UK 
United States
Kathleen Strachan, Head of Technical Advice, Natwest Mentor has notched up 22 years at the Bank, she’s a lifer – yet she is driven by change and has had several careers within the business – she is proud to have always worked ‘flexibly’ long before it became the mainstay of working culture and explains that the Employment Rights Bill is her current obsession.
‘HR was a deliberate choice’
Strachan says that she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do when the school gates closed, and she ended up having a few years of what she refers to as ‘life experience’ before finding her path into HR.
“I worked in hospitality, retail, you name it! I also worked abroad and got it all out of my system. I knew that I liked working with people and realised that HR was a good fit for me – I chose it, not the other way around and it was a deliberate move,” says Strachan.
It was 1994 and Strachan enrolled at the University of the West of Scotland to study Human Resource Management. She graduated in 1999 and tells me that coming from a working-class background getting a degree was ‘huge’.
Her first job was at Direct Line, which was part of RBS group in 2000, and then in 2002 she joined, what at the time was called, RBS Mentor, a consultancy with expertise in employment law, HR, health and safety and environmental management, as a trainee employment consultant.
I worked in hospitality, retail, you name it! I also worked abroad and got it all out of my system. I knew that I liked working with people and realised that HR was a good fit for me – I chose it, not the other way around and it was a deliberate move
Strachan says she was an ‘older’ graduate when she got this trainee position, aged 28, but she knew that wasn’t going to hold her back. “It was a great job because I got to work and gain experience in three separate HR departments of Consultancy, Advice, and Litigation – it was a brilliant grounding.”
From there she chose to work in NatWest Mentor’s Employment Law and HR Advice Department for the next few years before looking for a change and working as a Case Consultant in the wider bank where she supported line managers with HR cases - delivering advice to them for tens of thousands of employees. Strachan did that for a few years and then was headhunted back to NatWest Mentor.
