Job title: HR director
Company: Eurotunnel
What are your key responsibilities?
The provision of a full HR service for 1,500 UK staff.
Previous jobs (both HR and non-HR)?
I was personnel director at Hoverspeed for 10 years, and before that deputy personnel director at TVS, the former southern ITV franchise.
Why did you choose Eurotunnel?
I was headhunted. I knew my predecessor and I liked the company it is a genuinely Anglo-French enterprise.
What attracted you to a career in HR?
I started work in the Engineering Employers Forum research department, and employee relations always interested me. In HR there are few right or wrong answers, its all about judgment.
What key skills do you need to be successful in your current role?
You have to be persuasive, pragmatic and sensitive.
What do you enjoy most about your current job?
Employee relations and change management.
What do you enjoy least about your job?
Being an email slave.
What has been your greatest achievement in work?
Ive only been here nine months, but at Hoverspeed it was the integration of 1,000 UK, Belgian and French staff.
What is the most important contribution that HR can make to a business?
Making sure you have people who are competent to do their job and progress further.
If you werent working for Eurotunnel, which company would you most like to work for?
I would love to run a specialist travel agency offering brilliant customer service on trips to exotic places.
Which business person, outside Eurotunnel, do you admire most?
Paul Lucchinelli, general manager of the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. Ive been particularly impressed with his partnership management.
What measures do you use to see how good a job you are doing?
Apart from conventional performance indicators, its repeat business: do people come and use us again?
Which book has had the greatest influence on you?
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, an extraordinary tale of the dangers of unbridled capitalism and the dignity of labour.