that having fun is part of our mantra at work,” she says.
SHIFT TO STRATEGIC HR
From an HR perspective, there will continue to be significant change. Tunbridge pulls no punches: the HR team has not yet arrived at being true strategic partners with the organisation. “Is HR at SBS a strategic partner? No. It’s not even close. When I arrived, HR was still a very reactive, very transactional group of people. We had 11 people out of twentysomething who were dedicated to producing a fortnightly payroll, in-house,” Tunbridge says. The HR people at the time simply didn’t know what they didn’t know. “It’s not a criticism; it’s that they weren’t aware the HR industry had moved on. They were in a time warp! So they’re smack bang in the middle of their own learning curve, which is very steep.” This, she says, is precisely the reason why it’s so important to have some fun along the way. “[Now] we’re right in the middle of restructuring HR. We’ve outsourced our payroll; we’ve brought a technology platform in-house to do our rostering and timesheets. For the first time we now have a solid HRIS offering, which we never had before. And so, while sadly we had to make a lot of people redundant, those savings have allowed us to move towards a more strategic HR workforce,” she says. At this juncture, communication is key because there are parts of the organisation that simply do not know what to do with a strategic HR workforce, or what it really means. “They know they want and need help with people issues, but they’re just not sure how to engage with us. So a large proportion of time over the next 12 months is going to be teaching the business what [strategic HR] does, what they can’t do, and saying ‘you know, we’re not here to fill out your performance management plans; we’re not here to
I’m not an HR director who looks for maintenance roles – MELINDA TUNBRIDGE have that difficult conversation for you, but we are here to advise, coach, mentor’ – all those things you would expect from a strategic HR workforce,” Tunbridge says. The goal is no mean feat. Up until very recently, HR at SBS was still the place to go for people problems to be sorted out, and those days are coming to an end.
Personal file: Melinda Tunbridge
THE FUTURE IS LOOKING BRIGHT
Tunbridge cites her biggest career achievement to date as delivering on consistent employee feedback, and getting a new enterprise bargaining agreement over the line. “We negotiated based on the feedback in our EOS surveys, which was that we were consistently hearing that ‘we’re sick of tolerating mediocrity’ and ‘I’m sick working my guts out and the person I sit next to leaves at 4:59pm on the dot every day and gets the same pay rise as I do every year’. There was no consequence for underperformance,” Tunbridge says. The new agreement is by no means a witch-hunt; it’s a fair, values-based systems in which, at the end of the day, the people decided that underperformance was not going to be tolerated. “It’s not about penalising people. It’s about drawing a line in the sand and putting a plan in place so that if you’re not performing, we will be able to help you. But ultimately, there’s got to be some metrics around this. It’s a delayed pay rise, and so people can come to a point where they improve, and they get their pay rise, and if they don’t, a time may come where we have to part ways,” Tunbridge says. With the initial phase of the change management strategy starting to bear fruit, and alongside the full support of the managing director and the executive team, there is an air of hunger in Tunbridge’s voice. “We’ve already been through one really solid phase where we’ve introduced to the business that this is a plan; it’s serious. So the appetite and the expectation is high, and it’s really about delivering on that over the next 12 months. And certainly from a leadership perspective we’re going into that leadership group of the top 250 leaders to look at what makes an SBS leader tick and ask: does that align with the culture and the values and strategy of the business? Traditionally we’ve just let those leaders exist. So there is a massive agenda for the next couple of years.” More industry profiles at:
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Family: Married with a gorgeous 14-month-old daughter, Eloise Favourite sports: Ironman triathlons and marathons Hobbies: Exercise and a healthy lifestyle Favourite movie/TV show: Heston’s Feasts Best piece of advice you’ve received: “Keep it in perspective. We’re not curing cancer, and no one is dying” First job/worst job: Cleaning out cat cages in a cattery – eeeeow! If not in HR: Professional athlete of course! If that didn’t work out, forensic investigator...
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