HR Talks – An interview with Hillary Collins

What does it take to lead HR when the people agenda doesn’t stop at 5pm and can mean anything from a 3am issue on the factory floor to navigating an international divestment?

For Hillary Collins, it’s been the reality of a career spanning manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, FMCG and complex international organisations. Most recently People & Culture Director and Country Board member at PHX Ireland, Hillary brings extensive experience leading People strategy through transformation, M&A, organisational change and complex operational environments, both in Ireland and internationally. As she looks towards the next chapter of her career, we caught up with Hillary to explore the experiences that have shaped her as a leader, what businesses need from their senior People leaders today and what she is looking for in her next challenge.

You’ve built your career across very different environments, from manufacturing and logistics to healthcare and international organisations. What have those experiences taught you about what good HR leadership really looks like?

For me, good HR leadership starts with understanding the business you are in, not simply the HR agenda. Business strategy should define your focus for the People strategy. I’ve worked across manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, retail and international markets and, while those environments can look very different, the common thread is that people decisions and business decisions are rarely separate. If a distribution centre is struggling at 3am, an acquisition is unsettling employees or a leadership team needs to reshape an organisation, HR needs to understand the operational and commercial reality as well as the people impact.

I’ve also learned that credibility comes from being willing to operate in the messy middle. You need to be able to talk strategy at Board level and then get close enough to the operation to understand what is really happening. In operational businesses, that means understanding shifts, productivity, absence, labour availability, skills and safety, but also what the operation is trying to deliver, for whom and at what cost. You don’t need to run the warehouse, but you absolutely need to understand how it makes or loses money.

The best HR leaders aren’t standing at the side advising the business. They are part of the business, helping it make better decisions through the lens of people, performance and culture.

You’ve led people through acquisitions, integrations, divestments and significant organisational change. What have those experiences taught you about leading people through uncertainty?

There have been several and as I work in HR many I can’t cite, but the periods that stay with me most are those where the commercial decision is clear while the human impact is anything but simple. I’ve learned that people can cope with an enormous amount of change when they understand what is happening, believe they are being treated fairly and, importantly, trust the people leading them. One of the biggest lessons for me has been around visible leadership. During difficult change, there can be a temptation to over-engineer communication, hide behind carefully crafted messaging or wait until every answer is available. People generally prefer an honest answer, including “we don’t know that yet”, to silence.

Sometimes the harder part for HR is getting those in charge to stand up, look colleagues in the eye and own the state of play. You also have to be prepared to ask leaders to leave personal friendships, history and individual bias at the door and lead fairly through what may be an incredibly difficult process. Empathy and commerciality are never opposites. You can make a tough business decision and still execute it with humanity, clarity and respect. For me, successful transformation isn’t simply whether the new structure goes live on the right date or whether the synergy number is achieved. The real test is what you leave behind: can the organisation move forward with trust, capability and enough energy left to succeed?

Working internationally reinforced many of these lessons. You cannot export your own assumptions and call it leadership. Different cultures have different expectations around hierarchy, communication, conflict and decision-making. I learned to listen before prescribing. You can be consistent about the principles, outcomes and standards you expect while still leaving room for local context. Consistency doesn’t mean identical. People don’t expect leaders to have every answer, but they do expect them to show up. They may not remember every detail of the change, but they will remember how they were led through it.

Having operated at senior leadership and Board level, what do you think separates an HR leader who is respected by the business from one who is genuinely influential at the top table?

I think respect gets you a seat at the table. Influence is when what you say actually changes what happens around it. At Board level, I’m a business leader first. My particular expertise happens to be people, organisation and culture, but I need to understand the P&L, the customer, what’s happening operationally, where we’re making or losing money and what choices the business is trying to make. I’ve always laughed a little when someone starts explaining the financials to me very slowly because I’m “HR”, or you hear that old chestnut that HR people aren’t numerical. I have two Masters where finance was a significant component and have managed large budgets, complex programmes and business cases throughout my career.

But actually, that’s not the point. You shouldn’t have to prove you can do numbers; you should be able to talk about the business. Real influence also takes courage. You can’t always be the agreeable person in the room. Sometimes you have to say, “I completely understand why we want to do this, but have we thought about what happens if we do?” Equally, influence isn’t about constantly saying no. It’s having the judgement to know when to challenge, when to support and when to make the decision.

