Before Ciprian Arhire’s career had even begun, it looked like the game was over. While studying for what he thought was his dream career in computer programming, illness forced a change of course.
Arhire explains: “The illness prevented me from looking at screens or flashing lights, so I had to drop out of my computing course. But the recovery process led to me falling very much in love with HR.
“I realised that, through HR, I could be much more impactful than being stuck in a room coding. I switched careers, and started looking at the wonderful world of HR, and what it can do for organisations.”
Arhire started out in the learning and development sector in his birth country, Romania. But it was working within the HR department of a major international organisation that truly ignited his passion for strategic HR. That company was doing a different kind of HR than the “documents-and-payroll-only HR” that he’d previously experienced.
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“This company applied a completely different type of thinking about what the world of people development could look like,” he remembers. “I was inspired. I needed to leave Romania, to see where these amazing ideas about HR could take me.”
Since levelling up and pivoting towards the people profession, Arhire has held a variety of HR roles, and is now global head of people programmes and analytics for the FTSE100 gaming, betting and entertainment group, Entain, a business that employs more than 30,000 employees in 20-plus countries. He is a founding member of Hacking HR, a global community of HR and business leaders; he has led several CIPD networks for more than a decade, and he was listed among HR magazine’s Most Influential practitioners in 2022.
Arhire’s most recent brief at Entain involves spending hours with big data models, questioning, analysing and understanding data, and how it can be improved to benefit the business better. His early education in computer programming and system architecture has equipped him with an engineer’s appreciation of data science, as he lays the groundwork for integrating AI in people analytics, and ensures that Entain’s global workforce has the skills it needs for the future.
It can be difficult to mobilise change in a heavily regulated environment that requires agility. “It’s a highly political environment,” he explains, referencing his efforts to reassure Entain’s 2,000 employees in the Philippines, where the president banned off shore gaming in November: a decision that limits the business’ operations. But Arhire relishes the challenges.
“I love the fact that no two days are alike,” he says, listing the myriad of projects he’s involved in: redesigning the HR operating model, two new tech implementations, and a payroll review, to name a few. “It’s entertaining,” he says with a smile. “Keeps us on our on our toes.”
As a child, Arhire was surrounded by his family’s views on the kind of occupation he should take up in the future. His grandmother was keen for him to be a priest, while his parents envisioned him as a doctor. “I felt attracted to the areas my family wanted me to work in, for different reasons,” he explains.
“Care for people is common to both roles, and looking after communities. I liked that a priest guides people through struggles, and in a way, predicts the future.” Young Arhire also admired the scientific aspect to the medical profession: “Doctors get to put on a lab coat and prototype and test things,” he recalls appreciatively.
“I sometimes joke that as an HR leader, I am both a doctor and a priest: I get to prototype and test things, and I also get to inspire and guide people, and give them an exciting vision of what the future can be.”
Before he answers my question about the greatest challenge of his career so far, he briefly mentions his experience of having to kickstart his HR career in the UK: “In 2012, Romanians were labelled as gypsies who were here to steal other people’s jobs. I had to start from scratch, and downgrade my experience and expectations significantly, to get my start.”
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What advice does he have for people leaders facing those barriers today? “Retain a bit of delusion,” he replies. “Think beyond self-confidence, and say to yourself: ‘How hard can it be? I’ll try it. I will understand and learn.’ Trust your ability to do that.”
This advice comes from the man who attributes his career success to “drive and delusion”, aptly illustrated by the fact that he once taught himself how to use AutoCAD, the computer-aided design software, by using it non-stop over the course of one weekend, just to assess how it could be of value to the business he was working with. Where will such drive and delusion take him next?
“My greatest career challenge is yet to come,” says Arhire, and he believes that’s true for all HR leaders. According to Arhire, HR’s most important task is to harness the power of AI to improve organisational strategy, and to navigate AI’s impact on people, work and HR leaders’ duty of care. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a self-confessed data geek, it’s a challenge that excites him.
As long as he has the freedom to keep innovating, he’s happy: “I enjoy the ability to put on that lab coat and prototype and test things,” he enthuses. “At the moment in my career, that gives me a lot of energy and a lot of passion. It makes my eyes shine.” Sounds like he’s hit the jackpot.
This article was published in the November/December 2024 edition of HR magazine.
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