"It does feel a bit strange that my first major action as director of people was to give myself a four-year pay freeze and suspend my bonus indefinitely,” laughs Lucy Adams. Clearly she didn’t move to the BBC just for the cash.
Thanks to the publication last year of Adams’ salary, it’s now a matter of public record that she earns more than the prime minister. Even so, she actually took a pay cut from her previous job at the law firm Eversheds when she joined the BBC in June, arguably at the start of one of the most difficult periods in the broadcaster’s almost 90-year history.

“I have always loved the BBC. I grew up with it,” she says, describing how her father, an actor and writer, and mother, a secretary in the legal department, met while working at the corporation. “To be given an opportunity to be here, for however long, is just an immense honour. Yes, it’s a very difficult period, but there have been lots of difficult periods in the BBC’s life. What matters to me is to work in an environment where I’m intellectually stimulated, where I work with people who challenge and support me, and to do something that really matters.”

Back in the autumn it was announced that the BBC would cut its senior management wage bill by 25 per cent by 2012 as it sought to make efficiency savings. These include freezing pay and suspending bonuses for senior staff, as well as cutting 115 posts. Adams is confident that, as the BBC has a yearly churn rate among this group of 10 per cent, most of the job cuts can be achieved through a combination of natural wastage and replacing roles at lower grades. But she does admit that, at 643, the number of senior managers is inflated compared with other organisations.

“I would typically expect to see between 1 and 2 per cent and we’ve got about 2.5 per cent. That suggests to me that this is something that is worth looking at,” she says, although she adds that the level of compliance together with media and political interest in the corporation does create additional pressure for its executives.

The people department itself “won’t be immune” from the cuts and there will also be scope to cut leadership roles as a number of major projects are due to be completed over the next three years. These include the relocation of five BBC departments to Salford, the transfer of all content from tapes to digital (“the digital media initiative”) and the creation of the world’s largest news centre at Broadcasting House in central London.

Pay at the Beeb has been big news ever since Adams joined. The salaries of the highest-paid stars, such as Jonathan Ross (who is leaving in July) and Graham Norton, have continued to attract attention for all the wrong reasons – even after many of those earning over £100,000 accepted plans for a 25 per cent pay cut, rising to 40 per cent for higher sums.

This isn’t Adams’ remit, however – the pay packets of celebrities are the responsibility of the head of business and commercial affairs. But the reward packages of off-air talent, for which she does take charge, have come up for an equal amount of public scrutiny.

When the salaries and expense claims of the BBC’s top 50 executives were first published in the summer it led to a barrage of negative press as commentators questioned the use of taxpayers’ money. Then, under mounting pressure to become more transparent and open, the BBC agreed to publish the salaries and expenses of the top 107 earners and decisions-makers (including all members of the people board) on a quarterly basis from the autumn. November therefore saw the publication of Adams’ salary of £320,000. Public criticism this time centred around the fact that at least 46 BBC executives earned more than the prime minister, including Adams, who was ranked the seventh highest paid executive board member.

The BBC has gone further than any other organisation in its pay transparency, says Adams – and rightly so. She’s comfortable about having her salary and expenses published and says that, while some senior managers found it hard to have that level of detail disclosed, everyone understood the need for a public service organisation to be open.

Whether or not the public disapproval over remuneration packages is fair, these managers could, says Adams, earn more elsewhere - the Beeb currently pays between 20 and 50 per cent less than the private sector and this will be stretched to 80 per cent for the most senior positions over the next three years.

Like Adams, however, many people are attracted to the corporation for reasons other than money – “a more stimulating environment and training opportunities that are second to none” for instance – so it is unlikely the pool of talent will dry up any time soon.

Pay and job cuts are not the only issues that have been keeping Adams busy – only a few months into the job she had to deal with the fallout from the planned relocation of five BBC departments, including children’s programming, Five Live and sport, from London to the corporation’s new Media City development in Salford Quays, Manchester, in 2011.

The hub will house 2,400 employees, including 428 people who have chosen to relocate from London. When it emerged that uptake was greater than expected, the BBC was accused of “bribing” its staff to move from the capital because it allowed them to retain their London-weighted pay on top of generous relocation packages. Adams strongly denies such accusations, saying it would have been unfair to expect people take a pay cut at the same time as having to uproot their families and move to an area where there were few other career opportunities in the media. It will also, she says, ensure the BBC has the appropriate skill levels in place from the outset.

There will be a two-tier system of pay in Manchester as new recruits will be on lower rates of pay but, says Adams, the “real challenge” will be blending cultures from different and new parts of the organisation to generate “something that is new, fresh and dynamic”.

“We’re trying to create something in Salford that is quite magical in terms of the vision for the BBC – a sense of it stopping being London-centric and really reflecting the audiences in a much more diverse way,” she adds.

