A company on the move

Our cover story this month is by Terry Mcbride 

I visited STAR Industries and lunched with Ben Russell, recently appointed as CEO after a successful time as boss at 4phones Telecommunications. Ben looked comfortable in his new office, and most of the time there was a stream of people coming in and out to "keep Ben in the loop." Life at STAR seems relaxed, but you get the impression that they know their business. 

'It's an exciting time for STAR, and a great time to be CEO of a successful, steadily growing organisation,' began Ben. 'I'm pretty happy about our performance - our sales are up, margins are good and costs are being contained . We've had to make a few changes over the past few years - new machinery, new systems, and changes in jobs. In most cases, the changes have been a reflection of growth. We've responded to pressure by doing something about it, although not always quite as quickly as we could have done.' 

I asked about the HR department's role in recent moves. 

'Our plans to expand included a new branch interstate, and Louise O'Brien, our HR manager at the time, could see that we needed local expertise and so she engaged consultants to handle the recruitment for us. It was a good call - they had local knowledge and got good people. Still, it's a completely new set of people and it's taken a little longer to get this up and running than we'd planned.' 

At this point in came Susan Wu, a kind of human dynamo with that "Don't mess with me" look about her. Susan plonked a wad of paper on Ben's desk and announced, 'Read this, it's good news.' 

After some idle chat, I gathered that Susan is the Marketing boss at STAR, and Ben confirmed my suspicions, 'Don't worry she's got me scared too,' he said, only half joking. It seemed the wad of paper is market research to back a plan to enter overseas markets. That's a huge move for any organisation, let alone one of STAR's size, so I asked Ben what HR was doing to get things moving? 

'First, we'll be recruiting for new positions in our Manufacturing and Marketing areas. Later - not sure when - we'll need a Business Development Manager, probably on the ground in Singapore. Whoever that is will also need back-up in terms of a project team - and they'll need to be pretty cluey, too. I wouldn't mind a shake-up of the sales team before that, you know, to find out more about people's strengths. I'm not looking forward to Phil's reaction when I start suggesting moving people around. He seems to have his hands full as it is. Mind you, they are all good people, but with big egos - I guess they are sales people after all!' 

Phil Ayoub it turned out, is the GM of Sales. Ben assures me he's a kinder, gentler version of Susan Wu. 

I took the conversation back to costs. 'Yes . like most organisations, our wages bill is enormous, but we work hard at containing that. We make sure that the people at the sales end of the business get commissions on top of their regular pay, but one thing I'll be looking at carefully with my new HR manager at some stage is our broader remunerations practice. But I'm pretty sure we could pay more in a lot more areas if we managed our other costs better.' 

And that was it - my chance to pop the question. Is there a shake-up coming? Are you planning to outsource all your HR services? 'Absolutely not,' Ben replied without hesitating. 'It's about keeping on with what we do already, very well - producing top quality products at a reasonable price, but we'll all need to operate more like business units accountable to our customers if we're to survive, and it'll be up to my new GM of Human Resources to make some decisions about what we can handle in-house and what we need to go outside for.'  

It seems STAR has managed well in the past by aggressive marketing, offering good products and a tough approach to controlling costs. But now it's a case not of a new recipe, but more a 'nouvelle cuisine' version. Ben's vision for STAR's HR function is to operate as a cost-effective business unit, delivering best practice HR services, and establishing supplier-client relationships with other business units at STAR.