Tessa Boshoff has a talent for seeing potential. That talent reawakened when her steady rise through big retail names like the Body Shop, Starbucks and Gap was interrupted by an unexpected move in 2019, to education.
She says: “When I first joined Wall Street English five and a half years ago, I found a bit of a sleeping giant. In the retail businesses I had worked in, they had almost maxed out their runway. They were omnichannel, with so many products it felt as though anything that could be done to make the businesses successful had been tried already.
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“In this business – which has one product that has been operating successfully for 50 years, though a decentralised sales force – there was so much that hadn’t been done yet. We needed the right skills and the right structure to realise our ambitions. I feel like a kid in a candy shop! It’s so nice to be in a business that has so much opportunity.”
The global brand operates in 35 territories, with 350 English language schools around the world, the majority of which are franchised. However, Boshoff describes her team as a close-knit one that deeply cares about the product.
“We are global and we are huge. But at the core, we’ve got 60 people in HQ who are supporting that organisation around the world. And people genuinely care,” she says. “I think it’s because of the passion people have for education and the teaching background of a lot of the people that work here.”
At the time Boshoff joined, the company had just become independent from the educational publishing and services corporation, Pearson. Pearson had a shared services structure, so Boshoff had to create an entirely new HR department for the brand as it decoupled.
“Starting a new HR department is daunting, right?” Boshoff says, “but also an exciting opportunity to do things and create something in the way that you imagine. You’re not having to take over somebody else’s work, which is nice. Daunting, difficult but rewarding is probably how I would describe that.”
There was no time for Boshoff to get comfortable in her new department though, as Covid hit a year later. As Boshoff explains, this could have been catastrophic for the company.
“We had 120,000 students studying in centres. But one of the benefits of being a small, nimble team at head office is that we could move quickly to make sure that the business could survive. Within two to three weeks of us closing the Barcelona office, we figured out a way, using some of the technology that we were playing around with at the time, to get students from studying in centres to studying online.”
She adds that everyone in the business had to adapt quickly: “The teachers learned how to teach online basically overnight. The sales consultants had to learn how to sell online overnight. And one of the things I’m very proud of is that we managed to hold on to our entire team during that time. We didn’t put anybody on furlough in Barcelona, which is where the head office is.”
The HR team worked to support this rapid transition. “We were creating training quite quickly, to make sure that teachers knew what we were doing, and checking in with our franchise services management team, who were almost on the front line on calls for weeks.
“We also wanted to support people emotionally. We had counselling services available for anybody in Barcelona that obviously went through any trauma.
“Our CEO wrote an email to the Barcelona team every morning for the first 100 days of the pandemic. It was almost like a captain’s log, with inspirational messages, stories and reasons to believe that we would get through it. It’s a small thing, but it made a huge difference to the team.”
The online teaching was a huge success. Boshoff believes that going through such a challenging time pushed Wall Street English to realise its true capability.
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“The global online classroom, which we created as a result of the Covid pandemic, is actually very successful for us. It opened us up to other business opportunities and product ideas. Almost out of necessity, we discovered capability that we didn’t have before.”
Boshoff’s work on organisational design has helped the company to continue its innovation and bolstered its success. “The initiative that I’m most proud of is the organisational design, which has combined functions that historically have been run separately,” she explains.
“One of the structural changes I made was to put our product and technology departments together. We found a chief product and technology officer who has that entire organisation sitting under him: he sets the vision and there is synergy and symmetry in the team. He’s also brought in product modern product management principles, which will enable us to diversify the product portfolio. It’s a HR-led initiative, but it has a direct impact on the output of the organisation.”
To ensure that her organisational changes went over smoothly, Boshoff invested in team coaching and upskilling. “Sitting underneath that structural change is new skill sets, so we invested in coaching to help the teams become more agile.
“From a technology perspective, we also had a product coach come in. They helped the product managers go from the role that they were performing in the past to taking on more of a holistic product role, where they own the product start to finish.”
Between the transformation of a HR function, organisational design and product changes, Boshoff’s time at Wall Street English has been tumultuous. However, this has taught her a lot about her craft, she says: “I have learned you have to act as the conscience of the organisation, whether that’s easy or hard to do. You have to have the confidence to make tough decisions on a daily basis.
“For example, during the pandemic, I had to decide whether to put people on furlough. Can we afford to keep them? Can we not? Those are such tough decisions but you have to be confident and strong in your in your guidance. The people around you need that.
“The other thing I’ve learned through all of this is that you have to constantly upskill yourself. You don’t have to know everything, but make sure you’re sufficiently curious to go and find out.”
Finally, she adds that bringing a sense of fun to work is invaluable, especially during periods of intense change and challenge. “Having a sense of humour in HR is a core competency post-pandemic,” she says.
“I’ve learned to have fun in those moments when we can. Even though the work might be challenging, being surrounded by professionals that you respect, and a team that uplifts each other, makes it worth it.”
This article was published in the September/October 2024 edition of HR magazine.
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