Personal file: Peter Godfrey Family: Mother (Marie) and father (Brian) both heading for ‘80’; they are the foundation stones of my life. My sister Marion is married to Craig and they have three great children. My wife Merrill and I met in 1986; she is the ‘yang’ to my ‘yin’. The other lights of my life are my girls, Gabrielle and Carryn, who is married to Chris, and they have a son Bailey, with another on the way. Favourite movie or TV: Movie = Shawshank Redemption; TV = NYPD Blue, Rockwiz, Switzer and Modern Family. Best advice ever received: Read the business and finance sections of the newspapers every day. How do others describe you? From a ‘personal brand’ exercise I did earlier this year the consistent themes were: insightful, loyal, intelligent, humble, pragmatic, knowledgeable, and a good listener. If I was to add one myself, I am driven by achievement. Favourite sports/ hobbies: Basketball has been a life-long passion – playing, watching and coaching; I swim and have done so for 30 years or more; I ride a motorcycle, and we like to travel, go to the theatre a few times a year, as well as entertain at home, and escape to our surf coast property when time permits. First job and/or worst job: First job at about age 14 was as a casual shop assistant at Alexanders Menswear. If not in HR: I’ve had a number of ‘sliding door’ moments throughout my education and work life. I might have been a professional basketball coach at junior collegiate or collegiate level in the US. There’s a clear connection with what I do in the HR context as at its core ‘coaching’ is about the pursuit of excellence and the development of others. Winning is a product of that effort.
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compensation, and superannuation. His last role with the Shop Assistants was as senior national industrial officer principally focused on enterprise bargaining with all of the major employers in the retail industry. The bridge into Australia Post was Godfrey’s industrial and employee relations capability. Over the next 14 years or so Australia Post afforded him the opportunity to learn, grow and progress, as well as generalise into broader HR roles and focus on the full suite of HRM including organisation design and development, talent, succession, recruitment, workforce planning, performance management, and remuneration and benefits, while building and leading HR teams focused expressly on delivering business outcomes. Godfrey notes that his ‘proudest achievement’ in HR occurred during his time at Australia Post (2003–2010), during which he firstly built and then led a high performing team and function. “My HR team at Post consistently achieved customer feedback ratings at or above 80% satisfaction, while also returning their own employee engagement scores at or above 90%,” he says. “These results were achieved by an outstanding group of people providing an end-to-end HR offer for a business division of over 9,000 employees. As a further measure of the effectiveness of our HR function
that division of Post also returned employee engagement scores of 80% and above, which exceeded many Australian and global employee engagement norms.” The scale, unique trading and operating environment at Australia Post also equipped Godfrey with the skills to work and lead comfortably in “complex and often ambiguous environments,” he says. It also placed Godfrey in a unique position to comment on the skills, capabilities and knowledge that HR professionals must possess in order to operate in today’s complex work environment: “At a high level, it is business understanding, customer focus, functional leadership, core HR process, program and systems knowledge, and the ability to innovate, execute and deliver,” Godfrey explains. “If I was to articulate this in a different way, I think senior HR leaders need to understand the value chain/s of the clients and customers of their organisation. Upstream from that it’s essential to understand how their organisation helps the client or customers create value. Further upstream from that is to understand what capability is needed in their organisation to maximise impact, and how to go about building it.”
HR AT SPOTLESS In his current role, Godfrey is charged with leading and driving a number of initiatives with and for the global head of HR. HR at Spotless is multi-layered, inclusive of group, country (New Zealand, Hong Kong and the UK, for example), division (business partners), and state. There are also HR resources embedded in various parts of the business and in specific commercial contracts. “Spotless, although a completely different business, is very much like Australia Post in that it is a great story of success via a large-scale diversified and important business offering, and where much of its success is directly