Tracey Thompson
After many years working in financial services firms in London, I then had 13 years of self-employment to enable me to work from home and bring up my children. It was a good balance for me at the time and I'm very proud of the ongoing achievements of my 2 amazing sons.
As a family, we're active with sports, schooling, social and community support activities. I juggle to fit in theatre, travel, gardening and cooking exotic dishes.
I hugely enjoy the work I do today - it enables me to be in contact with professionals all around the world and it is certainly refreshing my knowledge of geography! I relish the diversity of stories I hear daily, and marvel daily on how so many companies just haven't got their HR functions "ship shape" after so many years of investment! I have no shortage of projects for the team and we've got plenty of ideas for how we can do things even better and faster. Our team is very social, and we actually enjoy spending time with each other outside of work - I think it helps that we all share similar values even though our interest areas are so different, and we're really quick to laugh at ourselves!
...look at this CV, this person has been working for 30 years, which is longer than I've been alive!
Not everyone leaves their employment by choice...... Any kind of vagueness or glib explanation will only affect your credibility with the interviewer. Lying and fudging the truth will invariably be found out. Professional interviewers can spot B.S. from a mile away and their “gut instincts” are honed to spot any inconsistencies.
At that company, where some of our workforce were struggling to afford to eat properly, pouring free booze into empty stomachs led to police and ambulance involvement, embarrassment and notoriety, absenteeism, and a veritable minefield for the HR team in the disciplining process
I suspect we lose even more credibility, in the event we undergo a clandestine affair. As the guardians of company policy and procedure, and the champions for people risk - we are expected to be absolutely virtuous.
What do you do when the IT help desk isn’t picking up your call? When the explanation over the phone from the support team just isn’t making sense? When you are struggling to translate the description of a thingy-me-jig to someone on the phone, who only talks tech? When you cannot continue effectively with your work until the tech issue is fixed?
It is worth remembering that in many countries the obligations of an employer towards his or her staff is exactly the same as if that employee were in the office. Checks on health and safety, annual appraisals, remuneration and so on are expected to be the same no matter where the work is carried out
....despite progress in the type of work we do and how we do it, and advances in transportation that enable workers can to come from even further away in faster time, we haven’t really made any real progress on the basic social model of work here/live there.
Check into the job market, properly. It may well be that your skills which were greatly in demand in the foreign country, are not in demand in your homeland.
...apart from getting everything wrong it is hard to see how operational HR alone can actively change the way a business works or how it changes and grows.
HR has an unrivalled view across the organisation and regularly deals with serious and complex issues that have an impact at all levels.