I learned to ask what the record could not explain.

I began my career with personnel records that looked more certain on paper than they felt to the people they described. After completing a degree in economics and organisational studies at the fictional Merrenvale College in May 1989, I joined Talverin Cable in July. My work involved employment entries, changes in assignment and the reconciliation of records sent by regional offices. I had no authority to decide an employee’s terms. I did have to explain why two records that appeared to concern the same job sometimes described different responsibilities.

Those early questions shaped my later interest in workforce evidence. A category can make a report possible, but it can also hide the distinction a manager needs to understand. A person recorded against one office might support another. A job title could remain unchanged while the work altered. I learned to ask the colleague closest to the work before treating the record as a complete account. That habit was practical, not a rejection of measurement.

In January 1996 I moved into compensation and personnel analysis at Talverin. I supervised two analysts and worked with finance on the definitions behind workforce reports. The responsibility was narrower than compensation policy: I prepared analysis and administered a delegated expense allowance, while recommendations required the appropriate management decision. I became interested in the way an apparently small reporting choice could affect a larger discussion about staffing, fairness or cost.

I joined Orvenna Communications in April 2004 as a regional workforce-planning manager. The company was growing its broadband and enterprise-service activities, and managers wanted a more consistent account of hiring demand. I worked with eight colleagues across regional operations. In 2008 I supported a recruiting screen that gave too much weight to a particular educational route. A later review showed that the shortcut excluded evidence of relevant experience. We reassessed 54 applications from an original 216, invited 18 people to interview, made six offers and received four acceptances. The review cost USD 95,000 and delayed the hiring timetable by five weeks. I had helped design the original screen, so I could not present its correction as someone else’s lesson.

The experience made me more cautious about convenient proxies. It did not mean that every applicant should be treated as equally qualified, or that the revised process proved anything about later performance. It meant the company needed a reason for the criterion it had chosen and a way to reconsider relevant evidence. I carried that question into my appointment as director of people analytics and planning in September 2012.

That role combined a 24-person team with a larger responsibility for interpretation. A 2016 employee survey received 586 responses from 880 invitations across nine operating units. The headline result concealed differences in participation and in the issues raised. I opposed presenting the combined score as a common view of the whole workforce. We spent USD 145,000 on protected follow-up discussions and a more careful account of what had and had not been heard. I did not describe employees who chose not to participate as satisfied, disengaged or opposed. Their reasons were not established by the response count.

I became CHRO in February 2020, reporting to CEO Nora Elviston. The role brought broader responsibility for the people function and regular executive presentations to the board and compensation committee. My approach to evidence remained central. In 2021 a vacancy review turned 164 entries into 92 current requirements, 48 obsolete requests and 24 duplicates. The corrected total improved the basis of discussion; it was not a claim that the company had removed 72 occupied jobs or captured their salaries as savings.

In 2023 I declined to distribute individual rankings from a turnover-model pilot. The analysis covered 686 employees in ten teams, but a probability estimate could easily be treated as an account of a person’s intentions. Working with data director Daniel Corvess and operating colleagues, I supported a more limited review of working conditions. We accepted the cost of redesign rather than make a manager’s conversation begin with an undisclosed prediction about the employee.

Today Orvenna has 3,100 direct employees. External installation partners are outside that count and outside my direct employment authority. My function has 69 colleagues through six direct reports and USD 16.8 million delegated annual expense. I remain interested in the point where a report becomes a decision about a person. A possible first board role would widen that interest into collective oversight, with preparation in the whole business rather than an assumption that people expertise is sufficient for every question.