With over 20 years in HR, communications and change management, including ‘big 4’ (PwC) and international experience with IBM, AT&T, BT and ICL, Gill has significant expertise in human resource development, with particular skills in management development, coaching and team-building. She is able to influence at senior levels, whilst also being a practical, ‘hands on’ person, with a good understanding of business issues.

Gill has excellent facilitation and conflict management skills and has helped a number of senior teams to successfully improve their working relationships and productivity.

She has built up an extensive mediation practice over the last few years.

Key areas of expertise

• Change programme management
• Communications and stakeholder management
• International HR management
• Management development and training
• Mediation
• Organisation development and culture change
• Performance management (eg, performance appraisal)
• Recruitment, interviewing and assessment centres

Mediation experience

Sorting out conflict and disputes has become a specialism for Gill, who has extensive people management experience and particular skills in facilitation and negotiation in challenging situations, developed during cross-cultural disputes in international joint ventures (Concert in the USA and AT&T-Unisource in the Netherlands), and years of ‘downsizing’ negotiations in BT. Gill is able to quickly identify the key issues, using her calm, professional approach to questioning and listening and being from Lancashire originally, she has a straightforward, no nonsense style, which allows her to build trust with the parties whilst maintaining independence.

Gill also works with Mediation Hertfordshire on a pro bono basis, mediating conflicts in the community.

Recruitment, interviewing and assessment centre experience

Gill managed the BT assessment and development centres for their Research and Technology division and was responsible for attracting sufficient, high calibre, graduate and professional applications for 500 Computing and Engineering vacancies a year at their Research Labs, including responsibility for their industrial placement scheme. She designed and delivered interviewing skills training for BT and ICL and was ICL’s Graduate Recruitment Manager, responsible for recruiting over 300 IT graduates a year, including publicity (presentations, fairs, brochures, etc), ‘the milk-round’, administration of 8,000 application forms and interviewing. She now runs development and assessment centres on a consultancy basis for a range of clients.

Career highlights

After gaining a solid grounding in HR with four years as Branch Personnel Manager for Sainsburys, Gill spent a year as Graduate Recruitment Manager for ICL before joining BT where she had a range of HR Manager roles including Graduate Recruitment Manager for the R&D Division in Martlesham Heath and HR Development Manager for the Research & Technology Directorate. Her last three years at BT were spent in the USA at Concert, a BT and AT&T joint venture. She then spent a year as HR Director at AT&T Unisource.

On returning to the UK she joined PricewaterhouseCoopers and was there for six years as Principal Consultant where she had various client-facing OD and change management roles, including Change Management Team Leader for BT’s PeopleSoft HR implementation, Employee Communications specialist for Norweb Telecom’s takeover of Intercell and a Change and Communications Specialist at the Navy HQ. She was also the Training and Communications Manager for the roll-out of PwC’s methodology across EMEA.

Gill launched her own consultancy practice in 2003 and now has a very wide range of clients, including such organisations as The University of Bedfordshire, EE, The GF Partnership, The Home Office, Dairy Crest, The Samaritans, Knightsbridge Guarding, TMA (The Turnaround Management Association), DANTE, TCT (Teenage Cancer Trust), The University of Manchester and Sapienza Consulting.

Testimonials

‘During my time working with Gill I found her always to be diligent, professional and results-oriented. She is extremely knowledgeable in her field (HR) and was highly regarded by myself and her fellow colleagues. I was particularly impressed with her conception and implementation of the Management Training and Development framework. I would thoroughly recommend her to anyone.’ – Martin Kelly, Manager, Process Management, AT&T Unisource

‘Gill was the PwC Change Team Leader for BT’s PeopleSoft HR implementation when I was the overall PwC Project Manager. This implementation of PeopleSoft HR was the largest in the UK at that time with over 100K employees and a shared service centre successfully migrated to the new HR system, within both time and budget. Gill had responsibility for the Stakeholder Management, Communications and User Training aspects of the implementation and she also ran several large project teambuilding events. She delivered high quality, structured programmes which were a key contributor to the high performance of the project team (which was made up of a mixture of BT staff, consultants and contractors) and to the overall success of the project. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Gill, who brought both organisation and innovation to the change management aspects of the project. Gill is thoroughly reliable and an excellent team player, who brings with her a wealth of Human Resources and Change Management experience.’ – Rachel Goodship, Managing Consultant, IBM Global Business Services

Qualifications, training and professional memberships

• Member of the CIPD
• Registered with the CMC (Civil Mediation Council)
• CEDR (Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution) accredited commercial mediator
• OCN (Open College Network) accredited workplace mediator
• Qualified to use various psychometric tools, including MBTI, OPQ, SDI, Facet 5 and PPA