Leadership spotlight: Director of People Business Partnering
In this series we will hear from the Senior Leadership Team at Three about the latest activity across the company and a little about the people behind the projects.
Vital stats
- Name: Una Rorke
- Job title: Director of People Business Partnering
- Function: People
- Tenure: 12 years (11 in Three Ireland and 9 months across UK & IRE)
Tell us a bit about your background
I joined Three on a 3 month contract in 2008 and have never looked back! I came from a recruitment background, where I worked in large and boutique agencies. At this point Three was very much in a start-up phase, so I was initially focused on recruitment as we ramped up at pace. The culture was fast-paced, the attitude “can-do”, and being part of a small HR team allowed for the opportunity to diversify skill sets and support many people-related programmes wider than recruitment. After the acquisition of O2 in 2014, I led the Recruitment, Operations and Reward team and more recently the Business Partnering and Engagement team. In August 2020, the People team consolidated across the UK & Ireland and I am now accountable for the People Business Partnering & Change team across the UK & Ireland and work with a fantastic bunch of people who are championing our people plan every day but ensuring they have a few laughs along the way!
In a nutshell, describe your role and how it helps achieve our objectives
I am privileged to lead the People Business Partnering & Change team, who partner with our leadership teams across UK & Ireland. We understand their businesses and proactively support and deliver people solutions that meet their needs both operationally and strategically. We play a key role in any activity that has any people impacts, such as organisational design and implementation, enabling a two-way dialogue with the business on new and current employee propositions, while ensuring all our cyclical people processes such as employee engagement and performance are effectively managed. Within all the initiatives that we support we keep the employee experience lens central so we can ensure we enable our People Purpose of A Better Me, A Better Us, A Better Three.
What is it like to work across both Three UK and Three Ireland? What are the key challenges and benefits?
It has been great to have an opportunity to understand a new business and meet new colleagues with fresh thinking and new perspectives. I believe we have the fantastic prospect of bringing a ‘best of both’ philosophy to life by looking at our successes in both companies and bringing new learnings to our teams. I cannot believe that I haven’t been able to meet anyone in person…. I have missed the desk drops and coffee catch ups. Yet I am so proud of all we have accomplished as a team so far!
