HR Grapevine 2015 Speakers - Stephen Pierce, Chief HR Officer, Hitachi Europe

Stephen Pierce, Chief HR Officer, Hitachi Europe, will be speaking at this year’s HR Can Change the World conference. He talks to HR Grapevine about his motivations and inspirations…

What have been the highlights in your career journey that have enabled you to sit where you are today?

I joined a food company in 1986, as a graduate in HR, and discovered that it was really what I wanted to do, and had a passion for, and that’s why I’ve been working in HR ever since. When I first started out I had a career plan, I wanted to be a HR director, of a large organisation. I set myself a deadline of when I wanted to do that by, and I actually beat the deadline. I’ve always had the aspiration to work in senior level at a big organisation, and I have a passion for HR and the contribution that we can make to transform businesses.

What motivates you and drives you?

I think in HR, believing that when companies say that people are the greatest asset, you’ve got to do something to make that a reality. Everybody says it, but actually, how many believe it? You’re only going to make it happen by having great HR people that know how to turn those words into a reality. You want your top people to be saying it, but they need to understand how to do it and typically they won’t, so HR can really make a difference if it can translate the aspiration and the vision into a reality for the organisation.

I’m motivated by business and I love the business environment. I’m not a back office sort of HR person, I like to get involved with the business and understand how they work and I think HR has a really important responsibility to be able to talk business. So many HR people I meet can talk HR but they can’t talk the business, and you’ve got to translate the HR language into business language to communicate with your key clients to really get that respect.

How do you know when you’ve done a good job, what gives you satisfaction?

I’m very motivated by achievement, by getting things done in a sense, but having a target and working towards it, I’m a great believer in the saying unless you actually know what you want to achieve, we’re never going to achieve it. Knowing where you’re going and understanding what it is you need to do to get there, and recognising that in HR is important. In these sort of senior roles you have so many things you could do, it’s vital to understand where to focus, and then once focused, then get a plan to understand how you’re going to achieve what you need to achieve in that area.

But also there are small successes too, occasionally I meet people that I’ve not seen for many years and they’ve said to me, thank you so much for giving me that opportunity, for appointing me to that role. People don’t forget the opportunity that they get given, and we as HR, can be enabled to develop people and help them to shape their own career, and when you meet people like that, then you recognise the small contribution that you’ve made to the company, but the huge one you’ve made to their life then that’s an achievement too and that’s fantastic.

Who inspires you?

Many different people, so there isn’t one person I would say is my role model. I love talking to people, hearing their story, watching presenters, and learning from them. It’s really just picking up through doing that, what’s good, what’s great and what’s indifferent, so there’s many different ways I think that I’ve learnt.

I like the work of Daniel Goleman for example, because I think that forms part of what’s important in HR and brings some new thinking about Emotional Intelligence, in a company like Hitachi, which is Japanese culture meeting western culture. You need a good dose of Emotional Intelligence, to be able to work cross-culturally in that way.

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