{"id":215849,"date":"2022-01-12T11:45:15","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T11:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/letstalktalent.co.uk\/?post_type=podcasts&#038;p=215849"},"modified":"2022-01-12T11:48:24","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T11:48:24","slug":"how-to-manage-your-squiggly-hr-career-an-example-with-mel-francis","status":"publish","type":"podcasts","link":"https:\/\/letstalktalent.co.uk\/podcasts\/how-to-manage-your-squiggly-hr-career-an-example-with-mel-francis\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 10: How to manage your squiggly HR career: an example with Mel Francis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Let\u2019s Talk Talent\u2019s Podcast Episode 10. How to manage your squiggly HR career<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This month Jo talks to Mel Francis about her squiggly HR career. It&#8217;s an incredibly interesting journey, and I think should resonate and inspire many of you about how we can put the human back into human resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dive in and find out more about Mel&#8217;s journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How to manage your squiggly HR career: An example with Mel Francis\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"600\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=rnfzq-11789ee-pb&amp;from=pb6admin&amp;square=1&amp;share=1&amp;download=1&amp;rtl=0&amp;fonts=Arial&amp;skin=1&amp;font-color=auto&amp;btn-skin=7&amp;size=600\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/how-to-manage-your-squiggly-hr-career-an-example-with\/id1436298840?i=1000547659581\">Listen on Apple<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/0YoslfcEqlVccwRr0e5501?si=f18026f7d07f4b8d\">Listen on Spotify<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transcript of this podcast episode:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jo Taylor&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hi, and welcome to the Let&#8217;s Talk Talent podcast. We&#8217;re going to be sharing \u2013 over a series of episodes \u2013 tips and techniques, bringing our friends and family to share their stories, their experience of working life today. Because together we can create simply irresistible organisations. Happy listening!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jo Taylor&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And welcome to Episode 10 of the Let&#8217;s Talk Talent podcast. I&#8217;m really excited to be introducing Mel Francis today. She is a senior HR professional, and neurodiversity champion. And like me, she shares a passion in all things HR, but ultimately how we unlock the potential in people, teams and organisations. So we&#8217;re in for a wild ride. And I&#8217;m really excited to be talking to her. So welcome Mel!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mel Francis&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hi, Jo thank you so much for having me. It&#8217;s lovely to be with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jo Taylor&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Awesome. This podcast is all about managing your HR career. And you and I have had a quite eclectic, some would say squiggly, career, haven&#8217;t we? To get to where we are now. And it&#8217;d be great if you&#8217;d share your HR story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mel Francis&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah \u2013&nbsp;I think people would describe my career as being squiggly Jo, but it&#8217;s weird isn&#8217;t it? Because until you start to talk to others, you don&#8217;t realise quite how squiggly your career has been. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So when I go back to where I started, I started out working for a pensions company as a pensions administrator in what today would have been called an apprenticeship. So I was working in a very administrative office. We had, I think, one computer somewhere in the office that someone used some time. And we wrote all our letters and sent it off to the typists to type up and send back out to us to send to the policyholders about their pensions. And we did all the calculations manually as well, on how much people were going to be receiving for their pension. So it&#8217;s like a world away from today&#8217;s workplace. But while I was there, I had the opportunity to study for a BTEC in business and finance. And that&#8217;s really where my first interaction with HR came about, because the lesson \u2013 which was &#8220;personnel&#8221; back in those days \u2013 was something that just really got me buzzing. And I was so interested in what we were learning that I decided that&#8217;s where I wanted my career to go. And at that organisation you were able to put in for an internal transfer to go to the personnel team. But quite frankly, no one was ever going to leave, it was a really small team, and so it was at that stage that I decided that if I was going to make this happen, I had to do it myself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I was living at home, I sold my car, which I loved at that point, and took myself off to Manchester Metropolitan University to study for a higher National Diploma, an HND in business and personnel. I can&#8217;t say that that was you know, the the unique experience that everyone dreams of, I think taking a girl out of a village and sticking her in a big city was the big deal for me. And I really struggled to make that transition. I didn&#8217;t feel particularly safe in the big city. But I knew that I wanted this qualification: kept at it for a year, came home, finished it in my own environment on a part-time basis and got the qualification that I was dreaming of. So that was really the first stage in that squiggly path, as it were, which then opened doors for me into my HR career, which have just continued. