia.

My last 3 roles have been quite significant, firstly nearly 10 years at Franklins supermarkets (who have since been sold to Metcash) where at its peak I led an HR team of 5 with 4000 employees in NSW.

I then moved to a more corporate environment at Sydney Airport Corporation Limited which was valuable to gain experience in a large infrastructure, capex-based organisation that was ASX listed.

My most recent role prior to joining the HR Dept was leading a team of 4 for the largest distributor of global brands – True Alliance. It is an omni channel business with wholesale, retail and online and has 800 employees across Australia and New Zealand.

On a personal note, I have been married to my husband David for 23 years. Together we have two children, Thomas who is 15 and Jasmine who is 12.”

I was impressed from the start at their level of professionalism. I had heard good things about the HR Dept from my connections in the UK and when I learnt more about all they can offer from a franchise perspective and spoke to other franchisees in Australia, it seemed like it was a good match between what I wanted to next with my career and what they were offering.”

It was a big leap of faith for me to leave corporate life and start my own business so joining a franchise network who support you at every step enabled me to hit the ground running and spend time on value-add activities to develop and grow my business such as networking and developing relationships right from the get go.

The support is excellent; from training, to the IT/systems, to the accounting and admin as well as support from other franchisees in Australia and across the UK. If you have a question, you ask it and get an answer pretty quick! The HR Dept are also very open to feedback and genuinely have the needs of their franchisees at heart – we are in a partnership which feels like each party’s objectives is win-win.”

The variety; working with different industries and sized organisations from 5 employees to 200, I am learning every day. I like asking lots of questions to really get to know and understand their business as well as their pain points from a people perspective. I like the sense of pride that comes from knowing my skills and expertise can help them to grow their business and become more successful.”

Happiness, success and a continuous learning journey. It’s early days for me right now, but I am feeling extremely positive about the future and how I can grow and develop my business to fulfil my personal, financial and career goals.”

Wonderful! As an extrovert, I get my energy from others so when I am not networking with prospective clients, I can call any of the other HR Dept franchisees. Between us we hold a wealth of expertise which we can share with each other. The network is very collegiate and responsive. A lot less lonely than running a one ‘woman’ band!”