Humans of HR: The story behind the leading lights – their career, motivation and achievements.
From building her own HR practice to helping her current employer grow across the world, Sam Moxham, Chief People Officer at financial services business Progeny, thrives on seeing others become successful, whatever form that takes.
30 January 2023
Story by
Simon Kent, Head of Content – The HR World
With a fascination in people and how they tick in the working environment, Sam Moxham ‘fell’ into her HR career and found it to be a lucky accident.
Moxham travelled the world in her early 20s Moxham before working as a PA in the tech market. When an HR administration opportunity came up, the step into HR proved a catalyst for her career: “I stayed at that company for ten years, completing my degree in HR Management and really learning my trade,” she says.
Moxham started a family and found her life changing again. She decided she wanted to be self-employed, and using her skills and experience, identified a gap in the market for delivering HR consultancy services to small businesses. Consequently she launched Halo HR and single-mindedly built a substantial bank of clients. Her first was professional services company, Progeny.
When the consultancy had gone as far as she felt she could take it, Moxham was on the hunt for a bigger opportunity. She was able to sell Halo to Progeny in 2019 taking on the combined role of HR Director and MD of Progeny HR Consultancy and Advice. “My focus here was creating something different,” she says. “I didn’t want our HR approach to be vanilla and it was really important to me that wellbeing was at the core.”
Balancing people and business
In 2021, Moxham’s role changed once more and she became Chief People Officer for the company. At this level Moxham ensured there was a particular emphasis on helping Progeny balance business and people-related decisions.
Creating and running her own HR business certain ranks high on Moxham’s own list of achievements. She notes how she had to be driven and focused to make a success of this and while she made mistakes along the way, some of that experience continues to inform her work today.
“It’s not all black and white in HR which can be very confusing for business owners, so I always provided actionable and commercially driven advice, to help them solve their HR issues so the business could move on quickly and positively,” she says.
Leading Progeny’s people and wellbeing agenda during the pandemic is also a career landmark for Moxham. “It was so important to me that we focused on maintaining communication, our sense of connection and our team’s level of wellbeing throughout lockdown, as well as dealing with all the more practical HR challenges.”
As part of their ongoing support, the business ran monthly virtual Town Halls hosted by the company’s CEO, appointed Wellbeing Champions and created a virtual social scene where fun and positivity were a priority.
This included The Progeny League – a series of cross-company challenges that covered everything from daily steps, to decorating a cake, to lip synching to a favourite anthem. Unsurprisingly, Moxham is proud that Progeny didn’t furlough any staff or make redundancies due to the pandemic.
“Building a meaningful wellbeing agenda, where wellbeing has a seat at the board table, has been hugely important to me,” asserts Moxham. “I couldn’t work in a business where I didn’t have a say and I’m able to offer a different perspective on business issues that are being discussed at a senior level. Having run my own business, I do have that commercial edge and this has been very useful to me.”
“When I was younger, I really enjoyed learning the rules of HR, however over time I have realised it’s not the rules that make or break a business but embedding them into a brilliant culture and HR centric approach.”
Support to a growing business
Crucial to Moxham’s role has been managing the addition of new businesses into the organisation. Progeny is a growing and entrepreneurial company and newly acquired firms need to be integrated into the business carefully especially as some bring with them a new geographic footprint or international territories.
“I think the key here is what they refer to in the US as neighbourhoods but I would call communities,” she says. “It’s about encouraging all our regional and international hubs to retain their own subculture within a wider Progeny culture, identity and value proposition that everyone also buys into.”
Data has been a challenge admits Moxham, not so much in having access to it but in being able to meaningfully interrogate it. In the past few years however, she says the business has been able to transform the way data is used within the business, consequently enabling her team to easily access actionable data insights.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Moxham is aware of how her own perspective on HR has changed over the years: “When I was younger, I really enjoyed learning the rules of HR,” she says, “however over time I have realised it’s not the rules that make or break a business but embedding them into a brilliant culture and HR centric approach.”
Creating a team that delivers
As part of this, Moxham is proud of the team she has created around herself, all of whom have the same passion for doing their best for all employees. “Our Talent Team for example effectively provide a window into our business for potential candidates, including those in very competitive sectors such as legal and tech,” she notes, “and they do a brilliant job of helping to secure the best talent.”
Moxham’s greatest success, however is to be in a role that she continues to be passionate about. “I was never academic at school and had no idea what I wanted to do, but when I entered a role in HR it just sparked something in me that is still there over 20 years later.”
Sam Moxham
Chief People Officer
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