Ian Mael
I have been working in the recruitment industry for many years, initially in the public sector before making the move into the private sector. During my career, I have had the opportunity to recruit interim professionals and permanent employees in the UK and internationally across all levels of experience. I have been fortunate enough to partner with some of the biggest companies in the world along with high potential start-up organisations.
I hugely enjoy engaging with HR Professionals and business leaders on a daily basis, and take pride in helping my executive community to address short and long term business challenges and add tangible value in their work.
Outside the office, my two big passions are family and sport. My weekends are usually focused on keeping my son entertained, he has just started football training and loves going swimming. There aren’t too many sports I don’t enjoy playing and watching, whilst football is always at top of the list. I am regular a gym-goer; I swim 6-7 times per week and attend fitness classes when there is time. Lastly, anybody who knows me will testify that I love my coffee!
Every CHRO has sat through this cycle: a VP of HR role opens up, the job description gets built collaboratively, and somewhere between the first stakeholder meeting and final sign-off, the brief quietly turns into a wish list. Transformation experience. Commercial credibility. M&A exposure. Deep reward knowledge. International scope. A future CHRO in waiting.
Searches stall when a hiring manager won't give timely feedback or goes dark for weeks. Every delay risks losing exactly the kind of passive, in-demand candidate the whole search was built around reaching.
Being unemployed is a status. It is not an identity.
People talk. They remember leaders they enjoyed working with. They remember people who handled difficult situations well. They remember people who were commercially minded, honest, pragmatic and courageous. They also remember people who weren't.
For the modern Chief Human Resources Officer, “total rewards” is no longer just a hiring and retention tool. It is in fact one of the largest corporate liabilities and strategic levers on the balance sheet.
Without deliberate governance, "fluid" can easily become "unclear," reintroducing the same friction the original model struggled with, just in a new form.
Talent management, done well, is one of the highest-leverage functions in HR: it determines who leads your organization five and potentially ten years from now.
Some of the wisest people I know believe that enduring relationships require give and take to enable trust to be built and loyalty to be formed.
Even after all these years, I’m still surprised at job seekers who don’t know the fine details of their current employment packages.
Staff are using AI tools to create presentations, press releases, plus automate tasks and communications. But is there a value for AI in the boardroom?