Helen Hartley – the Professional
Helen Hartley has a strong belief in creating frameworks for success. Her consulting skills facilitate pragmatic and practical possibilities that consider the operating environment of the business, including the industrial context. The world of work has become very complex and Helen’s extensive work experience enables her to provide creative solutions to complex HR issues.
To that extent, she has been a confidant, partner and coach to CEOs, Managing Directors and Senior Managers enabling them to develop professionally and personally which in turn allows them to responsibly drive the results required in a rigorous business enterprise.
Helen understands that making personal and professional change takes commitment. With a belief that you can only champion growth in others to the extent to which you are prepared to grow yourself, she is a lifelong learner who has amassed an impressive level of knowledge, skill and qualifications. You see, Helen started her working life as a hairdresser, owned two salons, and studied at university while working full time in a job that had a very heavy domestic travel load while raising two daughters. At the time, she was the first married woman (with children) appointed to a senior management role and transferred halfway across the country.
Helen has a strong senior generalist HR background, including Strategic Planning, Organisational Development, Managing Performance, Learning and Development, Online-Learning, Reward and Recognition, Change Management, and Employee and Industrial Relations.
Her work draws on her extensive domestic and international HR experience. She has worked for such notable companies as Schwarzkopf, Levi Strauss, and Duty-Free Stores owned by Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH Group). Her travels have taken her to the United States, New Zealand, Germany, and India and Asia where she has facilitated or co-facilitated at both the strategic and tactical levels.
Helen partners with other suitably qualified and experienced HR professionals within her HR network to achieve your results.
You will find Helen and her associate’s approach refreshing. It’s about what can be done!
Helen Hartley
Helen Hartley- the Person
On a more personal note, Helen has quite an artistic streak. She loves music and was classically trained on the piano as a child. Her love of music also extends to theatre, ballet and art. A budding artist, Helen thinks it is one big problem-solving activity which can be frustrating and illuminating, and when she gets right into it, she says it’s like meditation. You just go into the art, live in the moment, work it through and not be disturbed by the outer world or the complexity of the piece you are working on.
She has been a student of life and alternative ‘things’ since her early twenties and studied concepts that are only now making their way into the mainstream. She learnt quite young that circumstances that occur in life can either leave you as a victim or a survivor. She was never one to be beaten, and thanks to her father, it never occurred to her that she couldn’t do or achieve anything she wanted.
Helen’s next great love is travel. Her parents would take her as a child to watch the planes take off and land. She would announce that she would be on those planes one day, travelling wherever. Well, she did. In the earlier years, she decided that getting a job where travel was part of the deal was very attractive because she could not afford to travel. She loved doing the global thing and still loves the exhilaration of the take-off and landing as much as when she was that very young girl at the end of the runway.
She learnt that life sometimes does not go as planned. In 2009 she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer, a club you never want to belong to! Along with a great medical team and the love and support of her husband, parents and friends, she’s still here! When confronted with her own mortality, she says, you become tougher in some things and, in others, softer. There is no bargaining with the universe, so you just get on with it! Learning about acceptance, detachment, and not sweating the small stuff has been a profound and ongoing process.
Life is to be lived. We all have a story, and Helen finds people’s stories fascinating. There is always something behind the smile, frown or other facial expressions. More can be said about people’s actions. Look closely, and you will see and learn a great deal.
