Joining me on this episode is Alison Dixon who is based in Austin, Texas and working as Global Head of People Operations for a tech business.
The more of these conversations I have, the more common it seems that my guests have all entered HR via an unorthodox route. Alison is another prime example of this. Having entered the job market in the middle of the global recession in 2008, there were literally no jobs.
Alison did eventually secure a job, working in Fundraising for a local high school. She continued down this career path for a number of years before having the opportunity to do a Masters degree in Organisational Design. This gave Alison exposure to the world of HR and she was fascinated by it. Her perception of HR until then had been one of the ‘morality police’ and she was now seeing it in a very different manner, and she was hooked!
Alison has gone on to have what I would class as an accelerated HR career, progressing to a leadership role in only five years. Getting under the skin of how she has managed to do this it can partly be attributed to her approach to HR. Because she had no preconceptions about how she should act as a HR professional, Alison was both vulnerable and authentic. She was honest when she didn’t know the answer to something and built trust by being imperfect and authentic. She was also inquisitive asked questions to get under the skin of the business in order to understand what was really going on in the teams she supported, therefore enabling her to better assist them.
Alison is really refreshing and honest in this conversation and I believe there are some reflections we can all have by listening to her thoughts on the delivery of modern HR practices. I hope you enjoy listening!