UK 
United StatesLouise Atkinson
Chief People Officer, Babcock International Group
Becoming Chief People Officer is usually preceded by climbing up the HR ranks but Louise Atkinson spent a career in operations before heading up the HR department at the UK's second largest defence supplier to the UK Government.
Louise Atkinson
Chief People Officer, Babcock International Group
Becoming Chief People Officer is usually preceded by climbing up the HR ranks but Louise Atkinson spent a career in operations before heading up the HR department at the UK's second largest defence supplier to the UK Government.
‘Before I was appointed as CPO, I’d never worked a single day in HR,’ admits Louise Atkinson, Chief People Officer, Babcock International Group, the UK’s second largest defence supplier to the UK Government.
I meet Atkinson on a typical autumnal day, the rain is lashing down outside as we begin our conversation, but she is ever the professional and we fritter little of our time on small talk. She begins by telling me that she took a well-trodden route from university into a two-year graduate scheme in financial services. I ask which business and, expect to have to Google the answer of some unknown entity but there is no need – it’s Zurich, the insurance giant. It was by now 2004 the year one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history occurred, the tsunami that killed over 227,000 people.
“I worked on the claims side of the insurance business, and I learned a lot about things like contract law and all the basics of business. It was a very intensive and competitive graduate scheme by Atkinson’s own admission. While being thrown directly into the firepit of a powerhouse and grappling with working life the young Atkinson was also served a curve ball when her first post-grad job in procurement came with some advice.
“I was told to ‘smooth down my rough edges’.” I ask her to explain this while taking a default position on her behalf of being offended. She has great self-awareness and did then too, a rarity when youth is at play: “I can be quite direct and animated about things. I like pace and working in uncertainty. It was an extremely successful company so there was no burning platform for change, and I wanted to be exposed to that.”
Prepared, however, to take note she adopted a chameleon position and tried to conform to what was required of the time while learning as much as she could. “I got all my basic business grounding in those two years.” She explains she learned everything from how to write an impactful PowerPoint presentation to the best way to run a meeting. The role involved heavy negotiations with legal firms and managing complex relationships.
Working with men in grey suits wasn’t going to last
A key lightbulb moment came when Atkinson attended an insurance conference: “I remember looking around the room at men in grey suits and I had this realisation that I didn’t fit in. On that very same day I got a call from a recruitment agent saying there was a job at Tarmac working within a procurement role and I knew I had to go for it,” she says. The enticement to what she refers to as something ‘grittier’ was the change she was yearning for. Laughing, she recalls the transition from having a Michelin star lunch and being surrounded by fine art one day to wearing full PPE in a construction portacabin the next. Staying where her feet were was a good move, she needed a role that was tangible and that operated in a grounded, real life environment.
Defence is a very male-led industry, and it can be a hostile environment for women but that just energises me more
“The guys around the quarries used to say, ‘We take big rocks and smash them into little rocks. That’s what we do.’ It was the nature of the business.” To Atkinson it was ‘proper’ work, and her impact was visible. It was by now 2008 – they were working through the financial crash and getting by on low, single digit margins. “All of that pace that I wanted was there because it was survival mode, suppliers and customers were going bust every day. It was very commercial, high pace and high stakes.” Atkinson recalls the incredible people she worked with and how the struggle showcased the skills onboard. “They value talent more than businesses that are coasting and that was one of my big lessons moving from financial services to construction – when a business is in trouble, you need the best brains and the best people, and you need to give them the best chance of success because your business depends upon it.”
Maternity leave resulted in a promotion
She thrived in that environment for the next four years but that eternal thirst for a new challenge was innate and in 2010 she moved to yet another industry, hospitality, where she took on a transformation role. The sector didn’t really have a bearing, it was the unified experience of working in a high pressure role and applying it to the business. And then, says Atkinson, “I got pregnant.”
Looking back, she knows now that the high stress of Tarmac, while very much part of what she thrived on, had prevented her from falling pregnant and it was the short break between jobs that enabled her stress levels to normalise. Without knowing it she started her new role while expecting her first child. While delighted she also had the unenviable position of telling her new employer the news. “They were incredibly supportive,” she says. At 12 weeks pregnant she knew that maternity leave was looming and would begin at the same point she was to accrue six months with the firm.
“I had my maternity leave and while I was off, I was promoted to a transformation role,” all these years later she remains incredulous that she landed a new job while on parental leave. She worked in that role for the next two years. Atkinson was living on the south coast in Hampshire at the time, but the job was based two hours away and the commute began to take its toll together with the complexities of taking her baby daughter with her each day to attend the nursery next to the office. For any young mum it would have been wearing and some. “My daughter was spending hours in the car every day. It was just so hard.”
Most working parents would have thrown in the towel a lot earlier, but tenacious as ever Atkinson continued until the inevitable ‘mum guilt’ set in and the realisation that the commute was unsustainable became a dawning reality. “I got a call about the job at Babcock and my first reaction was, ‘I’ve never heard of them,’ but I couldn’t not explore it because it was 20 minutes from my house,” she says.
