Riikka Jokelainen - Chartered Mcipd Commercial and Creative Hr Leader

United Kingdom

Experience

Jul 2023 - Apr 2024

10 months

United Kingdom

Vice President, People

Gay Times

Scaled the business and developed Culture, Leadership and HR team to enable 4 X revenue growth and diversification following VC investment, in a rapidly changing operating environment.

Sep 2022 - Jun 2023

10 months

United Kingdom

HR Consultant

Gay Times

Report to CEO and defined the HR strategy. Part of the SLT working on overall business planning, shaping the organisation, leadership advice and preparing investor communications.
Defined HR strategy based on business goals and upgraded HR Operations including Onboarding, HRIS, Wellbeing provision, culturally-fit Company Policies, Reward and Hybrid working principles.
Defined Employee Experience principles based on the talent demographic and led internal communications, leadership and HR initiatives accordingly, resulting in strong trust and engagement.
Organisation design for Sales and Commercial delivery, including running a strategy workshop which resolved an impasse, enabling us to quickly move to a more effective operating model.
Performance improvement to step up pace in the business, with OKR process, addressing individual performance, and training needs analysis and plan for commercial skills across the business.
Coaching and training programme for early career managers, which equipped them to take more confident ownership of team members and performance, reducing reliance on senior leaders.
Led internal communications and company presentations, resulting in strong trust and engagement that helped us retain positive employee sentiment even through challenging times.
Diversity and Inclusion review and analysis. Created and delivered an action plan and learning programme which resolved friction in the team and achieved visible shift to more inclusive behaviours.
Recruitment scale-up with ATS and clear processes. Enhanced our talent brand on the market achieving high rates of attraction and saving £100k within 6 months on recruitment fees via direct hiring.
Resolved a number of sensitive Employee Relations issues, and built up the team's ability to work more positively together, including a DEI learning programme. Delivered organisation change including exits.

Oct 2018 - Jun 2023

4 years 9 months

HR Director & Founder

Companies in Balance

Built and ran my own HR Consultancy delivering a number of interim and project assignments and advisory work across sectors and company sizes, focusing on Creative, Technology and B2B Services.

MENCAP, care sector non-profit with £200m turnover and 8000+ staff:

Senior HR Business Partner (interim) for Corporate Functions, including Technology & Data, Finance, Legal, HR and Quality. Report to CFO, part of directorate Leadership Team and HR Leadership Team.
Defined and delivered departmental People Plans and projects liaising with Centre of Excellence teams. Designed and ran HR leadership development day.
Programme Manager for Business Services review. Led project team; delivered organisation design proposal to streamline activity, provide a better service to stakeholders and achieve cost-savings.
Career Development design based on agile, user-led design principles which gave the organisation a framework for career conversations and demonstrated agile ways of working in practice.

NEXSTIM, global medical technology SME with 50 staff:

Talent Review & Capability Planning toolkit to give a single view of talent and facilitate workforce planning and development in line with strategy. Completed leadership review for the Board.

WHITEFOX, UK, US and Canada-based sustainability engineering business:

Succession Planning programme design and delivery to shift to a more strategic approach to People. Created guidance materials and trained leadership teams to use the approach.

GROWTH INTELLIGENCE, AI sales tech scale-up serving B2B enterprise:

Head of Talent Acquisition for commercial and technical roles to enable growth and reduce senior leaders' time on hiring, with impact described by the CEO as 'transformative'.

YOULEND, hyper-growth FinTech with 400% YOY expansion:

Talent Acquisition for a number of functions and roles at high volume and pace, including EMEA & US Business Development, Operations & Compliance; reducing managers' time on hiring.

Advised a number of Creative and B2B service businesses on People strategy, Culture, Performance, Reward, Management development; ER cases and employment law to help them work effectively and build their desired culture.

Mar 2017 - Oct 2018

1 year 8 months

United Kingdom

Head of HR

Systemiq

Scaled the business and built the HR team; set up international Talent Strategy and defined the EVP at this pioneering start-up founded by ex-McKinsey partners achieving rapid organic growth.

Report to Managing Partner; part of SLT where I championed the target culture, employee experience and decision-making in line with our values and was commended for my integrity.
Achieved strong engagement, employer brand and retention, whereby staff turnover ran at 7% against a start-up average of 25% and the business was able to attract in-demand, niche talent.
Led internal company-building with an employee-owned approach to increase people's sense of agency, via working groups on topics like decision-making, diversity, hiring and team effectiveness.
Designed and embedded an innovative holistic model for talent management, performance and development, based on strengths, purpose and individual career paths; linked to company mission.
This approach of individual ownership, development and opportunity has led to numerous employees moving to leadership roles quickly, internally as well as in spin-off and affiliated companies.

Dec 2015 - Dec 2016

1 year 1 month

HR Business Partner - Marketing, Digital and Data Science

Direct Line Group

HR Transformation to embed new Strategy in collaboration with Centres of Excellence; organisation development and coaching my business areas to navigate the culture and achieve impact.

The multi-award winning Marketing team credited me as their most helpful and value-adding HRBP ever, after I resolved a number of long-standing issues around compensation, roles and recruitment.
Leadership development including Marketing people manager engagement survey analysis and actions, Digital Leadership competency framework definition, and coaching on people development.
Led cross-functional Talent Reviews, Succession planning and Emerging Leaders programmes that facilitated career development, talent deployment and secondments across the organisation.
Delivered HR Transformation by implementing a number of process changes with management teams including simplified Performance and Reward; new Graduate and Apprenticeships programmes.
Customer Experience organisation design, role profiles and change management to consolidate activity from several business units into one team of c. 50 staff.
Data Science operating model development, helping this brand new function gain traction and begin to transform the company's ways of operating across functions around data and analytics.

Aug 2015 - Dec 2015

5 months

HR Business Partner (FTC)

Grass Roots Group

Talent development and engagement action plans based on business objectives and survey data.

Oct 2012 - Dec 2015

2 years 3 months

United Kingdom

HR Director

Rayner

Created HR strategy enabling global market growth and full-scale modernisation of the business.

Feb 2012 - Sep 2012

8 months

People Development & Resource Manager (FTC)

RBS Invoice Finance

Designed Strategic Workforce Planning methodology, liaising with COO and other business unit leads.

Oct 2008 - Feb 2012

3 years 5 months

Organisation Development Manager (Head of HR)

Pure360 (now Spotler)

Built scalable HR & Culture enabling the company to grow at a rate of +40% new business per year.

Summary

Commercial and creative HR leader with versatile multi-sector experience including Marketing, Technology, Sustainability and Financial Services, and proven success leading growth and change with progressive people strategies. Skilled at collaborating with global, ambitious teams, I am quick to build rapport and trust with leaders and teams alike and deliver results at pace.