Taking five minutes out of her busy day, Guru caught up with Holly Potter (innovation expert and all round HR geek) at Bozboz, an uber friendly full service creative digital agency in Hove.  

Chatting to Holly, she enlightened us on her passion for understanding what makes people tick and harnessing that to drive results.  With an MSc in Personnel and Development she has loads planned for Bozboz and will be documenting the journey along the way here on Guru Careers, think of it as a live experiment charting the highs (and challenges) of the programmes Holly and Bozboz are putting in place. Enjoy the ride, I know we will!

Meet Holly…

My background is in Talent Management; having cut my teeth in the Talent and Organisational Effectiveness team at Diageo, I moved into HR-related roles in the aerospace and more recently digital (including SaaS) industries. I’ve also worked as an independent consultant with a range of businesses, mainly in the digital industry. It is great to combine this experience in my role as a Digital Marketing and Innovation Lead at Bozboz.

My remit at Bozboz includes developing our culture of innovation, training and development, employer branding and recruitment. I’m lucky to work with a team who understand the value of doing business in a meaningful way, that it’s not all about number-crunching and that the people you work with (your team and clients) are more important.  We have an incredibly talented bunch in-house, have won awards for our creativity and were named as one of the most ‘superfused’ agencies in the area by the Brighton Fuse report.  From websites to mobile and print it is great to be amongst talented people who are passionate about hand-crafting everything in-house.

I completed an MSc in Personnel and Development specialising in how to enhance innovation and creativity in a digital/tech context. I’m fascinated by what makes people tick and getting results by playing to peoples’ strengths and developing them along the way. HR shouldn’t be perceived as a box-ticking drain on an organisation’s bottom line. HR professionals have the skills and data to be able to drive business success. Saying that, justifying the value of HR can be a tough sell but once people get it, it’s plain-sailing from there. I’m in this game because I want to help create an environment where our people can develop and be happy, innovation and creativity can flourish and we can reward the team for making great stuff happen.

Over the course of the next year I’m going to be designing and implementing programmes to enhance our innovation capability, share knowledge across the team, hack the recruitment process and focus on making our people the happiest they can be here.

Say hi and share your experiences with Holly on LinkedIn or Twitter.