Humans of HR: The story behind the leading lights – their career, motivation and achievements.
Whether Jo Kansagra found HR or whether HR found her is debatable – but as Head of People at Virgin Incentives and Virgin Experience Days she finds success and satisfaction.
28 October 2024
Story by
Simon Kent, Head of Content – The HR World
Jo Kansagra is Head of People at Virgin Incentives and Virgin Experience Days.
Having planned for a career in financial services she realised quickly that whilst she loved speaking to people, she wasn’t enjoying the products she was selling. “I took a chance,” she says, “and left my finance role, moved back in with my parents, and took a role in a department store so I had some money coming in whilst I worked out what I wanted to do with my life.”
The move was to be fortuitous and one which would lead to her realisation of what she found truly satisfying. Having been taken on as a personal shopper she was then asked to handle the temporary staff at Christmas, recruiting – for the first time in her career – which while proving to be a steep learning curve, gave her an insight into the HR profession.
Building reputation
Shortly after this a permanent role as HR Assistant came free. Kansagra built a strong reputation in this role and was approached by the HR Business Partner of their flagship store in Oxford Street, London store to do the same job. As Kansagra notes this was a case of delivering the same role but for a bigger group of stakeholders.
“Since then, I’ve worked with some amazing brands,” she says living her career with career luxury and premium retail and hospitality organisations as well as a couple of fixed term contracts with a private family members club and a PR & Communication Agency.
Along the way, Kansagra is proud to have been awarded a scholarship for the Retail Summer School at the Said Business School in Oxford: “There was a lot of competition for the places, and it was a real insight into how HR partners with other functions in different businesses as well as how to make sure HR has a place at the table when businesses make strategic plans,” she says.
Importance of team recognition
At Virgin, Kansagra is particularly proud that she led her People Team to win Team of the Year at the company’s annual awards ceremony. “Team Members vote over several categories, Team of the Year being one of them,” she explains. “As it’s peer to peer voting it was a great feeling seeing my team win for all their hard work over the year. In my experience, People Teams can be overlooked for internal awards because there is an expectation from the business that things just happen. For the team to be recognised in this way reassured the team that they are doing a great job and whilst it can be tough sometimes, people do see the effort that goes into the work we deliver.”
Kansagra says she was attracted to HR because of the balance between organisational needs and employee experience.
“It can be tough to get the balance right 100% of the time but the impact can be huge,” she says.
Unsurprisingly she gets particular satisfaction from the times when she helps solve a problem which is creating road blocks to a manager, team or individual.
“I have high expectations of myself and what the team can deliver,” she admits. “Sometimes we want to achieve the gold standard of initiatives and occasionally we need to reset our expectations based on time, budget, and physical resources. Usually, we can come to a place where we are happy that we are delivering something we can be proud of but occasionally we must reduce the scope of a project to ensure that we achieve balance.”
Ongoing success
In this way, among the team successes have been the implementation of a new HRIS within 8 weeks – a change which effectively moved the responsibility of personal data back to the individual, increased manager self-service and allowed the People Team to streamline and automate processes. “We have also delivered a new Learning Management System,” adds Kansagra, “which is driving engagement and has increased the teams’ personal responsibility to learn new skills.”
When asked if there’s anything she would change about HR, Kansagra says she is very happy with the way things are, although she adds: “Perhaps it’s the perception that People Teams are responsible for driving engagement rather than it being seen as an opportunity for every Team Member to create a positive, enjoyable and success working environment.”
At the end of the day, then, HR can be more of a catalyst and support in this respect ready to help drive the best from everyone an organisation.
Jo Kansagra
Head of People at Virgin Incentives and Virgin Experience Days
