Karl Wood
Human Resources Services (Recruitment) Lead at Allwyn UK- Claim this Profile
Click to upgrade to our gold package
for the full feature experience.
-
English Native or bilingual proficiency
-
German Professional working proficiency
Topline Score
Bio
Mia Young
I worked with Karl on a regular basis, he endeavors to bring every working environment to its full potential and beyond. Pushing the preconceived limits of any company and brings a conscientious and creative approach to issues and new proposals. He’s an advocate for equal opportunity - for both present and future employees. When I worked with him during my junior year, he applied an enormous amount of effort into making a climbable professional ladder for juniors and interns, taking into consideration professional and personal experiences and improving on them throughout every area of the company. He has the innate ability to bring people together and inspires others to care about aspects of industries that are not always at the forefront. He gave every person a platform to be heard on, no matter the status, and pushed ideas through to execution. I cannot recommend Karl highly enough as he would be a valuable asset to any company.
Jack F Davidson
Karl is one of the most effective and natural leaders I’ve had the pleasure to work for. His talent for understanding people allows him to get the most out of his team even in challenging circumstances. He is the kind of hands-on manager who makes you feel supported and who will always go the extra mile for you. His ability to build trust with people at every level of an organisation allows him to drive culture and business transformation where others have failed. A highly sophisticated operator, his experience and keen sensitivity for internal politics gives him insight beyond best practice processes and allows him to deliver change without disruption. I recommend him highly, as a professional and a human being.
Mia Young
I worked with Karl on a regular basis, he endeavors to bring every working environment to its full potential and beyond. Pushing the preconceived limits of any company and brings a conscientious and creative approach to issues and new proposals. He’s an advocate for equal opportunity - for both present and future employees. When I worked with him during my junior year, he applied an enormous amount of effort into making a climbable professional ladder for juniors and interns, taking into consideration professional and personal experiences and improving on them throughout every area of the company. He has the innate ability to bring people together and inspires others to care about aspects of industries that are not always at the forefront. He gave every person a platform to be heard on, no matter the status, and pushed ideas through to execution. I cannot recommend Karl highly enough as he would be a valuable asset to any company.
Jack F Davidson
Karl is one of the most effective and natural leaders I’ve had the pleasure to work for. His talent for understanding people allows him to get the most out of his team even in challenging circumstances. He is the kind of hands-on manager who makes you feel supported and who will always go the extra mile for you. His ability to build trust with people at every level of an organisation allows him to drive culture and business transformation where others have failed. A highly sophisticated operator, his experience and keen sensitivity for internal politics gives him insight beyond best practice processes and allows him to deliver change without disruption. I recommend him highly, as a professional and a human being.
Mia Young
I worked with Karl on a regular basis, he endeavors to bring every working environment to its full potential and beyond. Pushing the preconceived limits of any company and brings a conscientious and creative approach to issues and new proposals. He’s an advocate for equal opportunity - for both present and future employees. When I worked with him during my junior year, he applied an enormous amount of effort into making a climbable professional ladder for juniors and interns, taking into consideration professional and personal experiences and improving on them throughout every area of the company. He has the innate ability to bring people together and inspires others to care about aspects of industries that are not always at the forefront. He gave every person a platform to be heard on, no matter the status, and pushed ideas through to execution. I cannot recommend Karl highly enough as he would be a valuable asset to any company.
Jack F Davidson
Karl is one of the most effective and natural leaders I’ve had the pleasure to work for. His talent for understanding people allows him to get the most out of his team even in challenging circumstances. He is the kind of hands-on manager who makes you feel supported and who will always go the extra mile for you. His ability to build trust with people at every level of an organisation allows him to drive culture and business transformation where others have failed. A highly sophisticated operator, his experience and keen sensitivity for internal politics gives him insight beyond best practice processes and allows him to deliver change without disruption. I recommend him highly, as a professional and a human being.
Mia Young
I worked with Karl on a regular basis, he endeavors to bring every working environment to its full potential and beyond. Pushing the preconceived limits of any company and brings a conscientious and creative approach to issues and new proposals. He’s an advocate for equal opportunity - for both present and future employees. When I worked with him during my junior year, he applied an enormous amount of effort into making a climbable professional ladder for juniors and interns, taking into consideration professional and personal experiences and improving on them throughout every area of the company. He has the innate ability to bring people together and inspires others to care about aspects of industries that are not always at the forefront. He gave every person a platform to be heard on, no matter the status, and pushed ideas through to execution. I cannot recommend Karl highly enough as he would be a valuable asset to any company.
Jack F Davidson
Karl is one of the most effective and natural leaders I’ve had the pleasure to work for. His talent for understanding people allows him to get the most out of his team even in challenging circumstances. He is the kind of hands-on manager who makes you feel supported and who will always go the extra mile for you. His ability to build trust with people at every level of an organisation allows him to drive culture and business transformation where others have failed. A highly sophisticated operator, his experience and keen sensitivity for internal politics gives him insight beyond best practice processes and allows him to deliver change without disruption. I recommend him highly, as a professional and a human being.