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So my first HR role was in the NHS on a maternity cover, which I&#8217;m really glad I did. I have massive respect for anybody that works in the NHS, and navigates that level of complexity. But it was a great start to my career. And really from there. I went to work as an HR manager for a US-owned organisation, which was a big leap, actually, you know. Created a staff handbook, implemented policies, renegotiated on the benefits and then was sitting there responsible for HR for a relatively small workforce who weren&#8217;t going anywhere. So it became a bit less interesting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I decided to make a move to my first telecoms organisation which was called Energis, where I had my first business partner role, which gave a really good oversight of running a business and understanding the different elements within that business and the importance of the front end of the business actually. And how the people part of that was just as critical as the finance part. And I remember there it was where a director I&#8217;m still in touch with today, who I still hold in great esteem, said to his whole team: &#8220;There are two people in this team that you need to be really close with. One is your finance partner, and the other one is your HR partner&#8221;. And that has always stayed with me I think. People and money are the two fundamental things that make an organisation work, and having the right people in the right place at the right time, according to the organisation requirements has always stayed with me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that was a great organisation to be part of, in learning, it was also a great organisation to be part of professionally, because it came very close to going out of business very quickly. And so that was my first interaction with redundancy procedures, with getting people ready, and equipped to have those conversations, but also supporting a workforce. And I think the other thing that I really learned there was, as an HR professional, of course you have these difficult tasks that you&#8217;ve got to manage, and it really is managing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mel Francis&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some managers have had no experience of it, some are nervous of it. And so that true partnering with the business to enable those processes is really critical. But at the point at which you deliver that message to those individuals, you become their partner. You know, you have to help them to navigate this process and to support them, which means that you&#8217;ve got to be there to answer their questions. You&#8217;ve got to help them to deal with the emotions and have the support mechanisms in place for those types of things. Because it&#8217;s a massive deal for people going through those changes. Again, that has never left me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I may be an HR professional, and sometimes that strategic part can override the personal part, but I never forget what my role is. It has &#8216;human&#8217; at the absolute core of it. From Energis, I went to another telecoms company, which was Vodafone, which was a huge HR team, and another huge opportunity for me to continue to grow my career. And it was almost a squiggly career within one organisation going from being a partner to taking more specialisms. And I was asked to create the Employee Relations team at Vodafone, which was another baptism of fire, but one that, you know, I would never change. After two years of being within Employee Relations, I took the opportunity to jump across to Employee Recognition, which was a much nicer place to be. And from there, I went on to maternity leave, which also gave me the opportunity to think about where I was, and what I wanted. The fact that me and my gorgeous son were disconnected by the A34 made me think that actually now&#8217;s the time to rethink. Also coupled with the fact that Vodafone weren&#8217;t really sure what to do with me when I went back meant that it just presented the beautiful opportunity to take some voluntary redundancy. And I found a job closer to home in Oxford, and I joined Oxford University Press. My role was supporting staff in 35 different countries. And we had different entities in those countries as well. So again, another string to my bow as it were in dealing with international employment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was approached about a role at Sa\u00efd Business School, that is Oxford University&#8217;s business school. And so I went to join that team, which was chaotic, I think it&#8217;s fair to say. A disorganised team of three brilliant people running to whoever was literally shouting loudest at them, and really spent my time \u2013 and I was there for eight years \u2013&nbsp;spent my time creating a professional HR function, which was much more aligned to the business, had much more clarity over roles of the HR team, and enabled the progression of those within the HR team too. But when it came to the end of 2019, I was just feeling really tired with the repetitive nature of the role and had my fifth COO join who was \u2013 they were all brilliant COOs \u2013 but I just felt like &#8220;here we go again&#8221;, and felt like it was time for a change, and skipped off into the sunset at the end of 2019 to a company who run summer schools for kids, the majority of which are private school kids, and the majority of which were Chinese private school kids. And you can see where this is going. They were hit really early with the impacts of COVID, in that parents stopped booking their kids onto summer school because the impact was becoming really evident, really quickly, in that space. So I then found myself on the other side of the table, which was having a conversation where I was being told \u2013 I was literally told \u2013 &#8220;we have to part ways&#8221; which was a really interesting chat to have from an HR professional perspective. So you can imagine the the response in that, but there I was: found myself out of work in March at the beginning of the pandemic, and I went into panic mode, you know. I&#8217;m a single mum, I have a mortgage to pay, and I was really lucky in that I managed to secure some work as a consultant. And I became a furlough expert, which obviously at that time, none of us really knew what furlough was. