Sarah Dickins's Email

A strategic and commercial business leader / Group HRD with a proven track record of creating the right strategy and leading, developing and inspiring people to deliver outstanding business results, a great experience for customers and a great place to work. Key specialities : - Business Strategy, People Strategy and Customer Experience - Leading and energising teams to deliver - Organisational Design and Organisational and Leadership Capability - Commercially focused - Organisational change, redundancy & restructure. - Culture change / employee engagement and transformation. - Succession plans and Talent Management

Non Executive Director, Chair of REMCO and Audit Committee Member @ From February 2015 to Present (9 months) Executive People Director @ A FTSE 250 business with 3,000 colleagues and 10,000 Agents serving 1.8m customers through a network of 300 Branches. An executive role with accountability for the leadership of the people strategy and communications with a team of 80 in HR. • Established a 3 Year People Strategy to turnaround our core business and build two brand new businesses over the past year. • Lead the organisational review of the business structure to align the organisation to our new strategy and successfully implemented a 15% cost reduction plan during 2013. • Lead a capability review across the group to ensure we have the right talent and expertise to deliver our strategy. • Built the foundations of the people proposition around employer brand, values success factors and a simple performance management process and launched these with a £1m investment in our ‘Performance Through People Programme’ for 1,100 leaders. • Standardised the recruitment process across the business around ‘hire for attitude and our new success factors. • Launched a new induction process across the business branded ‘Best Welcome’ including 12 Academy Branches for Field training and operational process change. • Conducted an engagement survey across the business and robust action planning for all leaders and at a company level through the launch of a Colleague Forum. • Plan in place to move to paperless people processes - new website, applicant tracking system and absence management system launched in 2014 and talent management and compensation systems landing in 2015. • New reward strategy to move to pay for performance in place from 2015. • All of the above so far have resulted in a 50% reduction in Agent vacancies; a 15% improvement in Agent Turnover; a 9% improvement in engagement to 74% and a significant improvement in business performance. From November 2012 to July 2015 (2 years 9 months) Bradford, United KingdomHR Strategy Consultant @ Key role working with the Board of Directors to develop the future HR strategy for the business. From June 2012 to October 2012 (5 months) DublinPeople Operations Director and Group Policy Director ( Operating Board Director) @ An Operating Board role with key accountability for the design and delivery of the Group People Strategy and Operational People Plan for 160,000 colleagues in Retail across 500+ stores. I also lead the integration of 192 Netto stores and 3,500 Netto colleagues to Asda during 2011. • Worked with CEO to establish strategic priorities for the 3 year people strategy. • Re-organised the policy function to deliver the strategic priorities and raised the capability in all key roles. • Lead Netto people strategy and strategic communications / business integration plan with CFO / Supermarkets Operations Director. The fastest and most successful retail integration. scheme. • Lead the launch of new values and a step change plan on culture and engagement for the CEO across the business aligned to the service strategy. • Lead the people strategy and change plan for the closure of the final salary pension scheme successfully signing up all members to the new scheme voluntarily. • Developed a 3 Year reward strategy for the business. scheme. • Spearheaded the move to the measurement of engagement across the business and the alignment the key drivers of sales, profit and service. From July 2010 to March 2012 (1 year 9 months) Leeds, United KingdomPeople Operations and Customer Service Director ( Operating Board Director) @ An Operating Board role with accountability for the Operational People Agenda and Customer Service Strategy for 165,000 colleagues and 18 million customers in 373 stores and 23 Depots. • Successfully delivered on all people metrics – Culture – 96%, Absence 2.6%, LTO 15%, Salary Cost control - £300m to plan, Service metrics – No1 on Queues and No1 on friendliness. Service Budget £5m. • Successful implementation of contractual change for 18,000 colleagues without business disruption. • Lead Organisation Design in retail to re-invent store structure and which resulted in a step change in the consistency of standards and service and a salary saving of circa £18m per annum. • Lead the strategic review of the service and contact centre strategy and secured £12m investment for the customer proposition and improved service perception on Friendly colleagues and Queues from No 3 to No1. • Step changed talent management process, succession planning, performance management and development strategy to ensure talent and skills in place to meet future business needs. Talent – 80% internal appointments. From April 2007 to July 2010 (3 years 4 months) Leeds, United KingdomGroup Head of Reward and Recognition @ Reporting to the Group HRD, this role had accountability for the development and implementation of the Group Reward and Recognition strategy. With responsibility for a budget of £10m, the role required significant interaction and influence of the Executive Team and also the Wal-Mart US team for corporate governance approval. • Lead a team and gained Executive Team/US approval on a strategic change plan for the business to vary 18,000 contracts in the business. • Developed a new LTIP plan as a key retention strategy for Directors. • Lead all reward strategy including the introduction of broad salary bands and successful launch of a 3 year pay for performance strategy. • Rebranded all reward communications to simplify messages which improved perception of pay and benefits by 10%. From April 2005 to April 2007 (2 years 1 month) Head of People - Distribution Network @ A generalist role working with the Logistics Board to lead the HR agenda and Union Relationship across the Asda Distribution Network of 20 Depots and circa 14,500. • Successfully lead the change agenda for the most ambitious change and growth programme ever done in DCs. This was delivered without any IR disruption and 50% improvement to the colleague opinion survey. • Launched a new succession planning process across the network with internal development programmes to fast track talent to support growth and change plan. • Leadership of all IR matters – this involved strategic direction for pay negotiations for local teams, design of simplified terms and conditions for new sites and the successful resolution of 1 industrial action ballot. From January 2000 to April 2005 (5 years 4 months) Leeds, United KingdomHead of People - Home Offices @ From January 1998 to January 2000 (2 years 1 month) Leeds, United KingdomPeople Manager - Distribution @ From January 1998 to January 2000 (2 years 1 month) People Programme Mgr to Head of HR - Distribution @ From January 1997 to January 1998 (1 year 1 month) Leeds, United KingdomStore People Manager & Deputy General Store Manager @ From March 1995 to January 1997 (1 year 11 months) Sheffield, United Kingdom

Sarah Dickins is skilled in: Talent Management, Change Management, Succession Planning, Performance Management, Management, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Business Strategy, Team Leadership, Executive Coaching, Business Transformation, Strategic Planning, Strategic HR, Coaching, Employer Branding, Human Resources, Strategy, Internal Communications, Talent Acquisition, Store Management, Management Development, Career Development, Integration, Operations Management, Strategic Thinking, Rewards, Organizational Design, HR Strategy, Customer Experience, Personnel Management, Recruiting, Culture Change, Retail