While the furore over Manchester salaries may have died down, the BBC could easily find itself in the spotlight once again as compulsory redundancies among the 1,000 London-based staff who have chosen not to relocate have not been discounted. And the immediate future also looks turbulent, with the results of a strategic review of the BBC’s portfolio (online, radio, TV and commercial) due to be published in the spring.

Adams is unable to divulge any specific details but says the board is considering “areas for improved efficiency” and that “the likelihood is we will be changing our offering in some way”. “We’re looking at whether we should be continuing to provide everything as we do today or if it needs to change,” she adds.

With a general election most likely to be held in May, political changes may also be on the cards. Public spending will continue to be squeezed, whichever party wins, while the Conservatives have already pledged to cut the licence fee and stop some of the BBC’s output. A recent review of Tory media policy, led by former BBC director-general Greg Dyke, went even further, suggesting scrapping the licence fee altogether in favour of a general tax or government grant. Adams, however, does not think that model is feasible. “When you look at recent data the majority of the British public are in favour of the licence fee and believe it offers value for money,” she says. “The licence fee is something that will be examined critically but when you look at the alternative mechanisms and the level of fondness the British public have for the BBC, I don’t think it will be a week-one agenda item for the Tories if they were to get in.”

If the challenges of being head of HR at the BBC were not enough, the timing of the call that Adams received from headhunters urging her to go for the role, previously occupied by Stephen Kelly, who has now moved to the technology firm Logica, could not have been worse.

She was only a year into an HR director role at law firm Eversheds that she “loved”, but her emotional connection to the BBC prevailed. “There were four of us in a very tight senior group and it was a much broader role, including facilities, communications and business planning, as well as HR,” she says. “It was awful timing. We were working really well and I had to say I’d got a call from the BBC. They were very disappointed but understood.”

Her time at Eversheds may have been brief but working with lawyers proved to be good preparation for the BBC. “You are working with some extremely intelligent and capable professional people but you are also trying to run an organisation, which is not necessarily the first thing they want to do,” she says. “Their inclination is to do the creative task, just like a lawyer’s first inclination is to go to see the client. Managing the team and budget are a kind of tension for them.”

Before joining the law firm, Adams spent nine years in various HR roles at business services provider Serco. Overseeing 50,000 staff carrying out public service work in the commercial sector was further good training for the BBC, but it was also at Serco that Adams first learnt what she now calls one of her greatest strengths – “not being an HR person”. On walking into her first meeting as a member of the global management board her boss said: “Right Lucy, I want you to comment on finance, strategy, risk, and health and safety but don’t comment on people issues at this meeting. You are not the nice lady from personnel; you are a member of this board.”

It was brilliant advice, says Adams. “I’m first and foremost a business person. I’m a leader of an organisation who is responsible for HR, and coming at it from that angle is very helpful,” she says. “One of my real bugbears about HR people is when they say, ‘Why am I not taken seriously or influencing well enough at board level?’ It’s because they’re just not broad enough.”

Adams makes no secret of the fact that she never planned to pursue a career in HR. As her CV reveals, she doesn’t have a traditional HR background and has only ever had very senior HR roles. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that she adds that she prefers to network with CEOs and other senior leaders rather than those in HR, whom she feels she has enough exposure to on a day-to-day basis.

There are two other attributes that Adams believes have helped her to succeed. The first is that she doesn’t have “any airs or graces”. “I deal with people exactly the same, whether they are the chairman or someone who is cleaning the office. That has helped me because it means you are authentic and it’s easier to do business that way,” she says. And the second? “I’m also really positive – my team get exhausted!”

This last trait has proved to be particularly useful when working for an organisation that has to deal with negative press on a continuous basis. “The media aren’t terribly in favour of the BBC, even though the public are, so you could really let that get you down,” she says. “But I have a great team of people that I work with and I fundamentally believe in what I’m doing here, and in what the BBC stands for. It’s the most amazing organisation and I have a huge amount of pride in it.”


The CV
Name: Lucy Adams
Education: BA in History and English, University of Brighton
Career: June 2009 to present: Director of people, BBC; 2008-09: HR director, Eversheds; 2004-2008: Group HR director, Serco; 2002-2004: HR and change director, Serco Rail; 1999-2001: Change manager, Serco Rail; 1998-1999: Director of business development, Pannell Kerr Forster; 1993-1998: Development manager, then head of strategy and development, North Yorkshire Training and Enterprise Council; 1990-1992: Lecturer, Harrogate College of Art and Technology; 1988-1990: Career break; birth of daughter; 1987-1988: Recruitment consultant, Xpert Recruitment
Personal information/interests: Married with one daughter. Enjoys salsa and ballroom dancing.