Building a people-centric culture with the help of HR

Can you tell us a little bit about your role as head of people and what your career has been like so far? I've been working in HR for well over 10 years now and I like to believe that I support companies for their people by demonstrating how the company culture matters. We empower employees to succeed in their roles and recognise them for their achievements. This results in successful recruitment and retention in the company. My role as head of people at 200 Degrees comes at a really exciting time for the company, as it’s going through a lot of ambitious and driven growth plans. As the first head of people, I will be creating a HR department from scratch, with my role covering the whole employee lifecycle from attraction and onboarding, all the way through to employee experience at work, including learning and development, reward and benefits, equality and diversity, employee performance, and talent management. In previous companies, I've worked on senior standalone HR positions, which have supported companies since their inception, through creation and implementation of HR policies, rapid recruitment and supporting key stakeholders, with employee engagement incentives to build a people-centric culture. I do believe that how we support employees is absolutely the key to garnering a supportive business atmosphere. What made you decide to join 200 Degrees? I am a big coffee fan and a foodie, but as the first head of people for 200 Degrees, I was excited by the prospect of adding value to the company and supporting the employees further in a people-centric culture. The company and its individuals have achieved so much in the past 10 years, and I can only imagine the amount of growth that we’ll be going through now. It’ll be really exciting to see how the employees can progress in their journeys and develop alongside us. With the company looking to open five more stores in the next year, how will your role play into that? The HR department will be supporting the recruitment and retention for the company. It's important, especially given the current climate, that we are going above and beyond for our employees. Anything we can do to stand out from the crowd, I will try and get done in the best way possible. I think that by having HR support, the company will progress to that next level. The focus will be on areas like quality, diversity, and the employee journey to give them proper service detail that will help the growth of the stores as we continue to grow into a bigger and bigger company. What is the employee journey like at 200 Degrees and what do you do to retain staff in this tricky operating environment? A lot of the job roles we have available are customer-facing, and because of that, it's important that our employees are engaged at all times to give the best customer service possible. From the moment they are attracted to the role, it's important that we give them the right experience of recruitment and onboarding to see them progress through their careers. By having clearly set-out expectations for their roles from the onset, it really helps guide them throughout the year. I think people are the company’s greatest asset, and for that it’s important to mention how we go above and beyond compared to other companies. I've been setting up working groups of equality and diversity, as well as sustainability, community, and outreach. By having those groups and by having an employee forum, it gives employees a voice, which is sometimes the most important thing; employees want to feel like they are being heard. That also feeds into the reward and recognition we do to reward our employees for the work that they do. One particular incentive we’ve done recently is give away a Sage coffee machine, so you see our rewards system manifests itself in quirky ways. Is there anything planned in the near future for 200 Degrees? I guess the next main big thing is that we’re celebrating our 10-year anniversary as a company here at 200 Degrees. We're having parties with the partners and our suppliers, as well as any main stakeholders connected to the business next month, which will be fantastic. From an employee perspective, we will be celebrating the employees right along the way and the really good thing about it is that we still have a few people that are longtime employee service employees here. It’s really nice to have, considering in this day and age, and the sort of company we are.