Credentials
-
DiSC® Certified Consultant
Success Insights International (now TTI Success Insights)Jan, 2017- Sep, 2024 -
PRINCE2® Practitioner
AXELOS Global Best PracticeJan, 2017- Sep, 2024 -
Goethe-Zertifikat B2
Goethe-Institut e.V.Jan, 2014- Sep, 2024
Experience
-
Allwyn UK
-
United Kingdom
-
Entertainment Providers
-
1 - 100 Employee
-
Human Resources Services (Recruitment) Lead
-
Mar 2022 - Present
Since March 2022, Allwyn UK have embarked on a large scale transformation journey to build a National Lottery that delivers more money to Good Causes. Planning and delivery of HR Services, including Talent Acquisition, MSP Account Management, Workforce Planning and HR Management Reporting. • Talent Management: Responsible for aligning business objectives with talent strategy. Developing a strong knowledge base of their business partner functions and business objectives. Maintain an effective level of business literacy about the business’s financial position, its culture and its competition. Lead process re-engineering for HR Transformation (Recruitment & Onboarding, HR Service Management, Workforce Transformation, Data Realisation and reporting, Compensation & Benefit, Target Operating Model, etc.) Partner with the HR Operations team on Employment Value Proposition and Brand Ambassadorship. • Workforce & Organisation: Oversee workforce planning and various activities that support organisational design work including engagement strategy, action planning and Target Operating Model. Monitor workforce planning efforts (forecasting, skills development, optimisation of resources, partnership with Recruitment MSP) to align organisation's business strategy to its talent strategy and ensure that each business unit has the right skills at the right time. Monitor financial implications of labour needs / changes and tracking adherence to the workforce plan. Participate in assessment panels and participate in the talent selection process for critical technical roles and Leadership. • Diversity and Inclusion: Ensure the integration of D&I within day-to-day practices that cultivate both a diverse and inclusive workforce, in which all individuals have equal access to opportunities and resources. Coach and develop leadership competency in D&I in collaboration with the Social Value Director.
-
-
-
WINC HR strategy and solutions
-
United Kingdom
-
Business Consulting and Services
-
1 - 100 Employee
-
MD and Human Resources Director
-
Jul 2014 - Present
Independent consultant specialising in HR transformation, change management, shared services centre assessment, recruitment, and training assignments. Worked with in-house HR teams to review policies and procedures, conduct Training Needs Analyses to support people agendas, Organisational Development goals and Diversity and Inclusion strategies. Sample engagements include: • Chanzo – Work across Private sector, Public sector, and Major international events delivering brilliant solutions for: Organisational Effectiveness, Recruitment, Search & Selection, Inclusion & Diversity. • Steel Hospitality – Provide people and process hotel consultancy for owners and operators of hospitality businesses. With experience built in Orient-Express, Ritz-Carlton and Regent, particular value is added to premium hotel products looking to drive admirable Employee Value Propositions. • Mercedes-Benz – Undertook delivery of their National Leadership Development programme, from individual initial training and career assessments to gap analysis and directing their learning programme over a range of interventions. Assessed c500 managers and leaders from across the network. • Discovery Communications’ (of Discovery Channel) - Scoped the decentralisation of HR operation to relevant global regions to enable scale through aggressive network acquisition strategy. Proposed roadmap recommendations implemented over the following months.
-
-
-
Millennium Hotels and Resorts
-
Singapore
-
Hospitality
-
700 & Above Employee
-
Regional Director of Human Resources, UK and Europe
-
Sep 2020 - Sep 2021
Leading global hotel management and real estate group Headquartered in Singapore, with 10,000 employees across 140 hotels across North America, Europe, Middle East, Asia, New Zealand. Led the development and embedding of people strategy across western Europe. HR team of 22 across 22 hotels in the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. On joining, the core tasks were creating and implementing people strategies to ensure revenue through the COVID period. • Transformed and stabilised the Corporate and Hotel HR teams across UK and Europe, setting and embedding efficient, legally compliant, and professional standards in HR services. • Created and tested new UK staffing models, using agency staff, bringing people off furlough, introducing flexible working and leveraging government grant funding to support multiple L&D initiatives – including launching a Training Academy. • Oversaw collective and individual consultations. Reduced arbitration time and expenses to zero tribunal claims in 2020 and 2021. • Partnered the operation to plan and recut the operations model to save money through delivering reduced/different services with fewer staff.
