Chief People and Sustainability Officer, The Cumberland Building Society - 'I'd like to see more CPOs get the top business jobs'

Jill Johnston has gone from Sainsbury's graduate scheme to Guardian Media Group Radio HR chief to Chief People and Sustainability Officer at The Cumberland Building Society. Here, she talks candidly about inheriting an "archaic" culture, boosting board diversity from 19% to 50%, and why she still won't mandate a return to the office.

A graduate trainee scheme at Sainsbury’s was a brilliant start

Jill Johnston was shrewd from the start. She applied for a prestigious graduate trainee position at Sainsbury's and got it, starting with the company in 1991 - a year marked by the end of the Cold War - as one of only two taken on. "I got a first in my retail marketing degree from Manchester Metropolitan University. One of the modules was HR, and in my placement year I worked for BHS, which wasn't in HR, and also for Next at their head office in Leicester, in their training department. That's where I got my taste for all things people," she says. That experience helped her stand out when she applied for the role at Sainsbury's.

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It meant a move to London, which she met with excitement. Originally from Cumbria and now living there once more, she'd wanted to experience life in the capital. "I'm the first in my family to go to university, so moving first to Manchester and then to London was a big thing for all of us," she says. Luck was on her side too. "My best friend from Uni also got a job at Sainsbury's, in the trading department - we both had jobs there at the same time, which meant we could live together, and we had such fun. Her role was in buying - we used to laugh about how she was tasting curries at 9am!" she smiles.

She turned down a job at The Cumberland Building Society many years before

Timing mattered too. Her mentor, Caroline, worked in HR in the trading department and pushed her on. "She was invaluable to me at the time, and by coincidence we later met again when I worked for the Guardian," she says. Johnston completed her two-year graduate cycle with the supermarket chain and was lured back to Cumbria by a job at Border TV. She stayed for eight years, working her way up to Head of HR and Training. "When I applied for that job, I also applied for one at Cumberland Building Society but turned it down for Border TV. It seems it wasn't my time to work there then - but it is now," she explains.

"I loved working for ITV - they set up a radio division, and I got involved in that. We had presenters, including Nina Hossain, come up through the graduate trainee scheme at Border TV. We recruited them, and we're very proud of that," she says. The station eventually merged with Granada, and around the same time Johnston was offered a job at Guardian Media Group by someone she'd worked with on the radio side, whose role was to set up a radio station for the company. "He wanted me on board as their HR director," she says.

She joined the Guardian in 2001 and stayed for eleven years, leaving as Group HR Director. GMG Radio included brands such as Real Radio and Smooth, and later acquired Century, Saga Radio and Jazz FM. When the business itself was sold to Global, Johnston found herself at a crossroads. "I thought to myself, what am I going to do now? I loved working in radio, so I decided to work for myself," she says. It gave her time to breathe and work out her next steps, which duly arrived eighteen months later - in the shape of Cumberland Building Society, which had knocked on her door once before.