Strategy Consultant & Interim Manager

Stephanie Corking
Stephanie CorkingHR Strategy Consultant
Stephanie is your Consultant HR Director for Strategy & Innovation, Leadership & People Management across the full HR value chain.

Her career spans high performing organisations such as Crabtree & Evelyn, Stella McCartney, Virgin. A commercially and customer focused HR practitioner who is the CEOs trusted advisor for corporate strategy, M&A or start-up and scale up and business expansion.

Key Achievements

People Strategy

  • HR Diagnostic
  • Talent Planning
  • Employee Value Proposition, EVP
  • People Development
  • Performance Management
  • Talent Acquisition & Selection
  • PE & VC for Major Growth

People Evaluation & Diagnostics

Worked closely with CEO, COO, HR and the leadership team, using a proven people and culture diagnostic, to understand the organisation’s goals and objectives, as well as the challenges they are facing.  Take the time to understand the company’s products or services, as well as the way teams work together, gaining a deep understanding of the company’s functionality and the strengths and weaknesses of all the teams.  Identified areas where you can improve you offering, and grow your business faster.

Employee Value Prop, EVP

Stephanie worked on an EVP project with a group of Consumer brands, working together with multiple teams and key stakeholders from both head office and centre management to design a service values framework that created a foundation to embedding a service culture across all customer facing employees. By creating service values and the competency behaviours to achieve these, this underpinned the operational excellence best practice that impacted directly on the customer experience.

 Engaged with the Learning team on a number of key projects to deliver a leadership talent assessment and 360 programme for Leaders and Managers across the global company. The brief was to create a unique framework in line with the organisations values and competencies, to have one assessment tool that was used universally across all divisions, allowing for transparency of leadership skills and behaviours that fed into the people plan. 

Project started with a rounded and methodical audit and review of all competency frameworks, values and vision, collateral, stakeholder interviews and insight.  During this phase, I worked with the key stakeholders and a sample of leaders across the business functions on a series of research and diagnostic activities. The research and findings conducted during the diagnostic stage guided the insight strategy focused on driving engagement, leadership behaviours and a high performing culture across the company.

This led onto a subsequent project where I developed and rolled out a succession planning project for the top 50 talent pool, working across a complex matrix structure, delivering ongoing development and coaching that’s enabled succession planning and career planning as part of the companies 5-year people strategy.

Over the past 4 years, worked closely with the CEO, MD and the CPO of a company, who were keen to discover more about current levels of employee engagement throughout the organisation, as well as realise opportunities to improve not only engagement, but business performance too. We collaborated on a number of employee engagement and leadership initiatives, using people data and analytics data to devise HR and people strategies, which informed decision making that impacted on organisational change and improved business performance.

 Stephanie traveled internationally three times in the last few years to work with the leaders, ensuring they had the insight and knowledge to embed a cohesive culture that spanned the different cultures, operations and functions. She designed and delivered leadership workshops, one to one coaching, 360 feedback, and worked with the HRBP’s on a series of Train the Trainer programmes to ensure that the work we did with the top team was filtered down to the rest of the organisation in a cost effective and manageable way. Following some tough times in their country, post pandemic and amidst an economic downturn across the region, it was important that the work with the leaders continued to ensure that the people strategy remained aligned with the changing economic landscape and the evolving business strategy.

Headed up a team responsible for collating the data and insight, and translated into reporting, suitable for the board, SLT’s and ERG’s across the global business. I delivered the findings to all key stakeholders, improving diversity of thought and inclusive conversations about DE&I in the workplace.  

The sessions were a huge success and praised by the CEO for ensuring leadership empowerment and goal setting that supported the strategy and ongoing development of DE&I for 1000s of employees. The resulting DE&I strategies and initiatives drove accountability through clear measures of success, which boosted diverse hiring, diverse and inclusive career progression and developed leaders across the group to influence and drive a more inclusive culture.

Investor Funding

In partnership with the BluZinc Private Equity and Venture Capital companies we help expanding companies ensure they win Funding or Series A, B, C with an effective and implemented People strategy and EVP, with measurable data.

  • BluZinc People Strategy
  • People Strategy Diagram

How can a robust people plan support exponential growth?

A robust people plan can help overcome challenges such as attracting and retaining the talent needed to achieve their growth goals. It is also essential to link the people plan to the corporate strategy, ensuring that your people (your most important asset) can support the growth.

A people plan is a strategic document that outlines the organisation’s goals for its workforce, as well as the strategies for achieving those goals. It should include the following elements:

  • A workforce analysis: This should identify the organisation’s current workforce, including its skills, knowledge, and experience. It should also identify any gaps in the workforce that need to be filled.
  • A talent acquisition strategy: This should outline the organisation’s plans for attracting and recruiting top talent.
  • A talent development strategy: This should outline the organisation’s plans for developing the skills and knowledge of its workforce. It should include a variety of training and development opportunities, such as management and leadership development, on-the-job training, and coaching and mentoring.
  • A compensation and benefits strategy: This should outline the organisation’s plans for compensating and rewarding its workforce. It should include a competitive salary and benefits package, as well as opportunities for advancement.
  • A performance management strategy: This should outline the organisation’s plans for evaluating the performance of its workforce. It should include clear performance goals and expectations, as well as regular feedback and coaching.

The risks of not have a people plan in place are:

  •  Difficulty attracting and retaining top talent: Without a clear plan for attracting and retaining talent, SMBs may find it difficult to compete with larger organisations that can offer more attractive compensation and benefits packages.
  •  Low employee productivity: When employees are not happy or engaged, they are less productive. This can lead to lost productivity and revenue.
  •  High turnover costs: The cost of replacing an employee can be significant, particularly for a small business, including the cost of recruiting, hiring, and training a new employee.
  •  Lack of innovation: A workforce that is not diverse and creative may lack the ability to innovate. This can hinder the organisation’s ability to compete in the marketplace.

In summary, if you want to achieve growth and scale up goals you need to have a robust people plan in place.  A well-designed people plan can help to attract and retain top talent, improve employee productivity, reduce costs, and increase innovation.

People Strategy Survey

The BluZinc People Evaluation (BPE) has been designed to support rapidly growing, privately owned and innovative SMB’s to effectively assess their people strategy and people practices, and in turn, reshape and reorganise their people plan into a clearer strategy that supports growth.

The diagnostic and subsequent reporting enables CEO’s and COO’s and owners to align the leadership team to motivate and inspire their people in line with the growth strategy and the company vision, purpose, mission and values.

Interim Managers

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