Gemma Richardson features in our June edition of PeopleRevealed, and shares her journey from her role as Head of People & Culture at Birmingham City FC into Fractional HR
Nicola Morris
June 17, 2025
My career in HR has been somewhat ‘squiggly’, as I tend to move to opportunities that I find interesting and give me a breadth of experience. I have worked in the legal, software, travel, environmental and sports industries in a range of roles from administrative to leadership. In the last eleven years I have been in HR leadership roles, with remits across the UK, Ireland, Nordics, USA and AsiaPacific.
Most recently I have been working with Birmingham City Football Club as the Head of People & Culture – a role in a new industry for me, which was both interesting and rewarding. The role gave me the opportunity to build the human resources function from the ground up, put in place strong foundations across the employee lifecycle and create strategic initiatives to drive and recognise high performance. It has also been a role which has firmly established me as a ‘bluenose’!
In 2013 I joined a travel-tech company, which gave me three back-to-back promotions in the space of five years. One of which was to the HR Director for the Asia Pacific region, which meant a relocation to Singapore. The role taught me a lot about working across cultures and adapting plans to local teams to ensure they drive global results.
I use metrics to measure the success of the initiatives that I put in place by using data such as attrition rates, employee engagement levels, employee satisfaction surveys, cost savings from recruitment (in-house vs agency spend) and absence levels.
However, I feel success as a leader is really measured by the value you add to business leaders and your team. I therefore regularly meet with each business leader and member of my team to seek feedback. This of course takes time to build the trust and confidence with the individual for them to be able to give you that feedback, but I believe it is invaluable, and it is what is needed to truly make a difference.
I previously worked for a company that relied heavily on HGV drivers to deliver their services, and due to the national driver shortage, they were experiencing difficulties being able to attract and retain HGV drivers.
I implemented measures which each leader could use at their discretion, depending on the situation in their area. These included sign-on bonuses, retention bonuses and carry-over of annual leave. I also reviewed driver pay rates every 3 months across the UK, to ensure that we were paying competitively to be able to attract and retain.
I worked closely with our learning and development team on a concept to identify your high potential crew members and train them to become HGV drivers. The ability to grow our own capability in-house enabled the business to invest in their people but also provide more resource at a time when it was greatly needed.
To foster a positive workplace culture you need buy-in from the leadership team. Helping them to understand the concept of culture and the power of a positive culture is key. The term ‘culture’ can be described in many different ways and culture is affected by many things in an organisation from dress-code to logos, to processes, control systems, policies and organisational structure.
In my experience the most important elements of culture are purpose and values. Having that ‘north star’ which everyone is heading towards creates clarity, alignment and transparency. Your values – and the behaviours behind them– need to be clear and embedded throughout the organisation. It isn’t enough to write them on a slide deck and communicate them, they need to be lived every day by each individual, but it starts with the leadership team role modelling them.
To build an organisation’s desired culture, you need to firstly understand the current culture, through conducting a cultural diagnostic. Until you understand the starting point, you will not be able to design the tactics to make that overall strategic shift and transform the culture. However, there are some common areas that I focus on to create a positive culture: two-way communications, reward and recognition mechanisms, leadership and people management, inclusion and belonging.
I once led a team who were responsible for driving several strategic initiatives through the business. One of the most successful was talent mapping and succession planning. We were able to get a thorough understanding of where our high potential people were in the business and deep dive into their strengths and development points, the risk of them leaving, their mobility across the UK and/or functions, together with their career aspirations. This meant that tailored individual development plans could be put in place for these people which help them to achieve their aspirations.
The people identified as high potential were placed on specific development interventions ranging from coaching, mentoring, projects, secondments and a number moved into intentionally created roles, enabling them to further their career within the business, rather than looking elsewhere for the next move.
When creating a more inclusive workplace culture, it is important to remember that inclusion runs through the entire employee life cycle – how you attract, promote, develop and offboard all need to be reviewed to ensure equality of opportunity. Reviewing people policies, to ensure they are created with a diverse lens, is always a good starting point.
Culture change isn’t something that can happen overnight and therefore I always map out a strategy over a 18-24 month period. To establish a robust foundation, I recommend building a psychologically safe environment, where people feel free to give their true opinion, share their lived experiences and be their whole self at work.
Creating an inclusive culture is not something HR can do in isolation; it needs diversity of thought from all backgrounds and different teams across the organisation. Therefore, leadership steering groups and internal working groups are key to drive inclusion throughout the organisation.
I have found that some leaders can shy away from the subject of EDI due to lack of understanding or fear of saying the wrong thing, therefore I always prioritise working with the leadership teams to educate them and raise awareness.
Above all, celebrating our differences and leading with respect, are things which will shape a more inclusive culture.
I would give two pieces of advice that I have been given over my career. Firstly, always think two steps ahead. When deciding on roles to take, I often think of the role I want after the one I am considering, weighing up which route will get me to where I want to be. Secondly, don’t discount roles because they aren’t on the next step of the career ladder – sideways moves can often help you to further your career. A few years ago,I was in a role that I really enjoyed and then the HR function restructured. I had a choice of two roles but I didn’t see them as a ‘next step’ for me. The Chief People Officer gave me some advice no to discount sideways moves in my career as you never know where they will lead. I therefore moved into a cultural transformational role, a sideways move, and it turned out to be one of the reasons that I was successful in securing the Head of People & Culture role at BCFC.
I’ve taken the leap from operating an ‘in-house’ HR leadership role to a more fractional way of working by providing consultancy services. My goal is to take the knowledge and expertise I have built up over the past twenty years and work with businesses to help them understand and harness the power of work place culture and engaging their people. My focus will be on creating strategies and initiatives tailored to the situation a business is in and enable them to meet their aspirations.
And finally....
I would be a novelist! I really enjoy reading thriller novels and am hooked on the Jack Reacher series – I have all the books to date.
