CPO, Envisage Dental - 'Our job is to make sure they have the right qualifications, but also the right people skills'

"I started working when I was 13, in a housekeeping role in hospitality. I earned my own money and independence as early as I could and it introduced me to what great guest service looks like," Emily Franklin says. That meant scrubbing toilets, changing beds, hoovering and all manner of domestic duties.

"I witnessed how people treat you differently depending on the job you do," she says. As well as pocket money, it gave her experience in dealing with people. "I quickly learned how people communicate, what type of service they are looking for and how they want to be looked after. Ultimately, I always wanted guests to walk out the door having had a great experience," she says.

After her parents divorced, Franklin credits her upbringing with instilling resilience, independence, and a strong work ethic from an early age. In her mid-twenties she decided to go to university - the first in her family to do so, and a very proud moment. "I started studying law and while I loved the verbal debate and the articulation of it, I found it really tough to memorise information and trawl through data. After my first year I switched to political science, studying power structures, people and society. I adored it and had a wonderful time," she says.

A job in talent consulting built relationship skills

That led her to a job in talent consulting at La Fosse Associates in London. "When I joined in June 2015 there were 60-70 people - today it's 500," she says. Working on executive search assignments, she learned how to find the best CTOs and Chief Digital Officers. "These were the best technical professionals, often leading transformation at a very senior level, and that was amazing because I was able to put my relationship-building skills into practice and run events," she says. The sticking point was that assignments ended once the professional was placed.

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Her next move was in-house. "I took a job with a technology business, Heywood Pension Technologies, on a short-term role to prepare the business for sale - I always knew it wasn't a long-term position," she says. It wasn't long after that assignment finished that she joined Ovo Energy. In 2017, when she started as HR Business Partner, there were 2,000 people. Today there are considerably more. "We scaled the business through a massive growth period," she says. I ask whether that's her sweet spot - joining a business at the point it turns into a growth opportunity. "Yes," she replies.

"I think of businesses in three buckets - build from scratch, scale up and maturity," she says. Her preference is the middle stage. "I like to work in a business that exists in a small way and expand it into new territories, building a great culture and operating model as it grows," she says.

After Ovo she took a curve ball and joined a completely different type of organisation - the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, UCAS. "People don't often know it's a charity," she says. The switch gave her insights that would propel her into the senior HR ranks. "Sticking with one industry can lack innovation. I love taking learnings from one place and applying them to another," she says.

It was a role she loved but then Covid hit. "I had a great two and a half years, but the pandemic brought challenges we wouldn't ordinarily have faced, including furlough, which took enormous amounts of resilience to lead through" she says.