Say Hello to Meg Phelps – Incubeta’s New Chief People Officer
Incubeta continues to grow as we welcome a new Chief People Officer, Meg Phelps to the family. With a diverse background spanning multiple sectors including 10 Downing Street, Meg will drive operating model transformation and ensure our ‘people experience’ is fully aligned – bringing more opportunities for individual growth and global connection.
With over 12 years of experience, we sat down with Meg to see what it was that she liked about Incubeta (aside from our award winning culture) and what her new role will entail.
1. Why did you decide to join Incubeta?
I thrive on giving people the freedom to push the boundaries of what they do and how they do it, creating alignment of individual purpose to organizational purpose. I adore what I do and I love it when people love what they do too, which is why I do my job. Incubeta’s culture and values are totally aligned to this approach – a clear growth strategy through a people-first approach. For me, the opportunity to grow with a company truly leveraging the power of tech but with a spark of creativity, innovation and excellence for clients really mirrors my approach to building great people functions.
The leadership team here recognize people are the number one advantage and this mantra will be at the heart of the journey we will go on together as one Incubeta team.
2. What are your key responsibilities, objectives and goals in your new position?
My immediate focus will be to get to know the business – I can’t do my job effectively without getting to know the clients, the work and the people that make that come to life. I also want to get to know the amazing People Team who’ve been steering the people-ship.
I’ve been so lucky to work with some amazing HR leaders in my career and this will be both an immediate and long term focus for me as we transform our business to ensure we have a People function who can be at the heart of achieving this.
Incubeta needs to continue to drive consistency and collaboration to truly unlock global leverage and drive efficiencies. One of my biggest priorities will be working alongside the organization to drive a global operating model transformation and ensure the people experience is aligned to that. I will also focus on ensuring the culture is enhanced and as a result we attract and retain great talent to support our growth.
3. What is your strategy for achieving these and how will you measure success?
I believe in, and use a human-centered design approach in the way I work, which is a problem solving technique that puts real people at the center of the development process, as well as aligning to commercial outcomes.
As a people function, we will be true partners to the organization – understand the work, understand the business and become trusted partners who can use systems thinking to connect things together towards the north star strategy.
The challenge will be to not fall down the rabbit hole too often and lose focus on what will have the greatest impact. The holes always exist, particularly in growing businesses where there will always be something to deliver or do. The key thing to remember will be what the priorities are and how we focus on those. I can assure you my team will get fed up with me saying this!
4. What challenges are there currently facing the industry, and how will you help Incubeta to navigate these?
The talent market continues to be challenging in every sector, despite increasing unemployment in many places across the world. At Incubeta we’ll have to be agile in the way we look at both buying and building talent – with a skills first approach and a wider people offering that flexes to the differing needs of generations. We will focus on a combination of both organically growing our talent both internally and externally to achieve this.
The impact of AI is of course ever-present, although I believe it’s an opportunity for people to grow new skills rather than a removal of roles altogether, particularly in the digital marketing industry, despite the current narrative around this. We will consider how we can utilize AI where it’s valuable to free up skill for more impactful and strategic consulting capability.
Global political headwinds and macroeconomic uncertainty inevitably play a significant part in our people strategy as we consider the risks this may present us with. That being said, I believe these can be mitigated with an agile operating model and people-first skills based approach to organization-wide decisions.
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Stay tuned to see what Meg gets up to…
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