Karen Wall, Executive Director – Talent, Communication and Marketing

Strategic HR Review

ISSN: 1475-4398

Article publication date: 13 April 2012

431

Citation

Wall, K. (2012), "Karen Wall, Executive Director – Talent, Communication and Marketing", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 11 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2012.37211caa.005

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Karen Wall, Executive Director – Talent, Communication and Marketing

Article Type: Practitioner profile From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 11, Issue 3

HR executives share their experience in human resources

Karen Wall joined Metro in 1999 six months after the free newspaper for commuters was launched in the UK. She says: “I was a big fan of Metro from day one. I was one of the people who sat staring into space on my journey to work and I loved Metro as the bite sized content was perfect for my commute.” During her early years at Metro she was responsible for marketing the brand to both the advertising industry and consumers. “Positioning the brand to the industry was essential as Metro’s free business model was based on one revenue stream – advertising.”

Her role evolved over time and alongside building the brand externally, she focused on building the employer brand and working with the senior management team to develop and shape the overall culture as the business grew. Her experience in marketing and understanding of the brand made talent the next natural step and she moved into an assistant managing director role with overall responsibility for talent and culture. She comments: “People often focus their time and effort on marketing their brand externally and forget that the employer brand needs just as much focus and attention.”

Commitment to people development

Wall was a strong advocate for people development resulting in a number of people progressing into senior roles in the business. “We really encouraged people to share their achievements and we created a ‘success wall’ in our reception where people wrote their successes – at the end of the year it was brilliant to look back at everything we had achieved,” she comments. “We also ran quarterly business briefings involving all heads of department so everyone knew about developments and projects taking place across the business.”

As the business grew, Metro received numerous accolades for its focus on building a great culture and commitment to developing people. “A high point was making it into the Sunday Times 50 Best Small Companies to work for and in 2011 Metro was ranked second in the mid-sized companies category of Britain’s Top Employers, scoring five stars in all five categories, and received praise for creating a unique culture and retaining great talent.”

Talent as a turnaround tool

In October 2011, Wall moved to Northcliffe Media, the regional arm of the DMGT Group. Northcliffe Media is a traditional business that until recently had a hierarchical structure – the exact opposite of Metro. The business is challenged by a number of factors including the tough economic climate. Wall’s role as part of the senior management team is to help turnaround the business, challenge perceptions and ultimately achieve growth. She explains: “My new role ensures talent is represented on the senior management team. Both culture and people development will be a key part of the business goals moving forward.”

One of the first priorities for Wall was to look at how she could reposition the overall Northcliffe Media brand. “Our business is made up of lots of incredibly strong local brands but there is also an opportunity to strengthen the overall employer brand to help us retain and attract the best talent,” she explains.

Looking ahead to the future there are plans in place to launch a Northcliffe Academy for future stars and the senior management team will be hands on both planning and delivering the program. She comments: “We ran a program like this at Metro and the feedback from the team was that it was a brilliant because it was delivered by the senior team, used lots of live business issues and encouraged cross department collaboration.”

Open and ongoing improvements

With over 2,300 employees, another challenge was to ensure that people clearly understood the issues facing the business and why some of the changes were taking place. In the past there had been a lack of openness about the overall group, both internally and externally. Wall’s remit is to bring a structured consistent approach to ensure the business acts transparently and communicates better. She says: “We’ve just launched a business focused social network called Salesforce Chatter. The idea is to stimulate conversations and collaboration and encourage people to share best practice across the whole company.”

Quarterly pulse check surveys will be launched to get regular feedback from everyone and monitor how the business is doing. She says: “We will use the feedback from the surveys to benchmark our progress and the feedback will be followed up and used to shape our business goals moving forward. All the senior managers in the business now have a model FIAT 500 on their desks. The cars are a constant reminder that you can resurrect a brand and change perceptions – watch this space!”

Karen WallExecutive Director – Talent, Communication and Marketing at Northcliffe Media.

About the author

Karen Wall is Executive Director – Talent, Communication and Marketing at Northcliffe Media. She began her career in media in 1999 working in the central marketing team at Northcliffe. She joined Metro in October 1999 as media executive. In 2000 she was promoted to marketing manager, then head of marketing and marketing director in 2004, when she joined the Metro board. In 2007, she was promoted to assistant managing director with responsibility to oversee marketing, research, talent and PR at Metro. In October 2011 she moved to Northcliffe Media as executive director with responsibility for talent, communication and marketing. Wall has a degree in business studies and marketing from Dublin City University. Karen Wall can be contacted at: karen.wall@northcliffemedia.co.uk

Related articles