It’s Never About Standing Still
by Simon Kent | May 19, 2025
There have been few moments in Harvey Francis’ career which haven’t featured change of one kind or another.
Involved with organisations where restructuring was part and parcel of working life, moving between sectors as opportunities emerged and offers made, he now has an executive position at Skanska, where he helps to lead a company working in a challenging environment.
It seems a far cry from his initial roles in retail. Beginning in a store management training programme he worked as a buyer at a Canterbury department store, until he decided he would combine his passion for music with his work and switched to run a Virgin record store. In retrospect he admits this ended up being somewhat chaotic and unstructured, although successful, and it also taught him that working for your passion wasn’t always the best thing to do: “A hobby and work are two separate things,” says Francis. “I exhausted my passion for music as I was listening to it for 9 hours a day.”
He joined the House of Fraser as a departmental head and was promoted to assistant store manager. He then moved on to BT who at the time had a high street retail presence. Francis managed the company’s Southampton store – which enjoyed the highest turnover in the chain – and in doing so also took responsibility for training other branch managers.
This led to a more structured national role to help shape training across the business. At the time training took place at the company’s Stockport centre but this arrangement was seen as being detrimental to diversity in the business as some courses required participants to stay in the centre for two weeks. Francis’ role was therefore to devolve training activities making them more accessible but still consistent. This, then, was Francis’ first contact with an HR oriented role.
Indeed it was then a project manager within HR who identified a vacancy for Francis: ”I thought it would be enjoyable and something else for the CV,” he admits, “I thought I’d do it for a year and then move back to operations.” However, regular restructuring and new initiatives kept Francis busy with new challenges and projects to manage. From Investors In People to developing a coaching programmes to managing reward and head count, Francis’ work continued to help develop the business, identifying new ways of doing things and making them happen.
Francis then moved to Pfizer with a clear HR position and agenda. He took part in a global HR team which created a HR tech system to cover international markets, ultimately delivering across more than a hundred countries.
Back in the UK he implemented an Ulrich model of HR for the company, defining business partner roles and establishing shared services for the business. Perhaps unsurprisingly his work earned him internal recognition and an award for change management.
The company was operating with a siloed structure, and again Francis was able to use the Ulrich model to break this down and introduce efficiencies – establishing shared services and enabling HR business partners to deliver greater value to each area of the business.
A year into his role Skanska’s Sweden-based CEO led a restructure for the business creating what is now the executive management team. As part of this Francis was given a c-suite role as Executive Vice President with responsibility for HR. “It came much sooner than I’d anticipated,” he says of this step up, “but it was very rewarding. It was an opportunity to be involved in some great work.”
Among Francis’ moves has been the creation of a single tech system to cover HR work from front to back office, replacing many of the pre-existing single systems that covered aspects of the department’s work such as payroll. This has supported the overall structure of centralising areas of HR that make sense to do so, while enabling HR business partners to do their work.
While Francis notes HR already had a c-suite role prior to the CEO’s move, the new structure also sought to integrate the UK subsidiary with the rest of the business. “I’d established a good reputation in the ten months since I’d joined,” says Francis, “and my role helped change the culture and create a better approach for the business.”
Since taking this role Francis has picked up responsibility for communications, overseen IT for a few years and more recently taken responsibility for customer experience. He is also responsible for business strategy, leading the executive team through creating a rolling three year plan.
Reflecting on his career, Francis can see that there has always been the intention of creating change to make organisations run better for everyone. “I guess my whole raison d’être is making things better,” he says. “It’s never about standing still.”
Even from his early role in training he learnt about what works and what doesn’t work for people, and about how when you’re making change you need to take people with you. He also notes that even if you want change to happen fast you need to be aware of how fast the organisation moves: “Every organisation has a rhythm and a pace you have to tap into that and make sure the change follows that rhythm,” he observes.
“The trick is not to change for the sake of it,” he adds. “Either identify what’s not working or how the business needs to change for the better. The role of HR is the means to the end, not the end itself. We are there to create a great culture and make a difference but also make sure the organisation has the people it needs and the culture to work well. My job is about creating the sweet spot when the business and the people work together.”
It is not surprising that Francis achieved his CIPD qualification through professional assessment in his last year at BT – demonstrating knowledge and the achievement of standards through practice. Since then has upgraded to become a chartered fellow of the CIPD. However, alongside this he has also undertaken management learning through Ashridge and IMD in Switzerland. He’s currently studying on an executive coaching programme but also points out that much of his skillset has come through watching and learning from others, judging what works and building that into his own practice.
“The important thing for me is that I keep developing,” he says.
