Hilary Richardson, HR manager, Rider Levett Bucknall
Different generations have different aspirations. We've got people who have been around a long time, the baby boomers, and Generation X are coming through. We need to make sure we have flexible reward packages, depending on what's going to push people's buttons to find their way through their career with us. There is a real difference there.
Fiona Roberts, human resources director, VW Group (VWG)
Everybody in the car industry wants the same people, so we need to show people that VWG will give them a really great career. Once we've got them, our focus is on developing our talent. Our surveys yield good data about how people feel, and we have a really constructive employees' forum.
James Watts, vice-president of human resources, KFC UK and Ireland/Yum Brands
When you have the right people in your business, how do you help them build the career that's right for them? Some people want to get into leadership roles, some are content being fantastic restaurant managers, some are part-time. Being able to adapt approaches to bring the best out of the 24,000 people we have working here is a constant challenge.
Andrew Stephenson, HR director, DFS
We have an ambition to become much more customer-focused, so as HR is one of the prime players in leading culture change, it makes sense that we also own the system by which we talk to our customers. We take the results into the boardroom, and that's led to things like redesigning our training programme through to changing reward structures to have elements that are paid against customer satisfaction. We also want to make work in retail appealing full stop – but that's not simply a DFS issue, that's a wider sector issue.
Tanith Dodge, HR director, Marks and Spencer
Growing globally is hugely challenging in terms of managing the complexity of thousands of people across 45 different international markets – particularly things like motivation, employee engagement and customer service. Our dotcom business is key – there's a transformation from being what has typically been a British high street business, investing in our supply chain and our digital infrastructure, and making it truly international and multichannel.
