Welcome to this week’s Discuss HR, the HR blog written for and by members of Human Resources UK.
Just a brief introduction from me today (hurrah I hear you cry!). I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who has been attending the networking events and today is the big networking day with events in London, Newcastle and Solihull, so I hope all of you going to these have a great time.
To business, today we welcome back our resident HR Director Sheena McLullich, who has a wonderful ability of relating her experience and today is no different. (Ed Scrivener)
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| Sheena, coming to a motorway near you soon! |
It was all my husband’s fault really. He’s spent much of the last few months trawling round the Internet (he calls it ‘research’) looking for a new car. Finally he found what he wanted but during his quest he also discovered that my ‘dream’ car was no longer available in the UK. So that was why I ended up making a nine hundred mile round trip to Scotland last month to purchase one of the last remaining models.
I didn’t really want (or need) a new car. For the past few years I’ve worked in central London where a car is a major inconvenience. I mostly travel round London by public transport and rarely venture by road anywhere inside the North Circular. In fact the last car I bought new, almost 7 years ago, had very few miles on the clock and was mainly used to travel to and from the train station – less than 2 miles from my house.
It hasn’t always been like that. When I lived and worked in Scotland a reliable car was a necessity and I regularly clocked up over 25,000 business miles a year. Back then I changed my car every 3 years, swapping each clapped-out wreck (via a contract hire scheme) for a brand new model – but always from the same supplier.
The reason for this choice was simple. Many years ago I was working in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands, delivering a major IT training roll-out to the local council. Late one winter’s night, somewhere off the A85, disaster struck and a wheel-bearing seized. I nursed the fairly new vehicle to my destination and phoned the contract-hire company in Glasgow. They arranged for the car to be towed to the ‘nearest’ main dealer, some 50 miles away. A couple of days later, the dealer phoned me to say that the car was fixed and could I please come and collect it. No I couldn’t – the garage was an hour’s drive away, I’d no car (obviously!) and there wasn’t a reliable bus service. In any case, I was delivering day-long training sessions from 9-5 and couldn’t possibly take time off work during the day. The impasse was solved with another call to the contract hire company. A couple of hours later, the car was parked outside my hotel, repaired, cleaned and with a huge bunch of flowers on the passenger seat by way of apology. Now that’s how to win a customer for life!!
In fact, I’ve dealt with this particular company now for almost 20 years so it was logical that I would turn to them to see if it was really true that I wouldn’t be able to buy this particular marque in future and whether, by any chance, they still had one available. They did, so I bought it. Everything was done online from sorting out the insurance to the credit agreement. I don’t have a car allowance in my present job so I had to pay for this one – the hard way! The salesman sent down some photos of the car and all I had to do was to drive up to Scotland to trade in the old car and collect the new one. That was no hardship as I could combine the trip with a short holiday to visit friends and family so everyone was happy.
To be honest, I’m not terribly interested in cars. I’ve been responsible for the company car fleet in a couple of previous roles but I’ve always managed to avoid driving a company car, preferring instead to opt for a cash allowance so that I could make a free choice as to the make and model I drove. I see a car simply as a tool that helps me to do my job – as a means of getting to and from different locations, admittedly with a certain degree of comfort and style.
So I wasn’t really listening as I stood in a thunderous downpour outside a car dealership in Stirling while the salesman enthused about ‘brake horse-power, cruise control and voice activated integral communications software’. The car looked nice, a sleek, grey coloured, 3 door sports coupé. The coupé bit was new to me. All of my recent cars have been practical 5-door hatchbacks but, as the family have all grown up and left home, I thought it was time to treat myself to something sporty – and I’m now old enough to be able to afford the insurance!
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| My dream car in case anyone wants to buy me it? |
It didn’t take too long to complete all the paperwork and I set off for the long journey back to south-east England. However, a lot has changed in vehicle technology in the 7 years since I last drove a new car. Somewhere south of Glasgow, I realised that I had a sixth gear (which did wonders for my petrol consumption!) I managed to set off the alarm when I stopped at a service station on the M6 and I didn’t manage to turn it off again for quite a few embarrassing minutes. The phone call from my son went unanswered when I remembered that I needed to ‘pair’ my Blackberry to the in-car phone system and I ‘accidently’ found out that the car would cruise quite happily at 120 mph – oops!!
There’s a salutary lesson there about listening to instructions, reading the manual and not blithely assuming that everything technical stays the same. When I worked as an IT trainer, I always used to tell delegates that learning a new piece of software was like learning to drive a new car which required an investment in learning the basics. A lesson that I should perhaps have remembered for myself.
I’m relieved to say that I made it back home with my sanity (and my driving licence!) intact. A few evenings spent with the handbook in a stationary vehicle on the driveway mean that I have now figured out what the buttons and switches on the dashboard actually do. I can now manage the entertainment and phone systems (apart from the voice-activated bit – I’m leaving that well-alone!) and cruise control..? I’m cruising in comfort and style ….
About the author
Sheena began her career in Training & Development before moving to a generalist HR position in 1998. Since then she has held senior HR roles for several SMEs in a wide range of industries. A Fellow of the CIPD and Member of the US SHRM, she has a keen interest in Employee Development, specifically in coaching and supporting managers to enable them to get the best from their people. She was appointed as Director of People for SPA Future Thinking in September 2011.
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Discuss HR is the blog for Human Resources UK, the leading LinkedIn group for those involved with HR in the UK. Next week’s Discuss HR will be written by Leadership Coach Dorothy Nesbit.
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