It was still relatively early days for Rolfe when this interview took place but its clear her enthusiasm is deeper than simply the novelty of the new. Her perpetual smile widens as she shows off the staff cafeteria which is decked out like a snazzy uptown caf. The building is, as youd expect for a company which trades on image, stylish.
The decor is clinical, corners are neatly rounded and colours, used sparingly against white, are vibrant. Theres a spiral staircase in the foyer where tall glass vases filled with matching white, spiral-stemmed exotic blooms sit alongside groomed receptionists. This could be Paris... but its not: its Hammersmith Broadway... And therein lies one of Rolfes challenges how to adapt her British HR skills to the London headquarters of a very French business.
This role, which she took on last summer, has been a cultural learning curve. Rolfe spent 14 years at Sainsburys, which she joined as a management trainee after ditching the PhD route as too solitary. She says her varied roles there gave her a wide grounding. Her next move was to the restaurant and pub chain, Whitbread, an industry she deems tough.
Sainsburys and Whitbread were quite similar both were very paternalistic, had very strong founders and the leadership of that company had come from that family for many years. They were bureaucratic not in the negative sense but both were large hierarchies where things have an established way of getting done and were very UK-based. The struggle was, How do we change without losing our heritage? And, how do we recognise that we do need to change for the modern world?
Rolfe says the contrast between her former employers and LOral was profound. That was part of my decision to join LOral. First, it is French and everybody who has worked with French companies says they are very, very different. But I think that even by French standards, LOral is different. It has a particular culture, which personally I love. Its a very fleet-of-foot, dynamic, quick-acting culture. And process and structure are secondary to relationships it is actually about the networks you create and they are not formal networks. Theyre just about getting to know people and understanding how those people will help you get your job done more effectively. Employees are very innovative, very creative, they are young.
Integrating into the international environment at LOral has been no hardship for Rolfe, a keen traveller and someone with an innate curiosity about other cultures. Approximately 25% of the managers employed by LOral UK are non-British, hardly surprising when you consider that the group operates in 150 countries.
Language is no barrier, says Rolfe (she is learning French to top up her schoolgirl knowledge). We pride ourselves on offering people international careers. If you go into the coffee bar you will hear accents from Canada, America, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia. You could name a country and I could say weve got someone from that country. Its fascinating, and part of our strategic objective is to get people into multi-cultural and multi-international teams. The concept of an Indonesian marketing manager working alongside a British commercial director is actually attractive to those we recruit, rather than scary.
Despite the openness, Rolfe concedes that there are fundamental differences: People say that coming here is different to going to the French headquarters, which is fair enough. The British are Anglo-Saxons, to generalise, and we are far more akin to our American colleagues in terms of liking structure, a bit of formality, agendas, meetings... Continental Europeans are much more verbal, they are much more fluid. But you duck and weave a little bit in terms of whether youll be in a French thinking mode or a British thinking mode.
But she admits her integration to LOral is ongoing. Im flexible and Im quite laid-back, which helps. But the whole way of doing business is very, very different. Coming into a senior role anywhere in LOral is difficult. Its a company which has enormous loyalty and passion for its people which means that people stay around. So, coming in at a senior level, youre entering an organisation where networks are very firmly established and you have to find your own way of making your own networks and entering into other peoples. And because its not very process-driven or structure-driven there isnt anyone there to say, This is how you do things. You learn by experimentation and by your successes and mistakes. I have to think, This is how I would have approached it. Hows that going to work in LOral...?
There are three HR teams the corporate team reports to Rolfe and is responsible for designing the HR strategy of LOral UK and delivering graduate recruitment, training, development and learning and compensation and benefits. Two operational HR teams have day-to-day contact with line managers, controlling resourcing, and career and succession planning. They report to their relevant MDs but have a dotted line to Rolfe.
So, what issues have Rolfes early months brought to the top of her agenda? LOral UK as a single entity is a new thing. What were trying to do is bring our brands together from a people perspective. Theres a lot of work to be done different terms and conditions, different contracts. They operate in very different markets so we need to keep the brand differentiation. But at the end of the day, they are part of LOral UK.
Another challenge came to the fore when recent research showed that there wasnt enough focus on people in LOrals employment branding. It took us aback a bit because we are a real people organisation. I know everybody says it but we pride ourselves on the fact that we do treat everybody as individuals... we try to get to know our people and work with them on a one-to-one basis and come up with a career path that suits them rather than say, Well, youve done that, so now you do that. We were quite surprised that that wasnt coming through.
This sparked the inception of the global LOrality campaign whereby employees were featured in brochures. Feedback from universities running the campaign for the first time last year (2001) was fantastic. Im lucky because I genuinely think that what we have to say is a really good story. Its really easy for the graduate recruitment manager to stand up and talk with passion because he believes it. Theres always a whole room of people queuing up to support him, to tell their story. We say to people, Do you want to come along and talk to 150 graduates we dont want a script, we just want you to talk from the heart about how you feel and they could say anything. It could be real dynamite they could stand up there and go, Its yukky but they dont.
LOral concentrates on undergraduate recruitment and takes in up to 30 each year, upping the number if additional people display the talent Rolfe is searching for. Its about the fit with LOral, which is just a feeling sometimes. You might have recruited your quota and then you meet someone and you think, You are fab, we want you, she says.
