Heather Beckett

This is a tier 3 senior leadership role in a complex organisation. I advise NEMA’s Executive and Senior Leadership Teams on people, culture and talent. NEMA is a relatively new organisation and I have set up this function from scratch.

I have established a highly engaged and high performing people and culture function responsible for:

• Organisational Development and Learning
• Recruitment and Induction
• Talent Management
• Internal Communications
• Staff Wellbeing
• Working with our shared HR Service team on all other aspects of people and culture work, including change management, performance management, and employee relations.

Highlights of my time in this role have included:

• Building strong relationships across the Executive and Senior Leadership Teams, and gaining buy in to and funding for a wide range of people and culture initiatives.
• Improving the employee experience and building NEMA’s organisational maturity.
• Leading my team to design and roll out new Leadership and Capability Frameworks for the organisation.
• Establishing a Learning and Development approach for the agency, and successfully embedding this over four years.
• Designing and embedding a psychosocial risk management and wellbeing approach that spans NEMA’s business and usual and emergency response roles.

Prior to moving into the Manager role I was employed on a fixed term basis to set up NEMA's organisational development architecture.

I set up my own consulting business and led projects focused on:

• Organisational design
• Leadership development
• Employee engagement
• Employee selection

I was asked to step up and lead a unit of 30 staff responsible for enterprise wide learning and organisational development work programmes for DOC's 2,000+ staff.

The unit was made up of four teams including:

• Training and Development
• Organisational Development
• Wellbeing
• Flexible Work
• Leadership Support

I quickly built credibility with the Managers who reported to me and successfully led a large and multi-faceted work programme and gained sign off on several initiatives from DOC's SLT.

My role at DOC led a team of five across the full suite of organisational development work, including:

• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
• Employee Experience
• Talent Management
• Leadership Development
• Induction

Key achievements:

• Building strong cross-functional relationships with my HR, L&D and H&S peers
• Establishing trust and credibility with DOC's leadership and gaining buy in to new programmes of work
• Restructuring the team and building a high performing and impactful unit with a strong reputation.

In this role I led leadership assessment and development work for the whole public sector, including assessing and coaching Senior Leaders across the whole public sector for the Public Service Commission’s Leadership Benchmarking Project, Leadership Insight.

This role led enterprise-wide people and culture projects for a highly complex organisation. Key work included:

• Rolling out an enterprise wide leadership framework
• Designing a Talent Management approach across multiple agencies in the Justice Sector
• Built strong relationships with Senior Leadership Team members

This role involved managing OPRA’s Lower North Island staff and offices, and leading projects with a range of public and private sector clients focused on:

• Talent management
• Employee recruitment and selection
• Change management
• Training and development.

Key achievements:

• Developed a strong office and team culture focused on employee engagement, collaboration, and learning.
• Developed and maintained relationships with customers.
• Managed budgets effectively, ensuring optimal financial performance while investing in necessary resources for business growth.

Before taking on the manager role I was a Consultant for OPRA.