Interview with: Kerrie Field, General Manager, Human Resources & Media Solutions, St Vincents & Mater Health
Kerrie Field, a speaker at the marcus evans HR Summit 2010 addressing the critical issues facing HR executives in Australia and New Zealand today.
Queensland, Australia, February 11, 2010 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
In today’s business environment, the Human Resources (HR) leader has become a key player. The HR executive is a talent strategist, leadership developer, change master and productive work environment architect. With the right people, the sky is the limit. Yet the department is sometimes overlooked as a back office service. Thus it is essential that HR demonstrates how it adds real value to the business and the indispensible role it plays, according to Kerrie Field, General Manager of HR and Media Solutions at St Vincents & Mater Health.
A speaker at the marcus evans HR Summit 2010, taking place in Australia, 10 – 12 March, the winner of the HR Leader magazine’s “Best HR Leader” award in 2008 shares her thoughts on her winning HR strategies and the solutions to some of the challenges facing HR executives in Australia and New Zealand today.
What led up to your “Best HR Leader award”? What were the winning HR strategies within your department?
Kerrie Field: One of the reasons why I was nominated was because of the innovation within the healthcare sector, which has very much been about transactional HR rather than transformational HR. When I started, HR at Sv&MHS was considered a processing centre; there to handle difficult situations as they came up. What my team and I have been very successful with at the hospital, has been developing in leadership programmes, negotiating very innovative enterprise agreements and looking at a whole range of learning pathways across the organisation – really changing the model. We have become coaches and mentors for the business, and advisors and councillors for the six and a half thousand staff that are employed across our six healthcare facilities.
What are some of the challenges facing HR executives in Australia and New Zealand at the moment? What solutions to overcome those issues would you recommend?
Kerrie Field: As we go through the global financial crisis, back office services or what are perceived as such, are the first things being cut out. One of challenges for HR executives at the moment is about looking at how we add value, and defining the return on investment of what we do and how our work impacts the organisation. It is about being a real business partner to the CEO and CFO, talking through issues but also bringing the people issues into context of what the organisational strategy is.
What long-term strategies would you recommend to your peers?
Kerrie Field: The whole concept around future workforce planning and looking at new models of education is a real critical path for HR executives. As we move forward, I do not believe that future generations will have the same education level and that the same types of programmes will necessarily work. Right now, we are partnering with universities, looking at who the future healthcare worker will be; HR executives need to look at where talent will be coming from.
HR needs to have a very clear understanding of what the organisational culture is and how that can be aligned to the strategic direction that they want to take. Our culture underpins everything we do. We are very much a mission and value based organisation, thus our reward systems, employee performance management, recruitment process, and learning and development are all linked to them. HR needs to align to company goals; if you do not have your people or your people strategy aligned to your goals, you run the risk of not achieving them. The HR perspective particularly in the health industry is that your product is your people.
What is the leading force which drives employees to success? How can they be inspired to go that extra mile?
Kerrie Field: It is about making employees feel that they belong to their organisation by inspiring them to understand how they contribute. For employees to achieve greatness, they have to feel that they are contributing to the overall success of their organisation and not working in isolation. Some of that is about empowering staff and giving them the opportunity to do small things that improve the process of their job or workplace.
How do you nurture talent within your organisation?
Kerrie Field: It has a lot to do with professional development opportunities and having staff involved in different things across the organisation. We ensure that we have a very attractive reward and benefits programme, not only financial but other benefits that are accessible. We have an extensive learning and development opportunity programme, and we nurture people to grow in their role. People are actively encouraged to try different things at St Vincent’s & Mater Health.
What are some of the opportunities out there for HR executives?
Kerrie Field: HR executives in Australia have a wonderful opportunity at the moment to really make a difference in their workplaces, become much more strategic and part of the overall direction of the business. This is a new time for us to reinvent ourselves. There is a wonderful opportunity for HR executives to be much more involved in the development of future generations, in relation to professional and vocational qualifications. A lot of the time you see that one size fits all but most of the universities and institutes are actually looking at working with us to create programmes that are much more suitable to our workplace. There is a real opportunity to demonstrate to the business how we can add value.
Contact: Sarin Kouyoumdjian-Gurunlian, Press Manager, marcus evans, Summits Division
Tel: + 357 22 849 313
Email: [email protected]
About the HR Summit 2010
This unique forum will take place at the RACV Royal Pines Resort, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, 10 – 12 March 2010. Offering much more than any conference, seminar or trade show, this exclusive meeting will bring together esteemed industry thought leaders and solution providers to a highly focused and interactive networking event. The summit includes presentations on the way forward for diversity in the workplace, developing leaders within the organisation, and effective HR strategies.
For more information please send an email to [email protected] or visit the event website at http://www.hranzsummit.com/KerrieFieldInterview
Please note that the summit is a closed business event and the number of participants strictly limited.
About marcus evans Summits
marcus evans Summits are high level business forums for the world’s leading decision-makers to meet, learn and discuss strategies and solutions. Held at exclusive locations around the world, these events provide attendees with a unique opportunity to individually tailor their schedules of keynote presentations, think tanks, seminars and one-to-one business meetings. For more information, please visit http://www.marcusevans.com
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