Director of People
Noone in the UK should need a food bank’s help. The Trussell Trust wants a future without food banks, without hunger, and without poverty. The Trussell Trust supports a nationwide network of food banks which provide emergency food and additional services to people locked into poverty. They also campaign for change, challenging the structural issues that keep people in poverty. As the coronavirus pandemic unfolds in the UK, The Trussell Trust is working with each food bank to help them continue their vital role during the crisis, ensuring the increasing numbers of vulnerable people and those driven into poverty can access vital emergency food and essentials in a safe way.
Trussell Trust were about to implement their new five-year strategy, which would see their new Director of People lead all HR functions as well leading 27,000 volunteers and the Safeguarding and Quality team. The Director would deliver a new volunteer-powered organisational strategy by upskilling volunteers as well as developing an HR strategy that supports The Trussell Trust’s food banks.
Prospectus briefed for the role via Zoom, ensuring thorough conversations with both the outgoing post holder and the Chief Operating Officers. We mapped out a search and targeted motivational leaders with HR expertise across the range of HR specialisms, particularly strategic people management, learning and development and culture change. We targeted HR leaders with experience of change environments, including restructuring and setting up new functions and through our search identified the successful candidate who was initially interviewed and assessed for over an hour by our consultant.
Dawn Wilde was appointed to the role. Most recently HR Director at Macmillan, where she managed a team of 60, Dawn’s previous HR career had been in retail, working for Tesco and Marks and Spencer through significant strategic change. Dawn bought experience in all HR disciplines with particular skills in strategic planning, transformational change, culture change, and leadership and development. She is ranked in Top 15 Most Influential Women in HR by Perkbox for leading transformational change and leadership development.
Due to the changing situation with Covid 19, Dawn was interviewed by The Trussell Trust via video, where she was able to demonstrate her skills, experience and personality, resulting in a job offer. Following acceptance of the offer, further virtual engagement took place with Dawn, up to and including her on boarding into the role. A few weeks into the role Dawn started to make an impact in the organisation by introducing support materials for Line Managers facing the challenge of Covid 19 and Wellbeing interventions for all employees and volunteers.