Big Interview
Amanda Cox,
Stores and People Director at Dunelm
You may well be reading this with something from Dunelm in the same room – if not, it might that elsewhere in the house, or home office, there’s anything from a frame or cushion to curtains or wall art that’s come from the well-known retailer. The bright green logo feels more familiar these days than a rival’s yellow and blue.
Interview by Jenny Holliday
You may well be reading this with something from Dunelm in the same room – if not, it might that elsewhere in the house, or home office, there’s anything from a frame or cushion to curtains or wall art that’s come from the well-known retailer. The bright green logo feels more familiar these days than a rival’s yellow and blue. Dunelm actually came from humble beginnings – on a market stall, where founder Bill Hadley, decided to leave his store manager role at Woolworths to sell slippers and M&S seconds on the market.
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Today, it has 177 stores and more than 11,000 staff. HR Grapevine's Senior Features Editor Jenny Holliday spoke to Stores and People Director Amanda Cox about finding balance, company values, staying relevant and working for such a well-known brand.
You’re Stores and People Director – tell us about your role
I’ve been with Dunelm for over eight years now, which I think says a lot about the company and how I feel about it. My role is a little bit unusual, because I am what would be normally called out in the wider market, the Chief People Officer, or the HR director, depending on which title people like to use. But, in addition to that, I run our stores retail operation side of the business - all things to do with stores. Yes, I have a double job. And that's because I joined Dunelm eight years ago, and obviously I've developed in my time there. When I joined, I was the first people director they’d ever had in the job – bear in mind it was a FTSE 250 business, there was a lot to do and to professionalise and mature and develop. Over time, I've built a team, who have been able to deliver a lot of that and was able therefore very fortunately, to take on the operational role, which is obviously back to my roots, because I started in store management with M&S, so it’s nice that I am able to do both.
Did the desire to work in HR germinate from those store management days?
I was probably badly behaved and in some ways, I needed lots of help from HR, I would say, in the early days when you're young in your career, but it was something that developed over time, really. I was at ASDA in store management roles, and the easiest way to do that was through regional people management, and then sort of from there, sort of got a love for it, before going into central people roles. I was fortunate to be able to do lots of different roles, like learning and development, some colleague relations, work, diversity, and organisational design, so I was able to get lots of different experience, as well as the people business partnering side as well. So that was great, because as I say, it wasn't that I grew up in in HR.
I love the fact that retail is pretty non-hierarchical because people on the front line are the people you need to listen to, because they're serving the customers.
What’s the best bit of the job?
I love the fact it is fast-paced. Every day, it's about results and where you are. It's very immediate, which I really enjoy. I like the fact that you've got such a large colleague base and this ability to work at every level in the organisation and be with people at every level. I think that's fantastic. I love the fact that retail is pretty non-hierarchical because people on the front line are the people you need to listen to, because they're serving the customers. And I think that's fantastic. And I think retailers have very strong cultures – I love being part of a business that has an identity and a culture and isn't vanilla.
What’s the day to day like?
I'm conscious because my role is nuanced. Clearly, I do spend a lot of my time in stores on the basis that I also obviously look after the retail side of the business. There's a lot of travel, we’re not international so it’s just travel across the UK. Obviously I wear both hats when I'm out in the stores. The world today has changed in terms of how we work and we have a real philosophy at Dunelm of feeling at home wherever you work. And so we don't specifically say it's two days in the office or it's three days in the office, we're much more ‘actually you know, do the right thing by the business by what your needs are with your line manager and just make the right the right decisions’. We find that works really well.
Does being part of such a big, well-known brand, bring challenges to your role? When you're leading people, do kudos and brand awareness play a part?
We talk about how we want to deliver value and joy to our customers, it’s as simple as that – and that’s value at every level, whether you're buying Dorma, to promo line that might be you know, two pounds, it doesn't matter value is everything - and joy. One of our biggest things is about ‘friendly’, and one of the things we measure every day and every week is how friendly are our colleagues. And, and that friendliness is so critical. So absolutely, it's about bringing the brand to life for our people. And if you're not recruiting the right people, whether that is at the front line, or indeed the people you employ in central roles, if those people are not in line with your culture and what you're trying to be, then you're going to have a mismatch, and that then becomes a problem. We’re a very ‘low ego’ company – if you employ a lot of people with big egos, it’s not going to work. It is about the frontline and really understanding what they're telling us. We're very honest and straightforward company, and if things aren't working, like they tell us and quite rightly, they should, because our job is to make their lives simpler and better. You should feel the brand whether you’re shopping in the store or in head office. You should feel the brand.
