HR Magazine - Jabbar Sardar, HR director, BBC Studios (1)

?Jabbar Sardar is HR director for BBC Studios, the BBC’s main TV production arm which in April 2017 launched as a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC. Having joined in January 2016, he oversees all HR activity for production and reports to BBC group HR director Valerie Hughes D’Aeth. For the past three years Sardar has featured as one of HR magazine's HR Most Influential practitioners.

He joined the BBC from Cafcass, where he was director of HR and OD. Here he helped to transform the workplace culture into one with high engagement, low sickness levels, innovation and high standards. He has led an agenda of total organisational and cultural change, moving Cafcass from being ‘on the edge’ in 2010 to ‘cutting-edge’ in 2014.

He did this by building an infrastructure which allowed Cafcass to achieve the right balance between a challenging but supportive performance culture. In a sector often associated with poor employee engagement, high sickness and a lack of innovation, Sardar's pioneering use and implementation of wellbeing, performance management, learning and development and general workplace tools was transformational for the organisation, and was carried through the wider social work profession and public sector. This improvement journey culminated in 2014 when Cafcass was assessed by Ofsted as ‘Good with Outstanding Leadership.’

Before Cafcass Sardar was a senior HR professional within a number of large public sector organisations.

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