It has to
be Heinz
Profile Strategic HR
Kraft Heinz is set on growth, but the people function needed to focus on L&D,
hiring entrepreneurial talent and enabling innovation, hears RACHEL SHARP
Open most kitchen cupboards in the UK and
you’ll find food from The Kraft Heinz
Company. Think household favourites like Heinz
Ketchup, Heinz Beanz, HP Sauce and Capri-Sun.
And it’s been this way for around 150 years, since
Heinz and Noble launched its first bottled
horseradish product, and went on to play a vital role
in maintaining food resources during the Great
Depression in the US and World War Two in the UK.
Fast-forward to 2019 and it’s four years since
Kraft Foods Group and the H.J. Heinz Company
merged to become the fifth-largest food and
beverage company in the world and home to more
than 200 of the most well-known brands, with a
presence in more than 40 countries.
When HR magazine meets Kraft
Heinz VP people and performance
EMEA Georgiana de Noronha, in
the firm’s EMEA HQ in The
Shard, we get a glimpse of this vast
range of products proudly
displayed around the office. While
baked beans and ketchup always
spring to mind, there are more
brands and special editions than
most realise. Take the limited
edition gold discoball-inspired jar
of Heinz Seriously Good Mayonnaise to celebrate
the 2018 festive season (which HR magazine gets to
take a sample of home and can confirm is ‘seriously
good’). Then for Valentine’s Day 2019 surely
nothing says romance like Ketchup Caviar…?
Such innovations are all part of the organisation’s
current global focus on growth, explains de
Noronha. “We’ve got a big focus on top-line growth;
so we’re talking about food culture and what our
food is going to look like in the future,” she says.
Which, in a challenging FMCG market, isn’t easy
even for such a big player. In February Kraft Heinz
posted a significant loss due to a write-down of its
Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands, announced it had
received a subpoena from the US Securities and
Exchange Commission over its procurement
accounting policies, and saw its share price fall – all
signs of competition hotting up from own-label
retail brands and a growth in consumer demand for
non-processed foods.
“The biggest challenge we have is the same
challenge all FMCG brands have, which is making
sure we’re adapting to ever-changing consumer
trends,” says de Noronha. “Whatever we want to eat
in the future are the trends we need to follow as an
organisation in order to grow.”
Which is where HR steps in as the “enabler of this
growth”, she explains. As VP of people and
performance for the EMEA zone – a title she says “is
much better than calling it human resources” – de
Noronha’s remit covers the entire EMEA 5,000-strong
workforce, made up of around 2,000 white-collar
and 3,000 blue-collar employees.
When she was promoted into
the role from head of talent in
2017 her “zone” consisted only of
Europe and Russia. But “we are
now EMEA so the complexity and
size has significantly increased”,
she explains, adding that this now
covers the five business units of
eastern Europe, continental
Europe, Benelux, the UK, and the
Middle East and Africa.
Her people and performance
My first
responsibility was
being given a
blank piece of paper
and being asked
to build a team
function has a complex structure to support this,
with de Noronha’s 10 direct reports consisting of an
HR lead for each business unit, business operations,
and each pillar in the centre of excellence: internal
comms and employer branding, reward, talent
and performance.
But the function hasn’t always been this strategic,
she concedes. It was very much about “setting up
processes and policies” and building the talent
function when she became head of talent in 2016.
Which, with no prior HR experience, meant de
Noronha was very much in at the deep end.
Starting out in investment banking at Lehman
Brothers, de Noronha didn’t follow the traditional
HR leader’s path. She “didn’t know HR” during her
time there, but her experiences taught her to be
resilient – which she now draws on every day in
HR, she feels.
Photography: David Woolfall
hrmagazine.co.uk June 2019 HR 27
/hrmagazine.co.uk