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So when Rishi, our friend Rishi Sunak, was talking on, and it was generally on a Friday night, which then sorted my weekend right out about furlough, I was poring over his words, because notes were not published straight after what he&#8217;d said, and going through and looking at what the difference was for us in terms of furlough, and then creating documentation, creating frequently asked questions, answering questions via the consultants to their SME clients. So actually, that period, although that was never going to pay all the bills etc, got me through and gave me another opportunity to look at probably one of the biggest developments in HR over the course of my career. So I&#8217;m really pleased that I was able to do that. And then I secured a maternity cover role at an organisation called JISC, who are an edtech organisation supporting education establishments, and I was there for a year, well, 15 months actually, and we did some great projects during the course of that time. And we made some real difference in that space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mel Francis&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And now I&#8217;m working at London Business School where I am a strategic people partner, partnering with some brilliant minds at LBS and making a difference there. So professionally, if you look at my CV, that&#8217;s my profession. That&#8217;s just one element. And those of you that know me and have worked with me, know that I always talk about having one head. And us taking that wherever we go. I think for me, that&#8217;s also been really, really important to pick out some real key elements of my career, of my personal life at the same time as running that career. Because when you just look at that career that might sound all jazzy and funky, but, you know, there are times and points in in my career where that one head thing is really important. So just after I started the role at the American organisation, literally in my second week, I developed a headache, which was so painful it meant I couldn&#8217;t go in. I was then still off \u2013&nbsp;the tablets from the doctor&#8217;s didn&#8217;t work \u2013 so I was admitted to hospital, where to cut a very long story short, I was diagnosed with having two brain abscesses. I was transferred to a specialist hospital in Oxford, where they attempted to aspirate the abscess to see what was causing them, which actually resulted in that abscess being ruptured. So then I have a brain full of abscess pus, which meant that I had to go through a total of nine brain operations \u2013&nbsp;neurosurgical procedures. I was in hospital for two and a half months, I was unconscious for just over six weeks of that. My family were called in on two occasions because they didn&#8217;t think I was going to survive through the night. And when I was discharged, I had to learn to walk again, because I was lying down for so long that my body had just forgotten how to do all of the things that it naturally does. Throughout that period, my employer who as I said, I was only there for a week and a half, had continued to pay me, continued to keep in touch with me, and continued to support me, which was just so important. That is a really key thing to take away from that experience. So I now have a condition called hydrocephalus, which is where your cerebrospinal fluid will gather in the points where you&#8217;ve had some kinds of injury. So for me, because they&#8217;ve poked around in my brain with those nine operations, I&#8217;ve got pockets where that fluid will gather and I have a tube, which runs from my brain down to my abdomen and drains off any excess fluid. And I will always have that: that&#8217;s for life. You know, I&#8217;m not medicated, I don&#8217;t have any side-effects from that, but I&#8217;ll always have that hidden disability if you like. And that element is really key as well. Now the other thing to mention is, again, back to my &#8220;one head&#8221; scenario, when I was at Energis Communications, my shunt, as it&#8217;s called \u2013 it&#8217;s a ventriculoperitoneal shunt \u2013 blocked. And so one morning I didn&#8217;t wake up. Luckily my line manager was aware that I have hydrocephalus and she was minded enough to call my mum saying Mel&#8217;s not turned up. Mum came to my house, she found me asleep, well, unconscious, got me an ambulance, got me to hospital and I woke up in intensive care. And my first reaction was, oh, my god, please tell me they haven&#8217;t shaved all my hair off again. And they hadn&#8217;t shaved all my hair off but they&#8217;d shaved a big chunk off out the front because they had to do the operation. So when I returned to work at Energis, and I wasn&#8217;t off as long as I had been at the previous organisations; I was off for a few weeks, but because of the chunk of hair that I had missing, I returned with these really snazzy headbands that for me, you know, just covered my scarring etc. And my colleagues in HR actually received a complaint about my headwear. And wasn&#8217;t it inappropriate that I was wearing that type of thing? Which again, just&#8230;we just don&#8217;t know what people are going through and what people are coping with. And I think that human element always has to continue to play out and ask questions, I&#8217;d be really happy to answer questions about what&#8217;s going on, and help to educate on that. But don&#8217;t assume, and also, just be kind,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jo Taylor&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think you made some really interesting points. And thank you so much for being so raw, I think it&#8217;s really important, as you say. I love that &#8216;one head&#8217; analogy. We don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going on. And if we treat people, as you know&#8230; we&#8217;ve all worked, I&#8217;ve got the same, organisations where you&#8217;re a commodity, and your personnel number \u2013 old enough to remember that when I first started at the BBC \u2013 is that you become a commodity, don&#8217;t you? