A Day In The Life Of...
IAN HANDY, HR DIRECTOR
Tell Us More About Your Background?
I left school at 16 and immediately started working in a hotel close to where I lived in Sunderland, which is in the north-east of England. I worked as a chef for about 10 years and then moved to London to work with a training company. This is where I got my first training qualification, which led me to moving out to to Dubai in 1997 to work for a training company. I now train HR and training managers from the Middle East, that's how I went from being a chef to a trainer, and now a HR director.
Tell Us More About Millennium Hotels?
Millennium Copthorne Hotels is a very large and expanding company. We operate 17 hotels in the Middle East and Africa. Over the next few years we are expanding extensively into Saudi Arabia and by 2017 we will be operating 50 hotels in the MENA region.
What Made You Get Into HR?
When I moved to Abu Dhabi in the year 2000 I was with a small hotel going through a massive expansion from 300 staff up to 700/800 staff. As a training manager I got involved in HR, meeting/greeting people at the airport and taking people for breakfast. I felt that I was really good with the training side, but slowly and surely I was becoming more involved in HR.
What Current HR Trends Do You See?
I think what we see at the moment is everybody trying to do everything systematically and better. There are lots of new things that are coming into the market and there are lots of trends which are being updated. Psychometric assessment is very popular but, unfortunately, we are all still fishing from the same pool, and the same pool over the last 20 years has seen many changes.
Tell Us More About Your Background?
Beofre moving to Dubai, I worked in sales for an advertising agency in London. My background is predominantly in Telesales.
Tell Us More About Biz-Group
Biz Group started two decades ago when I first came to Dubai. We are a training and development company, predominantly like your magazine. We also have a team building division and a strategy division that helps small businesses.
Everything we do is about improving performance. For example, how do we improve the performance of teams, the performance of people and the performance of businesses?
What Made You Originally Set Up A Training Business In Dubai?
I originally came here two decades ago to launch a product for a client from the training industry and just fell in love with Dubai in early 1992. Dubai was entrepreneurial, optimistic and sunny. Every time I landed back in the UK it wasn't sunny and the 90's was quite a depressing time for UK business.
So, I looked at an opportunity to start a new business. I didn’t have enough funds to start an advertising agency, so I started a training company which grew from an initial idea and a passion, to what you see today, with 46 people in the company and a very passionate team helping companies improve performance.
How Do You Help Companies?
From a training and development perspective, traditionally we work with an organizationt o find out what their business objectives are, what strategic issues they want to improve and how we can provide training and development solutions tailor made for them, or alternatively implement some of the international programs we have that help get companies from A to B. We also help individuals, whether it’s leaders, front line customer service employees or the general population through professional development. We help companies improve their business results.
Take Us Through A Typical Day As CEO?
Having just read Arianna Huffington’s new book 'Thrive', what I shouldn’t be doing first thing in the morning is checking my iphone to find out what emails have come in overnight from our overseas partners, but I’m still doing that.
Then my day is pretty much mapped out intensively, sometimes I think I’m like a doctor, my PA manages to fill in appointments back to back. If im not in the office, I am in a training room first thing in the morning .
So, a typical day of mine may start with introducing a new concept, like multipliers for senior leaders, followed by running an 8 hour workshop.
But. I don’t think there really is a typical day in my diary, I could either be in the office supporting the team, I could be delivering business keynotes internationally or even delivering a training
30 | TRAINING MAGAZINE MIDDLE EAST SEPT 2014
MILLENNIUM HOTELS