Rachel’s story
Brady Beginnings
Since early 2022 Rachel has been the HR and talent lead at Bradys. Coming from the academic sector but with experience across HR within universities, multi-national corporates and fast growth SMEs, Rachel has played a substantial part in the recent growth and development of Bradys and the Bradys team.
The remit was always large covering talent acquisition, HR strategy, and more recently operations. Having the right people in the right seats has been and will be crucial to Bradys’ success and growth.
In August 2023 Rachel was promoted to director of HR and operations, a role that sits on the senior management team, driving performance and strategy.
What does your role look like now?
When I joined Bradys the main focus was talent acquisition and building the HR practices and policies to ensure that they aligned with the strategic direction and growth of the business. It is common for fast growth companies to be doing the right thing, but maybe not having the best processes and policies. We have that all in place now alongside an embedded, and high performing HR function.
We have a strong team and great colleagues, but we need to ensure that we are all performing at our best and that the working environment supports this. Reviewing our working practices, training needs and our employee offer was a close second priority to create what we have now – a structure of autonomy, clarity of expectations, support and a growing climate of collaboration and cohesion
As time has moved on I have become more involved in the business operations side of the Brady world, whilst continuing to ensure that HR is contributing to the delivery of the great client experience that we provide daily.
Brady Backing
Mainly my role has centered around ensuring the teams around me have the support and training they need.
I have had to learn a lot about the processes and the leasehold sector quickly, and from a standing start (it’s so different to the world of Higher Education!). I think I still have some way to go but we have such a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw upon here and the fact that everyone has been so helpful and accessible, that learning process has been so supportive. You’re never made to feel that your questions are in any way ones you should know the answer to.
What would you say it’s like working at Bradys?
I thought it would fast paced when I joined, but I am not sure I was prepared for just how quick it can be. Sometimes I don’t know where the week goes – One day I will be interviewing for a colleague to join our legal team and the next working at home putting together a costed recruitment plan or looking at our incoming call processes. Not forgetting arranging the next quarterly team meeting or social event.
I think to succeed at Bradys you need to be open and responsive to change. A growing business needs to be agile and you have to be creative and great at spotting solutions to problems. Bring a bit of your personality too, we are a team who like to work hard and have that razor sharp focus on our numbers, but we like to get to know each other and have fun at our social events. Team is massively important here, so you need to work with and contribute to the greater team effort, digging in and doing that extra bit to help your colleagues out when they need it and picking those things up that sometimes just aren’t in the job description. That goes a long way around here – we are all part of the bigger picture and our collective success story.