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I remember reading a book by Reid Hoffman called The Alliance, which talks about when he set up LinkedIn about there being a mutuality, the psychological contract between yourself and the individual, but enabling people to bring their whole self to work. So when you think about that, in the context of your HR career, people that are listening to this podcast may be new in their career&#8230; how do we put the human, you know, the &#8216;H&#8217;, back into human resources, because it feels like COVID has been a turning point, in the fact that there is care, there is a bit more empathy, but it&#8217;s still too much focus for me on policy and procedure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How do we raise the bar in terms of that human centric behaviour, ultimately?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mel Francis&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, do you know that&#8217;s such a good question, and I think we can all see it playing out with some of the conversations we&#8217;re having around hybrid working, I would say. That&#8217;s front and centre of a lot of the challenges that some of us are having in HR at the moment. And, you know, I hear it from the business, from people who really vary between, yeah, cool, we&#8217;ve all worked from home, you know, we know we can make it work versus: Yep, time to get back! I think that element of &#8216;getting back&#8217; is really misleading, because we&#8217;re not going back, we&#8217;re going forward. So this has got to be the time where we start to think about how people can be their best and can bring their whole selves to work. And actually, as HR professionals, if we&#8217;re not putting people&#8217;s needs at the fore, we all know that they&#8217;ve got a choice. And we know they&#8217;re making those choices and voting with their feet at the moment. So your talent is literally going to be leaving you. So in terms of how can we get back to that conversation, I think as HR professionals, we have a real obligation and opportunity to continue to keep people at the fore. The human element is our responsibility to remind the business to keep top of the priority list, which is difficult. Like if I reflect back to the summer when one of the big banks in the city basically called everyone back to the office. Just a moment where you go &#8220;guys, come on, what are you doing? This is not the right way to go&#8221;. And I feel for whoever was in the HR position at that organisation, but continuing to push and have that influence on those senior leaders is really critical. And if that means building relationships with senior leaders or restarting relationships with decision makers, I think that&#8217;s going to be really important to continuing to make that impact and that difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mel Francis&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We did a paper recently called HR Superheroes, and we talked about being strategic business partners, which you talked about. If you were thinking about your career, and there were, I don&#8217;t know, five key attributes, because I&#8217;m taking it everyone&#8217;s got the skill, right? What are the attributes that if you were telling yourself what would those be, Mel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mel Francis&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Things that immediately spring to mind&#8230; so one is compassion, and always holding on to your compassion, your people-centric element. Second one I would add is curiosity. Be curious about different things, you know, ask questions, and seek information to aid your knowledge \u2013 which is another one \u2013 I&#8217;m going to add knowledge as a third one, just because I&#8217;m struggling for four and five (I&#8217;m not). But you know, just having that knowledge and gaining that through asking questions and researching and reading and being curious, I think are really Important elements, especially if you think about, for example, today, I&#8217;ve been interviewing for a Diversity and Inclusion advisor. And the notion of making a difference in that space is really important. But I don&#8217;t have all of the answers of what we need to do to be able to make that difference. But I do have an open mind and a curiosity and a real desire to make that difference. So don&#8217;t come expecting to be the expert in everything. But do go and find enough information to enable you to add your voice to that particular area as well. And which will lead me into another point, which I think is my fourth or fifth, which is learning and keep learning. I&#8217;m constantly learning, because there are things that I want to know more about. And it&#8217;s not, because I want to get the badge, like the badges do not interest me. But the ability to learn and to add that to my portfolio as it were, and to my knowledge is something that is really important to me. And then I&#8217;m going to say my fifth one is sharing. So share your knowledge, share your experience, bring people with you, and encourage others to be able to explore their own careers and their own way of learning, too. When I&#8217;ve had teams, I&#8217;ve always promised my teams that they will leave me in a better