Employee Profiles

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Lucy
“Shell offers a supportive environment combined with the opportunity to steer one’s own course. My current role gives me the opportunity to manage a customer-focused project in a virtual context - which provides a great deal of challenge, learning and diversity.”

 

Retail Sales Competency Programme Manager, Shell Europe Oil Products

Lucy
    • Location: Europe
    • Joined Shell: September 1994

 

What is your current role at Shell?

I am responsible for the people management framework for 100,000+ site staff across the Retail service station network in Europe, which comprises around 14,000 sites across 26 countries. This involves putting in place HR tools and processes to ensure that site staff, as well as Retail sales, marketing and network staff, are competent and motivated to deliver Shell’s Customer Value Proposition. On a daily basis, my team and I advocate good people management practice to a broad spectrum of clients, from country Retail Sales Managers and site managers, to the site staff themselves. We have developed a series of HR tools, including recruitment, performance management and reward, specifically aimed at our target audience.

I work from home because I travel frequently throughout Europe, and manage a virtual team of four, based in Finland, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and the UK.

 

What do you like best about your role?

My work focuses very much on the Shell consumer and, in this way, it is easy to see the impact of what we do. Because Retail is the shop-front for the Shell Group, my team’s work is absolutely critical to maintaining a positive image for Shell – I enjoy that responsibility. Additionally, I get lots of positive feedback on my work from the site staff themselves, so I am able to see an immediate impact on the behaviours and motivation of such customer-facing staff. My current role also gives me the opportunity to manage a customer-focused project in a virtual context, which provides a great deal of challenge, learning and diversity.

 

Tell us about your background and experience

I graduated in French and Management Studies from Leeds University. I spent my first four years with Shell in generalist HR roles in the UK. Through Shell’s internal job posting system, my husband (who is a Mechanical Engineer with Shell) and I found dual career opportunities in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Operating in Spanish, I focused primarily on the development of competencies for the Commercial, HR and Finance staff populations in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia and Paraguay – after which I moved into my current role, based out of the Netherlands.

 

What makes you stay at Shell?

Every assignment has challenged and stretched me in different directions. Shell offers a totally supportive environment, combined with the opportunity to steer one’s own course. Shell has also provided international opportunities for both my husband and myself at the same time. I enjoy working for a company with high values of integrity, whose ‘people-focus’ is promoted from the top down – both of which are key to HR’s role.

 

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