“For me, success is positively impacting someone’s career, whether in the short, medium, or long term, through driving a positive culture that inspires high performing teams resulting in personal and organization growth and prosperity,” notes Louise Brown, Board Chair at the City HR Association. Recognized as one of “The 10 Most Influential HR Executives to Follow in 2024,” she is celebrated for her role as a Strategic Partner specializing in the entire People life cycle. With a wealth of experience spanning diverse stakeholders and industries, this seasoned executive consistently implements HR interventions, spearheads innovation and leads change projects across global teams. This, in turn, plays to her strengths in stakeholder, project and customer management skills. As a global leader, Louise adeptly manages functions, processes, projects, and engagement amidst significant periods of change. Her leadership style emphasizes developing and continuously evolving individuals to support the accomplishment of strategic goals and cultivating high-performing teams.
When discussing success, Louise truly believes that the springboard is about empowering individuals and the organizations she collaborates with to realize their full potential. She highlights that success demonstrates that people can have it all, and it gives them the framework, tools and support network from within the workplace to achieve the art of the possible.
As the Chair of City HR, Louise is responsible for steering, guiding, and overseeing the strategic, governance, and developmental aspects of the association. Her role on the board places her at the forefront of stewardship for the association, where a primary focus is ensuring its ongoing relevance and sustainability. Serving as both ambassador and advocate, this experienced professional actively engages with the team to facilitate and implement the effective execution of the association’s strategy.
Louise identifies as ‘SELFLESS,’ encapsulating her essence in one powerful word that mirrors her commitment to prioritizing the well-being and success of others over personal gain, a principle that now forms the bedrock of her daily life and empowers her.
So what can we learn from Louise’s career history, her relationship with technology and transformation and her innovative leadership style?
Inspirational Journey into HR
Looking back on her career, Louise reflects on the inspiration that led her to join the HR profession. She shares: “I had an amazing work experience in HR at ICAP illustrated with colour and context and included rotations across the business (Front, Middle and Back office teams).” She expresses a profound connection with the passion, meaning, and ambition of the HR team she worked with during this initial encounter, and it was then that she was convinced to pursue a career in HR. She recognizes the learning acquired with both the HR team and leadership as a pivotal point in her career. Her career path was confirmed when a colleague offered profound insight into her leadership style, claiming: “when you are as passionate, committed and relevant on both a commercial and individual level, your career is not just a job it is your vocation” This insight drove her determination to be in HR and to transform the workplace into more than just a location for work.
Navigating Challenges: Building Strength Through Roadblocks (This bit is brilliant!)
Throughout Louise’s professional journey, she encountered challenges that ultimately contributed to her strength, resilience and agility. Early on, her energetic and passionate approach, while valuable, was sometimes perceived as overpowering and not always aligned with the organizational pace. The advice to “manage your enthusiasm” in her first job provided a crucial lesson in striking a balance. Recognizing the importance of taking everyone along on the journey, she learned how influential behaviors and attitudes could be, emphasizing the significance of organizational culture. Passion emerged as a personal blocker, prompting Louise to understand the value of reflection, time, and space. Through coaching and mentoring, she grasped the need to recognize her own empowerment, affiliation, validation, and confidence as integral components of achieving self-actualization and making a defining impact on her success.
The City HR Association and Its Services
Established in 1973, the City HR Association, led by a strong executive team under the guidance of its Chair, serves as a professional body dedicated to equipping organisational members and their HR communities with the necessary tools, expertise, best practice documents, and knowledge-sharing capabilities to address the challenges faced by their businesses. The Association supports its members through advocacy and representation on people-related issues. Thus, it actively contributes to the national agenda on people and cultural matters, and allocates specialized resources to address people-related issues specific to the City and financial services sector. According to the City HR Association’s Chair, this support is achieved through extensive collaboration within the market, offering insights on the latest government, legal, and regulatory mandates and providing thought leadership across all HR domains. Primarily, the Association fosters top-notch networking opportunities through sector knowledge-sharing activities and special interest groups spanning various HR disciplines, fostering alliances among diverse groups.
