Kate Singleton CMHRNZ

What led you to a career in HR/ the position that you are in currently?

I started out my career working in recruitment and found my way into HR through a desire to be more connected with the people within a business and harnessing their potential both personally and professionally.

What do you love about working in HR?

HR allows you to be across multiple facets of a business’s strategic approach and always bringing people to the forefront of opportunities and discussions. I enjoy developing relationships with people and understanding their goals and motivations, and how I can have an impact on achieving these. Watching our people grow and develop throughout their career as well as achieving their personal and professional goals is extremely rewarding and motivates me to get out of bed every day.

What are your thoughts on Chartered Membership? How do you feel about being a Chartered Member?

Achieving Chartered Membership was a streamlined process, the online tools and information made the accreditation process straight forward and smooth. I put it off, started the process several times over the last few years but then put it down, daunted by the prospect of being challenged to justify my experience as not being in a pure HR role I wondered whether I would measure up. This came down to confidence in my own experience, now having worked through the process what I would say to others is “feel the fear and do it anyway!” We often surprise ourselves with what we can do and the process wasn’t as scary as first thought!

What motivated you to work towards becoming a Chartered Member?

Our engineers [at Structex] work towards Chartership, and whilst it holds a higher significance in the engineering profession I felt it was something that I should aspire to as a sign of my commitment to excellence in the HR profession.

What are your next steps in terms of your career now that you are a Chartered Member?

I will continue to utilise my skills and experience within Structex as we work as a team to realise and unleash the potential of our people, and subsequently business. We believe that if we build up our people the our people will build the business.