On Wednesday 20th November, Zinc and members of The Talent Community came together to hear from three Talent Acquisition innovators about how their teams are having a big strategic impact.
We heard from:
- Annie Jackson, Head of Talent Acquisition at Cleo
- Marley Andrews, Talent Acquisition Team Lead at HelloFresh
- Charlotte Egan, Talent Acquisition Optimisation & Data Manager at John Lewis
- Tom Jewell, VP Customer at Zinc (Moderator)
Our panellists highlighted how their TA teams used a work problem as an opportunity for them to break the mould, innovate, and improve the work they deliver.
Keep reading for the highlights and takeaways on how you can incorporate innovation into your talent function.
Annie Jackson, Head of Talent Acquisition, Cleo
The problem
Cleo’s business ethos advocates for financial transparency. But what happened when transparency was applied internally? Annie had two problems to solve:
- Teams had begun advocating for greater salary and career framework transparency.
- A shift towards high-performance culture meant Cleo’s employer brand wasn’t matching up to reality, which left some new hires taken aback by the review framework once they started.
Leadership was on board with greater transparency, but there was some pushback from the TA team and concerns that candidates would be looking to always be at the top of salary bands.
The solution
It took Cleo’s people team time to gather benchmarking data and make sure everyone fit within the levelling and career progression frameworks. First they focused on going live with the salary bands they hired in the most often, like engineering.
It meant a few uncomfortable conversations with team members about salary bands, but the team was supported with data and feedback about band placement.
The impact
The move to transparency impacted the business in huge ways. It meant candidates noticed the transparency during the hiring process. It changed how recruiters sold Cleo to candidates, and encouraged them to be honest about what the work environment is like.
Salary transparency reduced the gender pay gap within engineering. It also encouraged the TA team to think further about transparency, including:
- Creating candidate packs for the interview process
- Encouraging people managers to give fairer offers to candidates
- Narrowing gender pay gaps across the company
- Building engineering hiring frameworks
With the onboarding survey results improving, transparency has proved to be a win for Cleo’s TA team.
Marley Andrews, Talent Acquisition Team Lead, HelloFresh
The problem
HelloFresh is a global company, working across 18 markets — and with talent teams scattered across the globe, everyone was recruiting in silos and working on different projects.
Marley’s job was to bring all the talent teams together and make sure:
- Everyone was working towards the same KPIs
- There were consistent ways of working across the business
- Talent teams could share their resources, knowledge, and insights
Leadership was determined to bring markets together on a global scale, and the talent acquisition teams were an important piece of the puzzle.
The solution
What did harmonisation even look like across such a wide range of markets? It all boiled down to what Marley called “talent acquisition as a service”.
Marley started by influencing leaders who had talent teams structured in different ways, and began work in one market before moving to the others.
Teams aligned on health metrics and KPIs. With all teams held accountable, it was easier to see how they could work together. Talent review cycles also aligned with health metrics so employees had clear paths towards promotions and career development.
The impact
Now HelloFresh has one aligned team working towards the same metrics, instead of dozens of small teams working in silos. It encourages everyone to be more disciplined, and gives TA more credibility within a business that places a high value on data-driven decision making.
If one market has an unexpected hiring peak, they can pull on resources from elsewhere in the business to be faster and more agile. For example, when she was ramping up a recent UK site, Marley ran out of time for recruitment. With the new model, she was able to pull on TA resources from elsewhere — without onboarding hurdles.
Charlotte Egan, Talent Acquisition Optimisation & Data Manager, John Lewis
The problem
When Charlotte joined the Talent Acquisition team at John Lewis in 2022, it quickly became clear that the live support chat and manual processes meant day-to-day firefighting, with little time to focus on big-picture strategy.
There was no way to track requests, and the team didn’t have access to a single source of truth. If they could optimise and unlock more time, they could move from business as usual into productive change.
The solution
The idea was to provide a “front door” to the TA team for transparency and support, and give all hiring managers access to a self-serve knowledge base. They brought in stakeholders to explain how the new systems would be faster, and got buy-in from their technical team.
Because their new knowledge platform would replace a live chat with the team that the rest of the organisation was used to, they had to prove self-service would work. And once they had something to go live with, the hard work started.
The impact
Because of the shifts within the team and different ways of working — they moved to an end-to-end recruitment model and adjusted roles — Charlotte’s big focus was on change management and delivering the project successfully.
In the end, she said, it’s not always about the big new stuff. “It’s the quick wins that make a big difference,” she said. “It's a change we can make that really makes someone’s day easier.” So when an idea came through from a recruiter, the team was able to implement it in hours.
It also meant they could bring in new tech like Zinc, which Charlotte acknowledged might not have happened as quickly with the old team structure.
After delivering on the vision, they’re focusing on their 2025 roadmap. It’s an opportunity for the team to look at how their systems can work harder for them, and build on the energy a successful project brings.
Big takeaways: Driving innovation in talent teams
Change is often uncomfortable. In the stories we heard from Charlotte, Annie and Marley, there were often significant hurdles to the big projects they’d been tasked with delivering.
So what can we learn?
1. Define the problem in front of you
Whether it was because they’d seen it in another role, or they were being tasked with change from their leadership team, all three of our panellists started with a clear-eyed analysis of the job to be done.
2. Don’t be afraid to be first
Whether it’s pay transparency at Cleo, Talent Acquisition as a Service at HelloFresh, or an overhaul of processes at John Lewis, these projects pushed the boundaries of how people teams typically operate.
3. Bring everyone else along for the ride
By involving stakeholders from outside talent, our panellists were able to get buy-in at all levels and explain their vision — instead of charging forward alone and leaving everyone confused.
At the end of the day, don’t forget to celebrate success. The work of talent is never done, but acknowledging how far you’ve come can help your team stay energised and keep finding new ways to innovate.
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