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HR Grapevine
13
A Day in the life of...
Sarah Graham
Head of Talent, END.
Most mornings start off with BBC6 Music and the commute to work for Sarah Graham, Head of Talent at END. – a clothing retailer. Below, Sarah gives us an insight into what one of her days is like working for the clothing brand, which can consist of anything from delivering training sessions to pulling articles together for the digital employee newsletter...
Morning - 06:00am
My day begins with a tranquil alarm, although I am often awake before it goes off creating a mental checklist of the activities for the day and the preparations I need to make. If it’s a Thursday, I am up earlier to go to a HIIT Step class – it’s brutal, but it definitely gives me an added spring in my step.
07:30am: I listen to BBC6 Music on my drive to work and love the diversity of music that I hear, I also love belting out the songs which gets the blood pumping – luckily, I don’t carshare! Once I get into the office, I get logged in to check my calendar and review applications on our ATS that have come in for our vacancies overnight. I’ll tidy up the pipelines and engage with the hiring managers if there are candidates that I feel would be a great fit for END. I like to move quickly when I spot great talent, especially with how competitive the market is at the moment.
09:30am: If it’s a Monday or a Friday, the people team have a catch up to talk about priorities for the week or to review the past week – this helps us to see what each other is working on and it helps me be ahead of the curve if I identify that there is a learning need across multiple departments, or new roles have been signed off for recruitment. We’ll also check in to our ‘Temperature of Truth’ – this was started during lockdown and it is something we still do. You give a score between -3 to +10 on what your current mood is, and it helps me to see which members of the team might need a little bit more TLC that day. The team I work in is talented – this was recently recognised when we won the CIPD North East’s HR&D Team of the Year award.
Once a month I pull the articles together for the employee newsletter that goes out digitally
10:00am: It’s on to the day’s activities – this could be a virtual networking event focused on diversity, equity and belonging or a Teams meeting to evaluate new roles in the organisation with line managers. Once a month I pull the articles together for the employee newsletter that goes out digitally. The opening article is written by one of the Senior Leadership team, and we have employee information, wellbeing updates and features on different teams from around the business. We also have a section for employees who have been given five stars for service by our customers on Trustpilot, and team news which shares our employees life events – I LOVE to see the baby photos.
Lunch - 12:00pm
If the weather is nice, we’ll have our lunch outside in the landscaped garden on benches topping up on Vitamin D. If not, we have a comfy area in our office where we’ll gather for lunch. What people have brought to eat is always a topic of conversation.
I spend a lot of time working on attraction approaches that feed into the recruitment strategy for the different roles and departments we have at END
Afternoon - 13:00pm
This could involve a catch up with my direct reports about any successes they want to share, or it could be a planning session with the people management team to see where we are against our people plan. I spend a lot of time working on attraction approaches that feed into the recruitment strategy for the different roles and departments we have at END. We have a lot of varied roles that are not often based in the North East, so I want to make sure that those vacancies are seen.
Some days I will be delivering a training session – our Values Based Management Development Programme is designed for managers at all levels of the organisation and focuses on supporting managers to be their best selves so that their team benefits.
Evening - 17:00pm
My journey home replicates my journey in – loud music and enthusiastic singing. I also check off actions from my mental list and think about what’s on the meal plan for tea. The evening consists of gym classes and then quality time with my son watching comedies or box-sets before completing my K-beauty regime before bed.
End of the day
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