Plans for the Future of City HR Association
Louise reveals ambitious future plans for the Association, emphasising their commitment to organisational growth, continued people management relevance and impact for the industry and the communities it serves. Working with a first-class board comprising HR leaders from different disciplines, partnering with world class academics and thought leaders and a strong executive team, the strategic direction of the group remains a top priority. In her words, “We have just celebrated our 50th year and are in full growth mode. This includes expanding our offering, developing and deepening our membership and listening to our members to deliver on those issues that matter most to them and our profession. This ensures our proposition remains future fit, inspiring, innovational and initiates action and execution.”
Pioneering the Transformation of the HR Landscape
Louise sees her HR legacy as going beyond the organization and giving back to future generations. To this end, she has recently become an active member of The Company of Human Resource Professionals. Through a pro bono employability initiative, she has contributed to inspiring those considering a career in the HR profession. She further collaborates with other HR and thought leaders on their next generation HR leadership programme which she sees as essential to ensuring a pipeline of future talent.
The Technological Revolution in HR
According to Louise, modern technology including AI is the cornerstone in reshaping the HR profession and its people practices and she therefore sees the alliance between HR and IT as a crucial strategic partnership with the business. She underlines how technology empowers people managers to have outstanding processes, sophisticated solutions, visibility, and transparency relating to the people they manage. However, she believes technology’s impact extends beyond immediate concerns, allowing HR to shape the future proactively. Her deep people analytics background informs the optimism that she overlays in the impact of technology, seeing first hand the expanded horizons of HR focus, fostering the right insights for well-informed decision-making. She articulates by saying, “Technology has enabled us to raise awareness of key influencers and connect data to the organization’s culture. Understanding the psychology and behavior of our people and to be intentional in the development of our people strategies and interventions..”
This integration facilitates targeted interventions and programs that support the business and helps individuals to flourish. She feels that as technology and AI takes center stage, it not only illuminates previously obscured aspects of HR but also, with robust information and strong data analytics, provides the profession’s growth into the next stage of value creation.
Leadership Acclaim at Its Pinnacle
When asked about the best recognition she has received as a leader, Louise responds by reflecting on the teams she has built, managed, and led, along with the talents she has nurtured. She acknowledges that witnessing the success of these individuals in their careers is a testament to her impactful role in their professional journeys.
HR Leadership Goals
As an HR leader, Louise is committed to assisting industry leaders in their journey to data driven decision making and using insights across the end to end employee life cycle, acknowledging the skills and future potential within their expanding diverse talent pool, to be future fit particularly highlighting the importance of technology and data in building a competitive advantage through our people . Her overall aim is to maximize the contribution of this generation of HR professionals to have a profound positive influence on the next era of work
Mantra for Work-Life Balance, Self and Team Motivation
Balancing a personal and professional life can pose a more significant challenge for women in the workforce, given societal expectations and additional responsibilities. It becomes a delicate symbiotic act, where the interplay between gender roles and workplace demands add more complexity. So, how does Louise manage this challenge? What are her insights? Delving deeper into the topic, she shares how she has come to appreciate the significance of self-care over the years as a working parent she acclaims that this has become even more important in recent years . Consequently, she prioritizes making time for her own personal care, recognizing that the periods in her career where she lacked physical training sessions correlate with times, she hasn’t felt her best. Louise extends this mindset to her own team to keep a balance between motivation and personal wellbeing. She summarises this with: “Encouraging each of my team to have personal well-being goals is paramount to me, so everyone takes the time to think about what they need to perform at their best.”
Message to Aspiring HR Professionals and Leaders
In offering guidance to those aspiring to join the ranks of HR professionals and leaders, Louise underscores the significance of crafting narratives enriched with authentic real-life experiences. These stories should weave a captivating tapestry, drawing from real situations, personal challenges, and genuine encounters, ultimately offering others a relatable and engaging journey.
She advises: “It sounds a cliché, but the ‘pages are blank; you have the power to write your story, whether you are the hero or heroine of your book, make sure you create the impact that you desire. Whether you want inspiration or to inspire, innovation or to innovate, initiation or to initiate be assured that HR is the best stage to be on. Above all own and cherish your career and embrace the technology and challenges ahead.”
