People
At the core of our success is the capability of our lead Directors. Our experienced team represent a broad range of knowledge, insight and expertise.
Paul Robertson
BA (Hons) MSc, Head of Practice and Managing Director
Paul has a diverse career background, with a wide range of executive leadership experience in private, public and voluntary sectors.
Before establishing Ways HR Consulting he was Head of Practice for Hays HRC and a Board member for Hays PLC HR Services. Other roles include Chief Executive of an International Charity; Senior Manager in Local Government; and Director of a specialist people management consultancy. His background also includes periods as a documentary filmmaker.
Paul has been a senior specialist in people management consulting for the last eight years and leads our major HR senior and strategic projects, and strategy work, including leadership and organisational development interventions. He was instrumental in developing and implementing the innovative Job Family Modelling approach to equal value pay now being used on a widespread basis in the public sector.
Laurence Hoefkens
Director of Business Development
Laurence was formerly a Director for Hays Specialist Recruitment, joining the company in 1982 as a consultant and contributing to its growth from a small entrepreneurial endeavour to a market-leading specialist recruitment consultancy, generating sales of over £2.1 billion.
During his time at Hays, Laurence was the Managing Director for a number of individual brands, delivering HR services such as Training, Assessment, Outplacement and HR Outsourcing. At the same time he led recruitment in multiple sectors, including Finance & Accounting, Legal, Insurance and IT Services.
Now Laurence leads our services customer satisfaction; recruitment management; business development; and formulating and re-engineering business strategy. He uses his industry-specific experience to advise companies at every stage of their business cycle: start-up, organic growth, acquisition, merger, downsizing or planned exit.
Andrea Metcalf
BA (Hons), MSc, MCMI, Mast.NLP, Associate
Accustomed to working at all levels of an organisation, Andrea’s experience extends to Training, Development and Coaching at Board level. As Director of Training and Outplacement for Hays HRC, Andrea developed business ventures and held senior management roles.
Having held significant project management responsibility for a number of major national training initiatives, Andrea’s ability to meet client specific needs in an innovative and problem solving manner, in line with organisational and cultural context, has been constant throughout her varied career.
Andrea has an MSc in Training and Human Resource Management, with a specific interest in the impact of ‘culture’. She is qualified in administering and providing feedback for a number of personality profiling techniques (MBTI, 16PF5). She is a Master NLP Practitioner, a High Performance Coach and also a member of the Chartered Management Institute and Associate Member of the Institute of Directors. Andrea leads our services in executive coaching, mentoring and management development.
Amanda Gee
Senior Consultant
Amanda joins us from Opal Property Group where she was Head of Legal Services and Human Resources. Amanda brings with her both extensive HR and legal expertise. She is CIPD qualified with broad commercial operational experience, delivering HR advice in a senior leadership role.
Amanda’s achievements with Opal included a perfect individual record in industrial tribunal claims where she successfully managed and represented the company, as well as the development and implementation of a new internal training and development programme which is now incorporated into a degree syllabus by Leeds Metropolitan University.
Amanda will be taking a lead in developing advice for organisations and staff facing career changes alongside assisting with our Job Family and other consultancy projects.
Gary Hughes
Outplacement Business Manager
A former senior executive within Hays PLC, with extensive experience in the recruitment and retirement industries, Gary is key to developing the outplacement area of our business and in particular our partnership with 4me Ventures.
Gary extends our skills in the area of modern online service offerings and assists us in managing our communications.
Our Associates
We use a strong base of proven, fully accredited partners and associates. They represent a broad range of knowledge, insight and expertise; and have regularly worked closely with the Directors to achieve great results for our clients.
Our associates are highly experienced HR and management consultants who have occupied leadership or senior HR roles.
We do not choose purely on the basis of academic or technical know-how, however highly qualified they are. Proven experience in real operational environments is essential to allow us to deliver pragmatic and relevant advice.
The majority of our associates have worked in close and successful partnership with us for over four years.
Katie Taylor
Marketing and Administration Manager
Katie graduated from the University of Leeds in 2002 and has since worked in a number of senior administration roles within the public sector, for the Department of Health, Contact Theatre and most recently, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence.
Katie joined Ways HR Consulting in October 2008 following a four month career break spent in South America. Her interests include attending gigs and she is a regular at the Glastonbury Festival.
John Prydderch
Writer/Project Support
John graduated from the University of Leeds in 2005 with a degree in English Language and Literature. Shortly afterwards he joined ITV where he spent three years working as part of the Programme Publicity team on Emmerdale.
John’s interests include reading, creative writing and the cinema. He is also a keen sportsman and regularly plays football for his local Sunday league team.