What exactly is the fit? Rolfe purses her lips, Hmmm, I guess, its fitting the culture, which is about being really inquisitive, really interested and interesting, creative and innovative, not looking for a mould. We dont want everyone to be the same.
And what is the management style like? We have a phrase poet and peasant and you have to be both of those in LOral. It sums it up brilliantly because the poet is about the ethereal, artistic, innovative What do I want, whats my vision? While the peasant says, At the end of the day I need to do this, this and this to make it all work. Thats the detail and the meticulous attention to what needs to be done and followed through. When we combine people who are both poet and peasant, they work really well.
And is she poet and peasant? I try to be. Over the years, my style has changed radically. I would have said I was far more on the peasant side I would have managed far more closely and been directive. Now, I find it easy to be empowering and I enjoy it. I think its better for me and its better for the team. Im expected to get my hands dirty. People who are at a senior level here and dont get their hands dirty dont do very well in this organisation.
She says HR is perceived as very important, adding that in the past she has watched organisations devolve responsibility to the line but was never convinced about its merits. Ive always thought, well, thats a trend and line managers have got to take responsibility for their people and our role is to coach and counsel. I agree with all that but I kept coming back to the fact that finance people dont allow other people to do the accounts and so it was almost as if, as HR people, we didnt have expertise to add. At LOral its far more a partnership between line managers and HR managers. Theres a much more even split of responsibilities. Some of the stuff done by line managers in other places gets done by HR here.
When I was interviewed for this job, one of the guys asked me, If I came to you and asked about one of your employees, would you tell me what you thought or what the line manager thought? I got it right because I said, Id tell you what I thought because youd asked for my opinion. What he was trying to say was that if hed wanted to know what the line manager thought, hed have gone to the line manager. In many organisations, when you go to an HR person and ask about a certain individual they wont be able to give you an answer because theyre not close enough to the individual as they have devolved everything to the line.
Here, if the MD and I are discussing someone, we may disagree or may be aligned, but we will both know them. I think its a rare thing and I think it goes back to LOral saying, We treat people as individuals and the way HR is positioned in the business celebrates that and reflects that. For a company that has done its marketing job so well, it is surprising that internal communication has not followed suit but perhaps this is simply a reflection of the French lack of structure.
Any self-respecting HR director will talk about the employer brand and making it the best place to work and wanting to be employer of choice and so on. I think that intuitively we have got a lot of that but we havent got it all nicely packaged. If I were to be critical of what were not doing at the moment its that were not pulling together and communicating it to our people.
How? To understand what our people want and what we plan. At the beginning of the year we will set our stall out and say this is where we see things happening and this is how were going to get there. For me, the new years going to be a really exciting time.
Rolfe has not decided how to do this. She says employee satisfaction surveys provide good data but she wants to avoid any delay in feedback. Youre not sure whats happening with your data, she says. And for sure, that would not work here. Were much more... Rolfe clicks her fingers. It might be that this business is far more suited to talking to people one on one, or focus groups. She says HR will concentrate on integrating people and ensuring that those who have been promoted on the basis of technical talent also have the people skills to make them good managers.
And, speaking of effective management, does Rolfe think its important to have HR representation at board level? I do, actually. There needs to be somebody at board level who is going to take responsibility for the people plans of the business. The reason there is this whole debate about HR on the board is because a lot of us havent shown that were good enough. Theres no debate about whether marketing should be on the board. Theres no debate about whether finance should be on the board. There shouldnt be a debate about whether HR should be on the board. Its just that we have not proved ourselves as a function.
We have to be really, really careful because if we dont take that mantle and run with the fact that we are as credible as our marketing and finance colleagues, then quite rightly someone else will start to do our job for us unless we prove we can do it a bit better than them. We need to get a bit ballsy about it. I dont think there is any issue about whether people issues should be represented at board level. I think there is an issue whether the HR profession is delivering, within its businesses, good enough people for it. If were not on the board, weve only got ourselves to blame.
So, is Rolfe aiming for the board? No. I dont think Im ambitious enough. I think Im capable of being on the board of a company but I really dont know if I have the ambition to want to be the HR director of Sainsburys or LOral Global. Now theres an admission. You enjoy your job dont you? Yes, can you tell? she laughs. And when I dont enjoy a job, I leave.
This attitude is typical Rolfe. She says she is a living life to the full person. When asked where she got this trait from she looks unsure, as though it is such an inherent part of her that shes never analysed it. When I look back to my university days, I think they made me appreciate life. Since then Ive lived life to the full Im always very active socially and I always give of my best at work. I have lots of energy and Im rarely ill. In that respect Im quite lucky because I can keep on going.
Before LOral, Rolfe travelled to Central Asia, and visited places such as Northern Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. If you went there now, you would be going against Foreign Office wishes, she says. I was looking at my photos and wondered just how many more years it would be before anybody was allowed to go there. For me, that underpinned the fact that you just have to take opportunities when they are presented to you.
When I ask Rolfe where she sees herself going in a few years time, career-wise, theres no hesitation. Ive no idea. No idea. Thats partly about me living life to the full. I used to want things to be planned. But who knows? Who knows? Until I feel Ive got my feet well and truly under the table and that Im competent in this job Im not even going to think about anything else. But LOral has a great deal of possibility. It has offices all over the world...