And the flip side, when things aren’t so ‘hunky dory’ how do things work then?
I don't think there's any time where everything's going hunky dory, you know, your performance might be hunky dory, but something else might be going badly wrong. It's less about ‘does that then impact the brand’ it's much more important that whether things are going well, or whether they're going badly - the reality is it's just more about ‘stick to your values’. If things are going badly, don't behave in a different way, behave in exactly the way that is aligned with your culture, and then respond and do the right things.
We allow our colleagues to access their pay when they want, called salary advance, they can access their pay as they need it during the month. So they don't have to wait for the cycle. We’re connected to the retail trust, too.
It sounds like wellbeing is really important to you that really stands out - What does wellbeing mean to you?
Well, we talk about well-being under three lenses, physical, emotional and financial. And clearly the three are inextricably linked. It’s really important that you do see them as linked and all-impacting. We do an awful lot of work and actually have done so much more work since COVID, we’ve put lots of emphasis certainly in the early stages on mental wellbeing and have lots of people trained in our business in mental health first aid, and mental health and wellbeing buddies. All of our store coaches and Deputy store coaches are trained, and we have well being meetings with our colleagues twice a year where we just talk about their well being.
In the last year, we've put an awful lot of emphasis on financial well being because of the cost of living crisis. For example, I do a video every month with hints and tips that all of our colleagues can watch. And it might be specific benefits we're doing, it might be highlighting our colleague support funds where we provide help for colleauges in need. This year we’ll spend about £350,000 on helping colleagues in need. It may well be their boiler is broken, and they've got no way of doing it, they can't afford their kid’s uniform, it might be their mother's died, and they can't afford a funeral. And we will help them at that time of need.
And the other thing we do is that we allow our colleagues to access their pay when they want, called salary advance, they can access their pay as they need it during the month. So they don't have to wait for the cycle. We’re connected to the retail trust, too, which is great. In COVID, we got really close to people's physical well being because we understood more about whether they had specific needs at that time. When we reopened stores, those people who had particular health needs, we put them on furlough for longer periods of time to ensure that they were safe. And then when it was really a desperate time, other members of that team would go and visit them and take their medicines or take their shopping. Our stores are like a family, there’s a real camaraderie.
What does the future hold for Dunelm?
Many people would say, ‘why are you not international?’ but even though we're the number one homewares retailer in the UK, we still only have a very small market share. There’s still so much opportunity to grow. The job of ‘people’ is to ensure that you're aligned to the business strategy, it’s as simple as that.
A lot of what I do is very focused around talent and capability building - what will hold us back? Capability. Simple as that. Particularly in some of these newer areas, where there is much more of a fight for the talent, so to speak, such as tech. We have a team of around 500 now in technology, when I started it was about 100.
Nick and I, the CEO, spend so much of our time just meeting people – we spend a lot of time you talking to people about ‘why come to Dunelm?’ and really helping them understand. The more you talk to people about Dunelm, of course they warm to it, and they understand what they're going to get from coming here. You have to work really hard to ensure that you get that talent in and you acquire the right talent, and then you're also developing it through the organisation. So talent and capability are such a critical part of the role.
Any final thought on trends – we’re coming up to autumn and winter...
We use the word relevance a lot. You’ve got to be relevant to your customers – I think it's about being relevant and appropriate for the consumer and relevant to our colleagues. We've got our contact centre, we've got our stores, distribution centre, we've got a home delivery network, and then we've got all of these functions, as I say, that are constantly developing in the centre. So actually, you have to be relevant to all of these different people - what an hourly paid colleague wants, versus what an engineer wants in tech are very different things. And unless you can be able to do both, then it's very difficult, because you're not going to be able to grow the business in the way that you need to.
Likewise, we have to be relevant to the consumer. If you don't stay relevant, you will die. When I started in retail, it wasn't as competitive as it is today. We didn't have online when I started at M&S all those years ago. If you're relevant to the people that you're serving, then you can still do well, people still want to buy things. That's why it's important not to sometimes do things that might seem the obvious thing to do, but they might not be because they can be incredibly distracting.
