UK 
United States
Suzie Langridge,
Head of People and Culture, SEC Newgate UK
Meet the CPO with 'soul' - Suzie Langridge, Head of People and Culture, SEC Newgate UK. Her belief in helping people drives her career.
Suzie Langridge,
Head of People and Culture, SEC Newgate UK
Meet the CPO with 'soul' - Suzie Langridge, Head of People and Culture, SEC Newgate UK. Her belief in helping people drives her career.
Langridge is one of those people that has an infectiously warm character. I meet her and immediately feel her convictions for ‘liking people’ radiate, not only in what she says about the way she approaches HR with ‘soul’ but because she gets what makes people tick and innately observes when a shift is required.
She is brave – she has job swapped between industries, faced personal trauma, and powered her way through with grit and determination to be part of the HR evolution, where people are the priority, and the employee experience is front and centre of business decisions. Now working for a business who have just been listed as a Sunday Times Best Place to Work, for the second consecutive year, she talks to HR Grapevine about her ambitions to put mental fitness and wellbeing centre stage.
‘Liking people’ is the driving force behind Langridge’s HR career
She began in HR believing it was ‘something else.’ The original idea was to go into medicine with the driving force of always being ‘really into people.’ Falling into people management there was some alignment with ‘what makes people tick’ even though that was mentally and not physically as her first career ambition would have leant itself too.
Her first foray into the corporate HR world was a job at the shopping channel, QVC. She acknowledges that it was a ‘cool place’ to launch her career. After a couple of years cutting her teeth, she decided to go travelling and further her horizons, but she had got a taste of what was to come. She returned in the middle of the credit crunch, 2008 at a time when it was very difficult to land a job.
“I’d get to the final stages, but the fact that I had been travelling for a year and half was often the reason I didn’t get the position,” recalls Langridge. She eventually took a temporary position as an HR Assistant at Birkbeck, University of London but she knew that it wasn’t where her heart was at. Nine months later she moved to Nordoff Robbins, overtime becoming their HR Manager, a music therapy charity. “It was another completely different move because it was in the third sector.
I guess it sounds cheesy and you can’t always put your finger on it easily, but it was as soon as I went in the office and met people that I knew there was a warmth
Suzie Langridge | Head of People & Culture at SEC Newgate UK
It was a brilliant one that gave Langridge a key moment of growth. “My manager pushed me out of my comfort zone and exposed me to lots of things.” It came at a time when the young Langridge was embarking upon her CIPD qualification too while also planning her wedding. It was by her own admission an ‘intense’ time.
“I learned a lot and I felt like I moved from being very process driven and junior to getting more involved in managing and coaching people,” she reflects. As with key periods of development, life took over and Langridge took maternity leave when her son was born in 2014. She quickly realised that she wouldn’t return, despite acknowledging that the job had facilitated a shift in her career.
“I wanted flexibility, it wasn’t possible, and I made the decision not to go back. I had been there for five years, so it was also perhaps a good time for me to move on,” she says. Life took another turn when Langridge’s personal life took an unexpected twist.
Another industry beckoned and Langridge moved to take up the role of HR Manager at Heni Publishing in 2016 which she remembers for being highly entrepreneurial, but a further moved beckoned this time to AxiCom a PR provider where she stayed for a further two and half years. As the pandemic hit, Langridge moved to BWC, a leading global communications agency. She refers to it as a ‘divine intervention’ which saw a shift in the direction of HR.
Culture is the ‘magic’ with mental fitness centre stage at SEC Newgate UK
In January 2023 Langridge became Head of People & Culture at SEC Newgate UK. It was the moment after she met the head of the business, Emma Kane that she knew she wanted the job.
“I guess it sounds cheesy and you can’t always put your finger on it easily, but it was as soon as I went in the office and met people that I knew there was a warmth,” explains Langridge. There are 130 people in the UK arm of the business with most based at the head office in London and others spread across a collection of regional offices.
“Emma had a clear vision for my role, but she also told me early on that she wanted me to be empowered to make decisions. She told me that she ‘wanted me to push things forward’ which gave me scope for the role,” says Langridge who explains that it was a refreshing and the first time anyone had ever said this to her. She now sits on the SLT and both her experience and expertise are widely respected.
Training managers helps to foster relationships with open dialogue across the business. Being able to have a conversation about your mental health and what you need is really important
Suzie Langridge | Head of People & Culture at SEC Newgate UK
Langridge’s title that encompasses ‘culture’ is a very clear nod to the values that are key at SEC Newgate. It recently scooped a second win as one of the Sunday Times Best Places to Work, 2024. Culture is the ‘magic ingredient’ at the business which binds employees together.
“Everyone has their own take on what culture is but essentially for me in this role it’s a bigger piece around all the aspects that contribute to the overall employee experience,” she says.
