My uncle was a senior trade union official at Bowaters on Merseyside and when I was 14 he suggested to me that I talk to the company’s HR director about what I wanted to do after leaving school. I hadn’t thought about a career in HR, but in talking to him I became interested in his job and decided that was the path I wanted to follow. He encouraged me to complete a social science degree and then join a large organisation to get a thorough grounding in all aspects of HR, and that’s exactly what I did at British Steel. One of my main achievements was at Pitney Bowes when we had to absorb 500 new staff into our mailroom management services division. The people were mainly from City firms and were not very pleased that an American outsourcing company would become their future employer.