With a fascination in people and how they tick in the working environment, Sam Moxham ‘fell’ into her HR career and found it to be a lucky accident.
Moxham travelled the world in her early 20s Moxham before working as a PA in the tech market. When an HR administration opportunity came up, the step into HR proved a catalyst for her career: “I stayed at that company for ten years, completing my degree in HR Management and really learning my trade,” she says.
Moxham started a family and found her life changing again. She decided she wanted to be self-employed, and using her skills and experience, identified a gap in the market for delivering HR consultancy services to small businesses. Consequently she launched Halo HR and single-mindedly built a substantial bank of clients. Her first was professional services company, Progeny.
When the consultancy had gone as far as she felt she could take it, Moxham was on the hunt for a bigger opportunity. She was able to sell Halo to Progeny in 2019 taking on the combined role of HR Director and MD of Progeny HR Consultancy and Advice. “My focus here was creating something different,” she says. “I didn’t want our HR approach to be vanilla and it was really important to me that wellbeing was at the core.”
Balancing people and business
In 2021, Moxham’s role changed once more and she became Chief People Officer for the company. At this level Moxham ensured there was a particular emphasis on helping Progeny balance business and people-related decisions.
Creating and running her own HR business certain ranks high on Moxham’s own list of achievements. She notes how she had to be driven and focused to make a success of this and while she made mistakes along the way, some of that experience continues to inform her work today.
“It’s not all black and white in HR which can be very confusing for business owners, so I always provided actionable and commercially driven advice, to help them solve their HR issues so the business could move on quickly and positively,” she says.
Leading Progeny’s people and wellbeing agenda during the pandemic is also a career landmark for Moxham. “It was so important to me that we focused on maintaining communication, our sense of connection and our team’s level of wellbeing throughout lockdown, as well as dealing with all the more practical HR challenges.”
As part of their ongoing support, the business ran monthly virtual Town Halls hosted by the company’s CEO, appointed Wellbeing Champions and created a virtual social scene where fun and positivity were a priority.
This included The Progeny League – a series of cross-company challenges that covered everything from daily steps, to decorating a cake, to lip synching to a favourite anthem. Unsurprisingly, Moxham is proud that Progeny didn’t furlough any staff or make redundancies due to the pandemic.
“Building a meaningful wellbeing agenda, where wellbeing has a seat at the board table, has been hugely important to me,” asserts Moxham. “I couldn’t work in a business where I didn’t have a say and I’m able to offer a different perspective on business issues that are being discussed at a senior level. Having run my own business, I do have that commercial edge and this has been very useful to me.”