And then you have to deliver. You can be brilliant around a Board table, but if the organisation doesn’t see execution afterwards, your influence disappears pretty quickly.

HR has changed enormously during your career, and now there’s huge focus on AI, technology, productivity and the future of work. What do you think will genuinely change the HR function over the next five years and what do you think is simply hype?

I think AI will genuinely change the function, but perhaps not in the way some of the more dramatic predictions suggest. A significant amount of administrative, analytical and first-draft work can already be accelerated. That should create an opportunity for HR professionals to spend less time producing things and more time thinking, interpreting and influencing. But technology does not automatically create a better HR function. If the underlying process is poor, digitising it can simply give you a faster poor process that still doesn’t work.

The bigger shift, in my view, will be expectations. Businesses will increasingly expect People functions to use data well, understand productivity, redesign work and organisations and demonstrate commercial impact.What I think is hype is the idea that technology removes the need for human leadership. If anything, as organisations become more automated, distinctly human capabilities such as judgement, empathy, courage, influence, trust and the ability to navigate ambiguity become more valuable. AI will change what we do. I don’t believe it removes the need for great People leadership; it raises the bar.

Having reached senior People leadership level yourself, what do you think aspiring HR Directors and CPOs need to start doing earlier in their careers to become genuinely effective leaders?

Get out of HR as often as you can, figuratively and sometimes literally. Spend time with customers. Understand how the company makes money. Sit with Finance. Go into the operation. Learn why a particular margin matters, what frustrates a sales leader, what happens when a customer delivery is missed and what keeps the CEO awake at night. I would also encourage people to take assignments that feel slightly uncomfortable. Transformation, employee relations, integration, restructuring and international work taught me far more than staying permanently within areas where I already felt expert.

At senior level, people aren’t looking for you to recite best practice. They want judgement. What do you think we should do, why, what are the risks and what outcome are we trying to create?And finally, don’t lose your humanity or sense of self on the way up. Seniority should broaden your perspective, not increase your distance from people.

Looking back across your career, what is one piece of advice you would give to the HR professional you were 20 years ago?

I would probably tell her: trust yourself earlier. Earlier in my career, I sometimes assumed that the most senior or most confident voice in the room must know something I didn’t. Experience teaches you that nobody has all the answers. Listen and learn, absolutely, but don’t automatically assume that someone else’s certainty makes your instinct less valid.

I would also tell her to set boundaries earlier. You can’t save everyone, you can’t fix everything and, actually, that isn’t your job. Particularly in HR, there can be a tendency to carry other people’s problems home with you or feel personally responsible for finding the solution to everything. You have to learn to care deeply without carrying everything. And enjoy it. HR can be crazy. I think most of us who’ve been doing it long enough could write a book!

But you will also find yourself in moments where you have the opportunity to genuinely change the course of someone’s life. You might give somebody their first real opportunity, see potential in them before they see it themselves, support someone through an incredibly difficult period or simply make sure they are treated with dignity when it matters most. They may remember what you did for the rest of their life, even if you eventually forget the detail yourself. What an honour that is.

So I wouldn’t tell my younger self to work harder or achieve more. I’d tell her: trust yourself, protect your energy, stay kind and enjoy the privilege of the work.

And as you look towards the next chapter of your career, what are you looking for and what would make you excited to get out of bed on a Monday morning?

I am looking for meaningful complexity. I still love transformation: building something, reshaping an organisation, integrating businesses, developing leadership capability and helping a company move from one stage of its evolution to another. I enjoy environments where there is a genuine business challenge to solve rather than simply an HR agenda to administer. I want to work with leaders who value constructive challenge and genuinely see people and culture as part of business performance. I also want enough scope to make a difference, to build, influence and leave something stronger behind.

At this stage of my career, I know more clearly what gives me energy. It is good people, an ambitious business, interesting problems and the freedom to use experience and judgement rather than simply follow a playbook. What would get me out of bed on a Monday morning? Knowing there is something worth building, people I respect to build it with and that the work we are doing will make a tangible difference to both the business and the people in it. Let’s have some fun while we’re doing it.

A huge thank you to Hillary for taking part in our HR Talks series. For more interviews and HR insights take a look here.