CLIENT SPOTLIGHT: BAE SYSTEMS

Since taking over as mobility lead at BAE Systems, what has been your biggest learning to date? 

Honestly…? Just how much resilience and determination you need to effect large scale change.  As humans, we naturally shy away from change and, when you’re surrounded by it, it can be really unsettling.  As a leader in this space, you have to embrace living with ambiguity.  For me, where you have a lot of change happening, it is important to maintain a focus on your core principles and ultimately make decisions you believe are right for the future of the organisation, even if they’re not always the easiest ones.  I encourage my team to be curious.  Always ask ‘why’ we do something the way we do and if you’re not satisfied with the first answer, ask ‘but, why?’ again.  A team which positively challenges the status quo is healthy as I believe it builds a culture of collective progression and success.  Since I have been in role, we have built a team who are passionate about continuous improvement – be that a process, a service, an end user experience or the way we operate internally as a team – we have a desire to become the best team, delivering the best service that we can.  I am passionate about effecting change as a team, alongside embedding a real pride in what we do.  But it doesn’t always mean that it’s quick, or easy.

With BAE being such a large and global organisation, what is the key to successfully collaborating with your internal stakeholders? 

To succeed in any function, you have to build strong relationships with your stakeholders and one of the challenges for GM teams is that we have so many of them.  I always adopt a style which is resolutely honest and with no hidden agenda.  When you talk about facts using an open logic, it becomes a powerful way to collaborate and puts you in a strong position to influence what you believe is right for the business and our people.  

Knowing that you are passionate about the family relocation experience – can you share a little about how you are seeking to “raise the bar” at BAE in this regard?  

When I first moved into GM I was consistently told that the most common reason assignments fail is because the family didn’t settle.  I found it then remarkable that such little focus was placed on the family experience across the industry. At BAE Systems, we are piloting a family experience service, where we are opening lines of communication direct with family members to give them a mechanism to be heard.  We’re also challenging our suppliers to think about family members too – can our tax briefings be modular and online, capable of being listened to by family members not just the employee?  Can we design videos for kids to watch about their new location?  Enable buddy schemes, connecting little ones through building a community and sharing experiences?  Despite its size and scale, BAE Systems is actually a hugely paternalistic employer.  Having a Family Experience Lead within our feedback programme means they have someone who can listen to their concerns, their worries and their challenges direct.  Which, in turn, means we have an opportunity to improve and enhance their experience.  Every small step we can take to simplify the process or every tiny bit of stress we can remove from their experience will add up, allowing our employees and their families to focus on the things that matter.  

As you plan for the next 2-3 years, what are the other main projects and drivers for you and your talent mobility team?   

At BAE Systems we have developed an ambitious Mobility Transformation plan, but it relies upon more than just the GM team to deliver it.  International mobility touches so many parts of the organisation you have to ensure you’re heading for the same ‘North star’ in your separate agendas.  Our business is experiencing a phenomenal growth in existing and new international markets and programmes.  It is a genuinely exciting time, but it comes with changing internal and external pressures for the teams - we need to be ready to adapt our service to deliver what the business, and our people, need.  At the heart of our objectives is a focus on cementing impeccable service quality for what I refer to as our ‘bread and butter’ service.  We need to optimise our technology, enhance our supplier partnerships and build a culture which embraces new ways of working which, together with our stakeholders, challenges the status quo. Ultimately, we’re aiming to reduce the level of complexity we currently have, to deliver more automated consumer style transactional service where we can, freeing up our specialists to perform the softer services that really make the difference.  People are often nervous of technological change, but in my view it presents an opportunity to release our teams from the manual day-to-day and enable them to deliver a more personal service touch for our people. 

Relocation can often be seen as a cost versus an investment by many business leaders, how are BAE leaning into the latter and using talent mobility to their advantage? 

Through deep collaboration.  At BAE Systems, we have brought together the business, our talent teams and GM to a space where we recognise our collective success is predicated on working together to achieve our common goal.  There are plenty of opportunities to take in this space and there is a huge passion amongst the teams to focus on driving this agenda through our 2024 objectives and beyond.  

If you had a magic wand, what is the one thing you’d like to see the industry achieve in the future?  

I would love to see the GM industry being ahead of the curve in technological advancement and adoption.  I can certainly see it is heading that way, even in the short time I have been in post.  GM teams need a genuinely integrated technology solution, which needs to be app enabled, highly secure, with an appropriate use of AI and perhaps delving into emerging solutions such as the Metaverse.  I truly believe that, historically, GM teams have suffered from sub-standard holistic technology solutions simply due to the complexity and fragmentation of our end to end service.  The number of deep subject matter experts that are required to effect an overseas move is huge, so we have to work in true partnership with each of our suppliers and any relevant subcontractors, as one big team, to succeed. I’d love to see the industry collaboratively pushing the boundaries around our collective future vision