place than when they joined me. And that has always been something that I&#8217;ve made sure of. So if that means that giving them time to study or giving them time to go on a conference, you know, enabling their learning and sharing what I know, is also really critical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jo Taylor&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My old boss at TalkTalk used to say that his greatest gift in his HR career was that his team would go on and ultimately hire him. And I thought that was just a really nice sentiment that he kind of wanted to pay it forward. That&#8217;s what he&#8217;d say: I want to pay it forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mel Francis&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I remain immensely proud of everyone that I&#8217;ve worked with, you know, love seeing their careers progress and I love the fact that they still get in touch to ask advice or just to have a chat. That&#8217;s a real indicator of the difference that you can make.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jo Taylor&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So maybe an unfair question to end this and you can tell me to do one, or whatever the PC term is, where next? Where&#8217;s your next challenge? Because you talk a lot about curiosity; that you are naturally curious, you&#8217;ve been very entrepreneurial between roles to kind of fill a gap, but also show a lot of tenacity in just rolling your sleeves up. What&#8217;s the next Mel adventure?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mel Francis&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you know, the thing that is really setting my fire alight at the moment Jo, is neurodiversity. And the reason for that or the reason why I&#8217;m interested in neurodiversity \u2013 my son was diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, or as he prefers Aspergers, three years ago. And at the time he was diagnosed, I had no idea what that meant. And I didn&#8217;t really understand neurodiversity, or neurodiverse conditions. And so setting about understanding what his condition was, and what that meant for him, has led me to learn more about all neurodiverse conditions. And at a point, I realised that in HR, we&#8217;re just not talking about neurodiversity in the same way that we&#8217;re talking about other areas of diversity. And you know, one in five of us is neurodivergent. I would wager a big fat guess that it&#8217;s more than one in five, actually, the more I learn about it, but not a lot of organisations will have neurodiversity as part of their diversity and inclusion strategy, explicitly. And that&#8217;s a whole lot of talent that is not being particularly understood, let alone sought. So from an HR perspective, I am now happy to talk to anybody who will listen about neurodiversity. And selfishly, as my son&#8217;s mother, I&#8217;m hoping that by the time he enters the workforce in about four years time, we&#8217;re going to have a very different space. So that&#8217;s really my passion at the moment, Jo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jo Taylor&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I love that; it&#8217;s got real purpose. I always think your career should have purpose. It&#8217;s like leaving someplace better. You know, I remember when we worked together in Sa\u00efd the first time I met you, that&#8217;s what your mantra \u2013 when we did the fireside chat and you were talking to your team \u2013 it wasn&#8217;t about&#8230; it&#8217;s taking the ego out, isn&#8217;t it? And realising that the sum of the parts is bigger than the whole and that you play a part in guiding that so hopefully when our listeners listen to this, they can not only feel the warmth that comes across in spades, and knowing you well, the type of person that you are, but also will start to be those advocates. You know, I truly believe that we&#8217;re only going to change \u2013 and now we&#8217;ve got an opportunity to change \u2013 if we come together. Now is the time. We can&#8217;t start waiting for someone else to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jo Taylor&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, Exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jo Taylor&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So thank you Mel \u2013 thanks for sharing a fascinating career story. I&#8217;ve known you for as long as I&#8217;ve known you, I didn&#8217;t know some of those jobs. So I&#8217;ve learned a lot about you. And thank you for getting raw and acting with integrity, and with that one head. It&#8217;s been a pleasure. Thank you so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Mel Francis&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thank you so much for having me Jo, really enjoyed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jo Taylor&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you liked this episode of the podcast, please subscribe, rate and review it on Apple Podcasts. Go to <a href=\"https:\/\/letstalktalent.co.uk\/podcasts\/\">letstalktalent.co.uk\/podcasts<\/a> for a transcript of this episode, along with all the links we&#8217;ve discussed today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":215850,"template":"","meta":{"content-type":""},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<title>Episode 10: How to manage your squiggly HR career: an example with Mel Francis | Let&#039;s Talk Talent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/letstalktalent.co.uk\/podcasts\/how-to-manage-your-squiggly-hr-career-an-example-with-mel-francis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Episode 10: How to manage your squiggly HR career: an example with Mel Francis | Let&#039;s Talk Talent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Let\u2019s Talk Talent\u2019s Podcast Episode 10. 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