lauren kerwood

Position Overview: I was the first HR Managed employed in the Canberra office, so the main focus on the role was understanding the needs of the office and aligning them with the overall Firms HRM strategies and educating the Canberra employees on these strategies and providing an access to HR that they had never had before.

* Acting Human Resources Manager – Was in this role for a period of 5 months before leaving. * Recruitment – designed and submitted job advertisements, reviewed CV’s, ran group interviews and was one of a team of people who conducted one on one interviews. * EEO and OHS – Ensured the company’s policies where being adhered to by all employees. Eg. By conducted spontaneous OHS audits. * Staff rostering – Responsible for creating individual weekly rosters for approx. 300 employees through the computer package – “StaffWorks”. In this process I had to ensure compliance with the EBA, as well as ensuring budget and salary targets were met. * Employee performance assessments and appraisals – I conducted monthly assessment of all floor employees to ensure the service standards were being met and provided coaching and counselling where standards weren’t being met. * Payroll – Acted as a backup to the payroll manager. * Employee relations. Responded to and managed day-to-day employee relations issues.

Engaged to oversee all aspects of the Human Resources function.

Employed as the first HR Executive for the company when there were only 30 employees. During my employment the company experienced rapid growth resulting in recruitment being the main focus of the role initially (I recruited over 50 employees). After the recruitment phase, the focus shifted to establishing a fully functioning HR Department as well as strategic project work. As the UAE is a highly politically sensitive environment the HR challenges were enormous, particularly in ensuring compliance with UAE labour laws. This role sat on the Management Committee with a direct line to the Chairman, CEO, CFO and Partnership team. Towards the end of my tenure, due to the GFC the role focus became business downsizing which required highly refined people skills and the ability to sensitively balance the needs of the business with those of the employees.

This role required successful separation of the firms HR practices from KPMG, requiring significant redevelopment to ensure they were appropriate and tailored processes for a small specialist firm with a very different focus than they had when they were a division in a large company. Inevitable this role also required a lot of senior coaching and culture management to ensure the firm developed its own identity and achieved industry status. As this role was national, I spent a significant amount of time travelling between the 6 Australian offices meeting with Partners consulting and advising them on strategic HR matters. This role also had a strong focus on Graduate Recruitment.

This role involved managing all aspects of HR for all of Australia as well as offices in New Zealand and South East Asia resulting in many challenges due to the diverse environments and different employee needs. In Indonesia for example the HR issues were very different to that of the Sydney office, OHS was a key focus for Indonesia with issues such as bomb threats whereas in Sydney the main HR issue was attracting and retaining top tier talent. This role also had a very strong focus on Performance Management, with an ‘up or on’ culture, only the most talented individuals were given the opportunity to progress through the levels, requiring the HR Department to play a significant role in employee counselling.

Activities and Societies: AIM (Australian Institute of Management) AHRI (Australian Human Resources Institute)