Moving into the new financial year, after a turbulent last twelve months, there is a renewed sense of optimism amongst City HR executives. Oakleaf Partnership and Oakleaf Executive are seeing a resurgence in demand for top talent after a quieter end to 2022. This up and down experience comes as the quite extraordinary volumes of tactical and operational mid-level hiring in 2021-22 tail off, whilst a number of senior HR leaders who mainly stayed put to guide their businesses through the post Covid ‘boom’ and then help navigate the volatile external market and economic conditions have started to pursue their next moves.
HR leaders with experience of transformation are in demand and those candidates actively in the job market tend to be in multiple processes. Broader demand seems to be within generalist HR and reward over other areas such as talent across all industries, whilst demand for senior talent acquisition professionals has declined significantly, particularly within the technology space given the significant, industry-wide layoffs. It is now a standard requirement for shortlists to be diverse, particularly at CPO / CHRO level with organisations wanting gender diversity in particular.
We have seen a number of moves within the London market across all areas of Financial Services. Candidates are still moving from the bigger houses into either smaller FS firms, such as private equity, asset management and hedge funds but there has also been quite a bit of movement within smaller FS businesses as well. We have seen strong demand within FinTech and payments and a real variety of moves in commercial and industrial sectors from high end retail to aerospace to manufacturing, as well as other areas such as sustainable finance. Engineering is still also a strong market for HR Talent.
The changing set up of the world of work remains high on the agenda – with differing patterns and priorities starting to emerge between sectors around hybrid and flexible working. Whilst some businesses publicly return to mandating some, if not most, days in the office, others have embraced the productivity benefits of an agile workforce, keeping working patterns variable and application of policies loose.
Oakleaf Executive have been working on several searches for key HR leaders who have been brought in to help continue business growth, globalise people functions, transform employee skill bases making them fit for the future, plus build best in class working environments including a focus on leadership development offerings.
Congratulations to the following in our network, in their new positions:
- Jonathan Clarke joined Slaughter & May from Wondrous as Chief People Officer
- Sara Sehabiague moved to Temasek from Advent International as Director of Organisation & People
- Adam Nichols took up the Chief People Officer role at Pennintons Manches Cooper LLP
- Katherine Wenbourne moved to Stephenson Harwood LLP from Allen & Overy LLP as Global Head of HR
- Issy Homan takes on the role of Director of Learning & Talent at John Lewis
- Kate Griffiths Lambert joined Gravita as Group CPO
- Andrew Fox moved from VTB Capital to Hampshire Trust Bank as Chief People Officer
- Chris Dunford joins Aon as Chief People Officer UK
- Carly Hubbard takes up her first CPO role at Harbottle Lewis LLP
- Richard Moore moves from Brown Shipley to Rathbones as People COO / HR Transformation Lead
- Belina Mann joins HSBC as MD HR – COO & Digital Business Services
- Lisa Warwick moved to DLA Piper as Interim Head of Learning & Development
- {my}dentist has appointed Libby Jones in the newly created position of Chief People Officer
- Matt Hubbard leaves Lloyds Bank to join Aegon Asset Management as CPO
- Ellie Evans joined Just Group as Chief People Officer
- Emily MCDonnell takes up the role of Head of HR at BAE Systems
- Kathryn Herrington moves to Suse from CLS Group Holdings as Global CPO
- George March joins PWC as Head of Executive Talent
- Heather Swain takes up the role as Director, Talent & Learning at Deloitte
