HR Organisation Effectiveness Director, Boots - 'Rewriting the rules of HR leadership with grit, vision and impact'

Sharon Benson has worked for some of the biggest brands. Currently, she is at Boots helping to shape the people strategy, build the case for technology investment and design a future-fit operating model. She says it’s all ‘the brilliant bits’. Her keen eye for business coupled with being financially astute has marked her out as an HR leader that ‘saves’ businesses cash rather than spending it.

‘I quit school, eloped and got a job’

Benson ditched sixth form and went to work in Newquay, Cornwall. This brief spell in the southwest saw her dream of more, so she took a punt on an au pair post in America, aged just 19. She admirably stuck out the unknown for six months before the itch disappeared and the tug of home came once more.

Back on English soil, she landed a factory job in her hometown of Manchester before moving to a temporary role at Proctor and Gamble (P&G). “I worked in logistics and recorded all the batch numbers of the products that were loaded onto the trucks. I managed to get this down to a half a day role and knew I could do more, so I went to leadership and suggested that I did that job in the morning and move to occupational health in the afternoon, where they were looking for someone part-time,” she explains. Her gumption paid off and that’s exactly what she ended up doing. Spontaneous as ever, her next move was to elope to get married to an RAF Policeman aged 21.

“We moved to Kinloss, near Inverness in Scotland, so I had to leave P&G - I went into the job centre everyday when I was there and kept asking them what they had for me – they got so sick of it they gave me a job working for them!” Benson’s husband eventually left the Air Force, and they found themselves on the move again, this time returning to Manchester. A boomeranger she found herself back at P&G but due to their stance on permanent contracts she had to leave for a second time because she wanted to secure a mortgage and couldn’t as a temp. Contact centres were her employer for the next few years; she was by now aged 26 and the industry wasn’t going to be her first love.

‘Working at Hammond Suddards was like stepping into LA law!’

A chat with a recruiter at her local job agency ended up with a discussion about a team leader role. While discussing that position, she spied a vacancy for an assistant personnel officer working at law firm, Hammond Suddards. “I said to the recruiter, if you get me an interview, I know I’ll get the job!” She ticked some but not all the requirements from health and safety experience at P&G to interviewing. It was the days before mobile phones were mainstream and by the time Benson got home, she did so to an answer machine message saying that for her ‘cheek’ they’d see her!

“I bought myself a new suit and I walked into the interview at John Dalton Street, Manchester. It was like the set out of LA Law, the American TV drama - I knew then that I needed to work there,” she says. She duly joined on April Fool’s day – unlucky for some but not for her. Fee earners ruled and, it quickly became apparent that HR was thought of as second-class citizens. “I was told I had to sit on the floor with the secretaries, but I was dealing with confidential matters, and I needed my own office, so I thought, I’ll show you!” She set about doing just that and taking on more responsibilities including interviewing to demonstrate her skills.

Ever on a drive to prove herself, she not only excelled with that but wanted to show that she was adding value just as the fee earners were. “They were paying the legal secretaries around £18,000 per year for 40 wpm typing – I suggested that the business move towards hiring audio typists that cost around £12,000 pa and typed at around 80-90 wpm. They were cheaper and did the work quicker,” says Benson. Her bold idea was taken forward with a pilot that ran for six months based upon four audio typists working in the evenings. There were other cost savings in addition to the lower wage bill – the move eradicated the need for overtime expenses and taxis for colleagues that stayed beyond their hours. “Instead, we offered the evening typists parking spaces and that worked really well.” The typists were made permanent, working between the hours of 4pm and midnight. There were many working mums that were keen for that kind of work to wrap around childcare.