A Global Human Capital Management (HCM) manager's reflection

What’s been your biggest learning as a manager so far?

That there are different ways to achieve certain outcomes, or even better outcomes, than my way of working, and adapting my beliefs to others. I also change my ways of working at a fast pace, and prioritise what is important from ‘everything is important’. When I joined Specsavers, I learned the meaning of listening and understanding people rather than focusing on myself. It allowed me to bring people on the same journey rather than battling and isolating myself.

I also established more honest communication channels to enable trust and confidence in people. I failed a few times myself, allowing my frustration of achieving at all costs to impair my judgement and see the bigger picture. I am lucky to have managers in Specsavers who trusted my ability to change and grow. I think this is key: bring people on your journey so they choose their own path, and potentially become great leaders themselves.

How do you tailor your management style for different personalities and ways of working?

Management styles can vary from one individual to another, depending on their sociocultural background and experience. A team is about understanding individuals' strengths and preferences. For example, my team comprises techy people, but some don’t like leading meetings, some prefer technical support, and some do system development. I try to recognise that individuals may have different working methods and styles. Some may be more organised and structured, while others may have a more fluid and flexible approach. I am flexible and accommodating as long as it does not compromise our team goals, productivity, or dynamics. While I provide guidance and monitor the business's demands and needs, they have great autonomy in organising their work. They lead their daily stand-up (which I am invited to), technical escalation reviews, and contracting sessions, which foster collaboration and individual contributions.

I also don’t have a strict rule on a 1:1 routine. My team can organise on a need-to basis once we have clear goal settings and development opportunities. I encourage an inclusive work environment where different approaches are valued. On the other hand, I organise ‘coffee corner calls’ - a way for me to build relationships and guide them on

how to approach a challenge, which, most of the time, they already know the answer to.

How do you support your team with their wellbeing, and make time for your own?

Wellbeing is my key focus area, simply because I neglected myself for too long. Again, I am lucky to have good management, who took the time to mentor me not just from a career development aspect but from a personal point of view - which positively impacted my work-life balance and my family. From there, I decided to give back to the people I manage with the same caring approach.

Remote working has a lot of benefits, but from experience, the in-person interaction, networking opportunities and visibility are impacted.  We lose socialisation skills and are prone to isolation, and there’s a separation between work and home to be made. I found asking people to stop working and pause more challenging than working itself. We’ve been trying to implement some guidelines recently:

- Avoid looking at emails and chats in meetings, to focus on the meeting itself

- Try to get your meeting done in 25 minutes rather than an hour, and keep it short, with a clear agenda. The last five minutes give you time to

   reflect, get a fresh drink and even go to the restroom.

- Turn your camera on! It will help you focus on the meeting rather than typing, making the interaction more social. It can be challenging if you are

   not used to it, but it becomes easy. Facial expressions give you clues about people’s feelings and reactions and make the process more human.

- Avoid having back-to-back meetings and provide some gaps when planning meetings with other people in their calendars.

- Respect people’s time. They're not an ‘on demand’ message service - be nice and be patient. We never know what's happening in others' worlds.

- Make an effort to meet a whole team regularly.

- Take a proper lunch break, no last-minute messages or chats. Take at least 45 minutes to eat and get some fresh air in a different room.

Specsavers has some great programmes in place, and I’d recommend everyone to look at the mental health awareness courses and information available in SharePoint. The most challenging part is that people think they need to show how hard they work, which can cause burnout. I used to be like this too, but now I'm able to do more activities with my daughters, and things that force me to stop working in time. I've even swum the Channel.

My main priority is that my team learn to look after themselves, and that I have respect for their precious time, so that they can look after their families too. I am confident that this helps their work to be more consistent and supports a good working environment. Sometimes, little things like swimming or taking drama classes can make a big difference in someone’s life and help develop confidence or communication skills. It doesn’t always need to be about work to grow as an individual.

There’s been a lot of focus on ‘squiggly careers’ recently - how are you supporting your team to identify their transferable skills?

I actually had a really great meeting with Rebecca Barnham recently, all about squiggly careers. It’s quite new for me and a great initiative. Imagine using my military, nursing and coaching skills to help the business or explore internal career opportunities? We all have transferable skills from different experiences, and the internal talent pool is a massive asset if we look carefully. I want to be part of the career champion project and show what we do in our team. I even discussed the opportunity within the SuccessFactors profile to add your experience, which in the future can be searchable to the talent teams if you wish - similar to what is used today with LinkedIn and other tools. This went straight on the deliverable list for my next team meeting and is why I recommend my team to take the time to read about our business news and updates. The Weekly Wrap, Managers’ Monthly, SharePoint and Viva Engage (Yammer) have much to offer for those who take the time to read them.

Don’t be afraid to contact other managers, too. My manager (thanks, Luke Barron) suggested this, and I contacted other managers whom I could identify as mentors, learn from and receive valuable feedback. Specsavers is great at nurturing its people.

What’s your approach to objective setting for both individuals and the wider team?

The interesting part of this question is that we decided how we work with our team and the wider team as a whole. Under Luke Barron’s guidance, and that of Sam Reavill, my peer, we looked at the organisation's goals and aligned our commitment to achieve them at our level. Working as one big team helps my team specifically to focus on what is important and not become distracted by the demand. We built a framework around Agile methodology via a two week sprint cycle. Individuals choose/agree on their objectives following SMART principles (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound). It gives them a sense of responsibility for their work and ownership, and with regular check-ins and progress tracking, it works well for us.

Managers have different views, depending on the environment they are working in. Individual objectives for me are based on the change management quality they deliver quarterly on their sprint cycles, and their ability to maintain our incident management queue under a certain threshold as a team, rather than individual KPIs. It aims for each individual to demonstrate how they can support others, and their customers’ feedback is key. Finally, their development has to progress from learning new skills, for example through internal or external courses.

What’s your top priority as a manager for the second half of 2023?

Definitely user experience. With over 30,000 users in 13 countries, running nine payroll integrations, we simply want the system to be reliable. We are conscious of its impact on stores, support office colleagues and M&D, and are part of a big machine to ease our colleagues' work so they can focus on our customers. We work with most teams in technology, HR, recruiting, finance, pension and payroll, which is exciting. We are involved in many projects exposing us to the overall digital transformation of the business, and it looks promising, so keep reading the newsletters and SharePoint for updates.

We will also be occupied with phase three of the People and Payroll project, then the SAP half-year system upgrade for a few weeks in November. The technical support and system improvement backlog is growing in the Human Capital Management space, and the demand is continuously increasing, which is good news and shows interest and growth. Developing the SuccessFactors platform and new modules in the coming months and years is challenging, but this is the space in which we thrive.

First published in Specsavers managers' monthly newsletter, 'Getting to know you - meet Sébastien Locteau' in august 2023