It all started with an inquisitive mind. Even before Vera Parker took on the role of chief people officer at engineering specialist Smiths, she asked herself: How can HR remove the barriers that are preventing this company from performing even better?
Once in post, her questions multiplied: Why are only two out of every five roles filled by internal candidates? How can we address our gender imbalance? Why are we promoting men at a faster rate than women? What qualities can our 16,000-strong team aim for to become great leaders?
Read more: The new path to high-level HR, Part 1
Motivated to find answers, Parker sprung into action. She instigated an internal promotion strategy that has led to the filling of four out of every five roles with people already working for the business. Under Parker’s watch, Smiths’ gender imbalance has improved by three percentage points: 43% of the business’ engineering apprentices are women, for the second consecutive year. Parker also spearheaded an extensive consultation, after which her team defined and embedded a set of leadership behaviours for all staff, to help boost performance across the firm.
Demonstrating the success of Parker’s internal development strategy, Roland Carter became Smiths’ CEO in March, after having worked at Smiths for more than 30 years. “Nobody in the company can remember the last time we had an internally sourced CEO,” says Parker.
Carter’s successor for the role he vacated is another Smiths staffer, who had served the company for more than a decade. What’s more, the firm’s new head of excellence and sustainability, who began the role in May, had worked for Smiths – and in HR, no less – for nearly six years before taking up the new role.
The success of the strategy feels incredibly rewarding, says Parker. She adds: “Every company has incredible talent. We just need to invest in people, and not necessarily invest money or invest in expensive training but in getting to know people and understanding what barriers they have. Help them remove those barriers and really support people while respecting their choices and listening to what people want.”
An organisational restructure at Smiths has added two extra areas of responsibility to Parker’s portfolio: health and safety, and the Smiths Group’s charitable foundation, which was established last year to financially support education (specifically in science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and communities. This work has involved deciding on and administering the foundation’s first round of grants, which were awarded in March to charities in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.
Read more: Employee volunteering worth billions to charity
“I’ve been at Smiths for two years, and I’m absolutely delighted to be in this role, and in the executive space,” Parker exclaims. Did she ever imagine she’d be in this kind of role? “No, definitely not,” she replies. “I’ve just grasped opportunities at every step of the way. I always have, from a fairly early age.”
Parker was an ever-curious, always-reading child, who often wondered why people act the way they do. It’s easy for me to imagine that this curiosity underpins the multi-lingual, globally interested woman she is today: a Russian-born dual citizen of Britain and Canada, who has led HR departments in mining, technology and offshore drilling sectors.
After studying communications, Parker took a summer job at the US offshore drilling company Schlumberger, now SLB, in 1992, and stayed with the company for 22 years. She honed her craft and grew in HR capability through various roles at SLB, working in six different countries along the way.
Though she enjoyed her time at SLB, Parker left the company for a new challenge in mining. “It was much more exciting than oil and gas,” she states, while at the same time acknowledging the difficulty of coping with the criticism that mining companies get for their negative climate impact. “It was very, very hard to bear,” she says.
Parker worked for Rio Tinto, the second largest mining company in the world, for six years. There, she learnt the importance of ensuring safety above everything else – a mantra that is surely to serve her well at Smiths, as she gets to grips with her new health and safety role.
While working for Rio Tinto, family tragedy stuck, which led Parker to step back from the role she enjoyed, and take a year-long career break. “Having a huge role at a FTSE 10 company was just too much,” she admits. “I am an achiever, and it was difficult to step away from what I’d achieved. It was probably the hardest decision of my career. But it was right for me to leave.”
By the time she was jobhunting for a company role, Parker knew what she wanted: a manufacturing businesses with significant global impact, where she knew she could make a real difference. Before she joined Smiths, its performance had flatlined for 10 years, she tells me. “Now, we’ve demonstrated 11 continuous quarters of growth. A huge reason for that progress is because we have been impacting the company culture.
“We are in a fairly happy place,” Parker adds, “but we want to do better. We want to be a lot more efficient, and to continue to innovate, which is a very big part of our people agenda: creating an environment where people can innovate and progress.
“We’re not done with gender diversity, or other forms of diversity. Inclusion is very important to us. At the same time, we will forever focus on internal development and investing in people to be the best versions of themselves.”
For HR leaders who are not yet in the boardroom, Parker’s advice is to constantly strive to understand where all people within the business are coming from: ask questions; be curious, and you will find the dialogue and openness that can propel you to where you want to be.
Parker’s future career goals reflect the pleasure she takes in seeing the people she has mentored or supported succeed in their ambitions. She wants to support more people, and later down the line, to contribute to another company in a non-executive director role.
Beyond that, “it’s premature, but I can’t wait to have grandchildren,” she tells me. “They would be the biggest threat to my career progression; I would not be able to keep away!”
This article was published in the July/August 2024 edition of HR magazine.
Subscribe today to have our latest articles delivered to your desk.
