HR in high-growth businesses | Boardroom Chat Ep. 3 (Leighton Bower & Katie Newell)

This episode discusses HR’s role in high-growth businesses across recruitment, development, and retention, focusing on common pitfalls such as hiring only for today rather than future-proofing roles and team skill needs. The conversation highlights underutilised soft skills like leadership, people management, client-facing ability, and values alignment, noting these can be harder to train than technical skills. For development, it emphasises mentorship and sponsorship over traditional classroom training, explaining sponsorship as senior leaders using networks to remove roadblocks and create safe exposure opportunities. On retention, it covers the importance of market-aligned pay alongside recognition, purpose, proactive career conversations, and equipping line managers to support growth. It also addresses succession and risk management when employees leave, encouraging businesses to celebrate exits, and stresses clear communication of vision by translating business goals into what roles and teams must deliver. 00:00 HR in High Growth 00:38 Future Proof Hiring 01:38 Beyond Technical Skills 03:47 Developing Through Mentorship 05:39 Mentorship vs Sponsorship 08:41 Retention Beyond Pay 10:53 Career Conversations Tools 13:31 Leadership Measures and Risk 16:37 Communicating Vision Clearly 18:25 Making Roles Make Sense 19:32 Closing ThoughtsHR in High-Growth Businesses: Future-Proof Hiring, Mentorship, Retention, and Communication #HRStrategy #TalentRetention #LeadershipDevelopment