This month’s member spotlight Nicci Birley has specialised in a number of areas throughout her career. But if she head to choose it would be coaching and mentoring.

About Nicci

It’s been almost five years since Nicci started her indies journey setting up Cornerstone Resources jointly with her husband and co-director. Nicci was also recently shortlisted for the HRi Awards 2022 – High Growth Indie – congratulations.

How long have you been a member of HRi?

Since 2021

Why did you join HRi?

We joined HRi as we believed that we ran run an ethical, professional independent HR consultancy and wanted to go through the rigorous accreditation process to be recognised as such, as well as be part of the largest group of independent HR professionals in the UK.

What’s your favourite part of being a member of HRi?

I love it for 3 reasons:

• the community aspect of it, that we can each reach out to one another for support, help and advice
• the professional standards of HRi as an organisation
• the fact that as a group of indies, we can join together as a more powerful and louder voice for independents across the UK

What is your specialism?

If I had to choose, it would be coaching and mentoring, however I have specialised in recruitment and in global mobility during my career and have a lot of generalist, business partnering experience.

 

What do you love most about HR? and being independent?

I love the variety of working in HR, especially now we work with many different customers from different sectors – no one day is ever the same!

After 20+ years in HR in large national and global organisations, it was a little nerve wracking at first, stepping out on our own but almost 5 years in, it’s the best decision we ever made. I love being able to be flexible, agile and make decisions one day and implement them the next!

 

How do you define success?

Essentially, that I’ve done my best with what I have been given.

For me, it’s important to make a positive contribution to others and we try to live this out each day in how we live, work and how we do business with charities and small businesses alike.

We can easily measure our success by one standard: what we’ve done with what we’ve been given.

 

What is your most memorable win, achievement or celebration?

Wow, that’s difficult! I think there are two, from a professional perspective, one is achieving my ILM Level 5 qualification, despite managing a very busy work day and family (and our house flooded in between!) and, which is a joint (with my husband and co-director) and whole team achievement, we’ve almost reached 5 years old as a business and we are recruiting our 7th team member. I feel very fortunate to be in this position.

 

 

Fun Facts

What’s something about you (a fun fact) that not many people know?

I’m a languages graduate and speak a few different languages – I love travelling, learning new languages and all about different cultures.

 

Are you currently binge-watching any shows?

We’ve just finished the latest season of Blacklist and have moved onto Bloodlands.

 

If you had to eat one meal every day for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Now, that’s difficult, as I am a huge foodie! Steak and chips or an amazing curry and all the extras!

 

What’s one item you can’t live without?

My phone / a to do list!