For Craig McCoy, HR has always been ‘business first’. From the start of his career in learning and development to being headhunted as the first group HR director at Sky, through to a series of deliberately chosen interim roles within the health and care sector, McCoy’s roles have been dynamic and fast-moving, ensuring that the people element of each company matches and contributes to meeting the challenges of the wider business. His roles have always been focused on leading and delivering a positive contribution rather than being reactive to events.
“A common mistake made by HR directors is to try and work from some sort of template that covers the elements a people strategy should have,” he notes.
“This is the wrong way to start,” he points out. “To create an effective people strategy you need to immerse yourself in the business first and foremost. Then, that experience can be translated into what the people strategy should be.”
Having been in HR for more than 40 years, Craig splits his career into three episodes: the first is the early years, in which he brought the skills and aptitude from his Cambridge languages degree to in-house training roles and change consultancy work with Andersen, which took him around the UK on a wide variety of projects.
The second part featured high-powered and challenging HR roles, primarily in the technology and media sector. There was a five-year stint at Datastream (his longest time in any one position), extensive restructuring and business development work at Compaq Computers, and that top and unique role at British Sky Broadcasting. There, McCoy led an HR team of 150, shaping the people side of the business at a time when the company was creating and launching the world’s first interactive TV platform and ‘red button’ digital services.
Perhaps bizarrely, as part of the Murdoch empire, McCoy also had a view over the football clubs the business had stakes in. A rather interesting mix, then, of sectors and considerations for the now high-profile HR leader, and a time when, by his own admission, the work was high-speed and demanding. The business moved quickly to develop new media technologies and pushed to get services out to market.
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McCoy was in charge of people and change management for a £100m project involving the 5,000 contact centre staff who would support the business’ 10 million customers by email, interactive TV and phone. His efforts were recognised through the business’ award of European Contact Centre for 2002.
Similarly business-orientated roles at BT and Aegis Media followed, the latter requiring leadership across a virtual 40 strong HR team with sight over a workforce of 8,000 in 45 countries. However, McCoy then exacted a deliberate shift in focus as his career switched to its third phase: interim roles centring on the healthcare sector, and elderly care in particular.
“I liked the appeal of interim roles,” he says. “It meant I could use my skills in a different context, being flexible but also trouble-shooting for companies according to their particular needs.”
Again, these roles meant that McCoy was always focused on the demands of the business rather than caretaking, bystanding or letting things tick over. He helped businesses face financial difficulties and manage incoming new executive teams. He also steered organisations through times of challenge and change. His niche meant delivering quality care services on the one hand, but always with a view on the hard-nosed business side of things on the other.
Understanding each business has been crucial to the success of McCoy’s people approach in interim posts. HR, he says, cannot simply offer or implement ‘a system’ that doesn’t acknowledge what lies beneath, especially if what’s already there isn’t working in the first place.
His business-first approach means shoring up the fundamentals of the company first. It’s an approach that requires HR to operate at executive level, with influence over the business: “If the operating model isn’t right, there’s little point in trying to make it work,” McCoy observes.
“You might need to change the organisational design. To do that, you need to work with the board and the executive team. Otherwise you’re just layering something on top of a business that doesn’t work.”
McCoy is also adamant that HR’s work must be rooted in data. If the business doesn’t already have suitable data for HR to use, HR professionals’ first job is to go and find that data.
“Sometimes, people data just isn’t available in an integrated or usable way. As a result, decision-making and business proposals are based on concepts, principles, themes and even just gut feel, rather than robust data.
“You need to know the starting point for the HR strategy. Carry out some initial baselining, and then monitor movement from there,” he advises. Thankfully we now have a myriad of technology solutions and devices dedicated to the collection, storage and analysis of HR data, meaning that the function can make decisions based on very clear grounds and record specific outcomes.
Some may view McCoy’s final – for now – move as a step away from the frontline of HR. But he is no less engaged or concerned with the work of the function than at other times in his career.
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Having led what started as a branch of the CIPD, McCoy is now sole director of HR Connection, a focus for networking, events, webinars and support for HR leaders and professionals. McCoy has led the organisation for the past decade, first as the CIPD’s branch chair – this was the only fully sponsored branch of the organisation, he says – and now as sole director of the organisation with a volunteer board of nearly a dozen people.
“It has the potential to become a fully fledged commercial venture,” McCoy enthuses, pointing out that the organisation is now considering hosting events away from the capital and across the UK.
At the same time, McCoy is also spending a day a week advising financial services business Wagestream, tapping into his knowledge and experience of the health and social care sector, as well as making introductions and speaking at events. The business offers an early pay salary service and is ‘values-driven’, says McCoy.
McCoy’s career decisions have clearly been led from the start by his determination to make a difference to businesses, and to the working lives of those around him. He’s been at the forefront of significant change within industries, and is still there as fintech makes further moves into the employment space.
“When I’m looking at opportunities, I ask myself if I could see myself working with those particular business leaders,” he says. “I need to know that they ‘get it’.” McCoy certainly does.
Five things I can’t live without
1 Networking events: They are my life blood
2 Fine wine: I have taken many wine tours around the world
3 Music: I learned piano and I now sing bass in a choir
4 Family: My wife and daughter are very special to me
5 Travel: We’ll soon go to Costa Rica and Romania
This article was published in the May/June 2025 edition of HR magazine.
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