Strategic HR BBC profile
Saying bye
to the Beeb
This year Valerie Hughes-D’Aeth entered our HR Most Influential
Hall of Fame and the BBC won two gongs at our HR Excellence
Awards. JENNY ROPER hears about all that’s been achieved
something the organisation was already
driving towards.
“I don’t know Lucy Adams, I’ve
only met her once,” Hughes-D’Aeth
says on how it felt to come in after her
predecessor had left in controversial
circumstances (Adams was criticised
by the Commons Public Accounts
Committee for her part in the
£25 million paid to departing BBC
executives, and for saying she did not
know of an email about the payoffs and
then changing her evidence).
“What I do know is that Lord Hall
director general Tony Hall who
took up his position in 2013 said
to me we needed to focus on
things like building a very open
transparent culture… along with the
simplification of what we did and
organisational efficiency.”
The charter set out a number of
changes including disclosure of highlypaid
on-air talent and managers’
salaries; the BBC giving greater focus to
‘underserved audiences’; the National
Audit Office being given a stronger role
in looking at how the BBC spends its
money; and programme-making to be
opened up to greater competition.
The latter has come in the form
of BBC Studios separating from
the BBC to become a commercial
subsidiary producing content for
the likes of Netflix and ITV as well
as the BBC (all profits go back to
the BBC Group).
Another critical part of the charter
was a new ‘unitary board’, which
replaced the external BBC Trust and
internal BBC Executive.
“That was a very big piece
because overnight we had a
completely new set of non-executive
directors – not one or two but literally
all overnight,” says Hughes-D’Aeth,
pointing out that such wholesale
leadership change is pretty unheard of
in other organisational contexts.
Getting HR’s house in order
Another first port of call was strongly
linked to the new charter’s call for
efficiency and effectiveness. Though
looking internally to HR might seem
an odd start, it was critical to get this
right to set the right tone, explains
Hughes-D’Aeth.
“We had to build a function able to
support the organisation as it moved
into the next charter renewal period
and make sure it was fit for the future,”
she says. “When I first joined the HR
function had been without a
permanent leader for a period of time.
So it was very much meeting the team
and finding out what was going on.
“The decision had already been
made that we would move the function
predominantly to Birmingham. So you
had an HR team who were potentially
being made redundant in some cases
and obviously wanting to know what
the future held for them.”
Some of the biggest HR restructuring
decisions for Hughes-D’Aeth were
around outsourcing versus insourcing.
In the end it was decided to bring
recruitment back in house. “There’s no
right or wrong,” she says.
Where to start? It’s the question
that hits any journalist as
they research and prepare to
report on a particularly large and
complex organisation.
But it feels especially pertinent as
HR magazine sits down with outgoing
BBC group HR director Valerie
Hughes-D’Aeth (who leaves at the end
of this year) to talk about what she has
achieved during her five-year tenure.
Walking in on day one back in July
2014, and faced with an organisation of
around 16,000 staff (now 19,000) –
whose previous HRD had left amid
criticism, and with the Jimmy Savile
scandal still reasonably raw – what does
the first hour involve? How about the
first day, then week? How do you decide
what your first priority should be?
The answer is: you don’t. Instead it’s
clear that all things BBC have become
Hughes-D’Aeth’s ‘Mastermind special
subject’. No step-by-step, one project or
department at a time approach;
Hughes-D’Aeth had to get to grips with
all that the Beeb does, and how this
could be better structured and
supported by HR, as fast as possible.
“I’ve brought a few notes, I hope
that’s OK,” Hughes-D’Aeth says as we
settle into one of the sofas at the BBC’s
Broadcasting House (located near
Oxford Circus and home to around
4,000 staff). But she barely glances at
them, rather drawing a deep breath
before taking us on a whistle-stop tour
of some of the biggest reforms in the
BBC’s 96-year history.
Charter renewal
A simpler answer to the riddle ‘where
to start in heading up HR at the BBC?’
might lie in the new Royal Charter.
Although this didn’t come into force
until 2017, the greater focus on value
for money and efficiency it set out was
Valerie Hughes-
D’Aeth is leaving
the BBC after five
years to pursue a
portfolio career
32 HR November 2019 hrmagazine.co.uk
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