David Reay is a problem solver. If there’s something that needs to happen in the business or something that the business needs to address, he wants to be part of the solution.

As such, he doesn’t make a big play of his leading role as People Director at Immediate Media. Certainly he has influence and a seat at the decision making level of the organisation, but to a great extent his approach to the position and the kick he gets out of his job has stayed the same over his career.

“I ultimately enjoy solving problems,” he says. “It sounds basic, but the problems I like solving are the intricacies of the human mind. You think something isn’t going to be that difficult, and then you discover how complex it really is.”

Reay’s career has certain seen complexity increasing as it has progressed. He splits his career into two sections with the first ten years in the function as a time for establishing the fundamentals, the best practice for the profession, before using his skills with more freedom across a wider variety of employers and locations. 

“If you believe in it, go for it.”

Starting with an entry-level role at Proctor & Gamble, he soon found himself in the frontline taking a role at a newly privatised government-owned organisation created to address the UK’s nuclear legacy. He was, he says, about the fiftieth employee, and as such found himself within a business at the start of its journey where the role and boundaries of HR role were less defined than usual. As such he was able to contribute to and gain experience from many different areas of the business. 

“I was able to cut my teeth on everything, from policy to recruitment to creating a culture,” he says. “When you’re early in your career, being in that kind of environment compresses six years of learning into three.”

The experience brought him both challenge and freedom, and he felt very supported by a manager whose approach was essentially ‘if you believe in it, go for it.’ Reay says he still applies this approach to his managing his current team now.

Gathering experience

A position at BAE Systems also provided more groundwork for Reay’s career, with a more focussed role which also taught him a lot about organisational culture and how people fit into this effectively. Looking back over this time, Reay describes himself as ‘greedily gathering experience’ but he also professes that he wasn’t certain this kind of work was what he originally wanted to do when he set out in the function. However, his next move into the entertainment and media sector provided him with the freedom he wanted to take his work to the next level.

Reay joined Sony Music at a time when the music industry was undergoing significant disruption. On the one hand the industry had a sense of optimism around the future. It was dedicated to making great content and needed the right talent to make that happen and deliver it to audiences. The challenge facing Reay and the wider industry was how organisations, leaders and teams needed to evolve and come together to make that happen.

Reay became responsible for global organisational development, learning and talent so was instrumental in trying to make the business more innovative and agile. His role needed to address how to build the capabilities needed for an industry whose operating models were changing. A further move to a more international position brought another perspective to the work – how to translate that approach into diverse cultures from Latin America to the Nordics.

He took a career break in 2020 which involved developing some culinary skills at chef school but returned to the fray, first with a spell at TikTok and then at Condé Nast, where he was HR lead for its editorial, video and entertainment functions.

He was then offered People Director at Immediate Media, responsible for people and culture but also taking a wider remit than before in terms of using his influence and position to help support and develop the business’ brands. In this role he takes an integrated approach – the various ‘levers’ and influences he has are part of the people function but they also play directly into the direction of the business itself.

“We’re not taking individual HR initiatives, we’re listening to the business.”

“I know there’s always the debate about how HR needs to have a seat at the table,” he notes, “but I think when you’re in the media and dealing with content creation the magic of what we do is the people we’ve got. It’s not a secondary function – the concept of people management is baked into the business. We’ve got to spot good talent and nurture it – it’s very much driven by the context of the industry.”

Aligned with company needs

Reay’s work is also integrated with the business because he is still concerned with the needs of the company rather than trying to identify specific people based initiatives: “I still start with what are the problems you’ve got to solve for the business,” he says, “and then you become the solution. And the solution has elements of diverse parts of the function but we coalesce around the problems and solutions. We’re not taking individual HR initiatives, we’re listening to the business.”

This approach is ideal for a media industry where change is constant and Reay find it immensely satisfying to see the work that he’s doing having an impact on the business and the industry in general. He notes one initiative which saw his team set their sights on encouraging children to discover reading – establishing a National Magazine Day complete with partnership across the wider industry and a nationwide competition for schools to win bundles of magazine to help inspire literacy.

“HR can contribute more than just managing people.”

What is clear from Reay’s work is that he has resisted becoming pigeonholed in his HR work. Whatever the context and wherever he has worked he has always looked further than the boundaries of the strict HR function. He’s looked to the wider business need, but he’s also brought an industry awareness and curiosity. There is also a clear need here to make things happens and to be a part of progress, not simply to ensure the administration and compliance requirements are met.

Interestingly Reay feels having experience outside the function should be a compulsory part of HR development – to get a bigger picture on what’s happening for a business and what else is going on. “I think it gives a greater fluidity to the profession,” he says, “You start to see how CEO appointments can come from HR – that it can contribute more than just managing people.”

And as for Reay’s career from here, he’ll be content if there are still challenges for him to engage with: “As long as there are problems to solve, it stays exciting,” he says. “There’s always another area to explore, another question to ask and something else to experiment with.”