-
-
-
M-is
-
United Kingdom
-
Events Services
-
1 - 100 Employee
-
Head of Human Resources & Organisational Development
-
Sep 2018 - Aug 2020
Leading global creative agency, aspiring to be an exemplar of inclusion, innovation and creativity, that delivers multidisciplinary experiential events, and digital communications solutions to clients from global business to international sporting federations and governments. Led HR and Organisational Development, Change/Transformation, and Learning and Development functions. Established and sponsored projects to resolve scalability, employer brand/perception and leadership issues. Designed and embedded policies and governance across employee base plus c200 transient contractors. • Collaborated with Exec to define long-term mission and growth goals; identified support routes through employee engagement, policy and procedure standards, and talent management. • Developed 7 Employee Resource Groups with Exec sponsorship to gain employee voice, driving radical culture and operational change through visible actions and informing projects and the leadership of what “good” should look like. • Established new DE&I policy, maternity leave, performance management/appraisal processes and policies, embedding from top down, mitigating ER compliance risks, and increasing integrity. • Researched, developed, and implemented competitive compensation and benefits, whilst addressing Gender Pay Gap, market rates and introducing annual increments, linked to performance management framework and SMART bonus system. • Drove Diversity & Inclusion transformation. Initiated baselines for a new BAME metric and signed the business up to the Prince of Wales’ Race at Work programme, engaged the business in CSR programmes and drove accreditation as a Living Wage Employer. • Implemented the BSI ISO 14001:2015 Sustainability and Environmental Management System; managed the BSI ISO 45001: 2018 Occupational Health and Safety Management System and the recertification of BSI ISO 27001: Information Security Management System.
-
-
-
Baku 2015 European Games Operation Committee
-
Azerbaijan
-
Spectator Sports
-
100 - 200 Employee
-
Head of Human Resources Services (Recruitment)
-
Mar 2013 - Aug 2014
International multi-sport event in the Olympic tradition contested by athletes from 52 European nations. The Games are governed by the European Olympic Committees (EOC). Based in Baku, Azerbaijan, hired to implement the HR Shared Services Centre for the European Olympic Games. Built team of 18 supporting the 52 EOCs. Highly complex ground-up development of processes, partnerships, and delivery model. • Devised strategy to bridge the lack of international volume recruiters in the region and built delivery plan to mobilise resource, leading talent acquisition of c500 senior positions in collaboration with Azerbaijan Government Ministries. • Researched and analysed workforce demand planning, process modelling, workforce skills gap analysis and established effective compensation and benefits administration systems: job analysis, grading and compensation range framework. • Sourced and implemented an automated, integrated ATS and Workforce Management System and designed Employment Marketing Brand (EVP) including a comprehensive Career Site. Led and ran complex tender process and created partner training and SLAs for multiple recruitment providers, establishing £10m of recruitment contracts.
-
-
-
Hamilton Island
-
Australia
-
Hospitality
-
300 - 400 Employee
-
Group Employment (Recruitment) Manager
-
Mar 2008 - Mar 2011
Integrated resort on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef comprising of six hotels, 17 Restaurants, 20 Retail Stores, Yacht Club, PGA Golf Course, Great Barrier Reef Airport, Marina, Public Ferry Terminal, and a Public State School. Led team of 10 in the provision of centralised HR, serving 3,000 island-based and a further 250 Sydney-based corporate employees. Oversaw the delivery of c1,200 hires seasonally plus onboarding, arrival flights and staff accommodation. • Designed and implemented a national HR Shared Services Centre model serving and provided talent acquisition and HR support across the resort. • Led AUD$250k (c£130k) Oracle Taleo e-Recruitment Applicant Tracking System implementation project. Reduced agency fees and improved process efficiency saving AUD$537k (c£285k) over two years and reduced HR and payroll set up errors by over 25% with the associated Onboarding Self-Service portal. • Developed and implemented Resort-based college facility to provide hospitality training to interns/apprentices/career starters - achieved revenues over AUD$760k per year.
-
-
-
Radisson Hotel Group
-
Belgium
-
Hospitality
-
700 & Above Employee
-
Regional Director of Human Resources, AsiaPacific
-
Jan 2004 - Feb 2008
Now Radisson, with 150+ hotels throughout Asia Pacific. Brands included Regent, Radisson Blu, Radisson, Park Plaza, Park Inn, and Country Inn & Suites. Team of 35 across 6 countries, with a client group of 6,000 employees. Driving HR and strategic business initiatives and change both in-region and in central functions, and acting as escalation point for leadership, ER and union matters. • Established and implemented efficiency programmes in the HR function including virtual working, process frameworks and best practice sharing to support significant growth and expansion into emerging markets • Coordinated the pre-opening teams and oversaw mass-hire events of several hotels
-
-
-
Belmond
-
United Kingdom
-
Hospitality
-
700 & Above Employee
-
Regional Director of Human Resources, Australia
-
Dec 2000 - Dec 2003
Luxury hotels, train services and river cruises worldwide. Led in-country HR operation at time of significant growth through acquisition. Role heavily biased towards the integration of the new brands and entities, including robust HRIS and Payroll systems and implementing a HR Shared Services Centre. Provided strategic HR leadership and corporate governance for all business units to drive effective decision making and engagement in the team to get behind multiple change initiatives. Luxury hotels, train services and river cruises worldwide. Led in-country HR operation at time of significant growth through acquisition. Role heavily biased towards the integration of the new brands and entities, including robust HRIS and Payroll systems and implementing a HR Shared Services Centre. Provided strategic HR leadership and corporate governance for all business units to drive effective decision making and engagement in the team to get behind multiple change initiatives.
-
-
-
SOCOG: Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games
-
Australia
-
Entertainment Providers
-
1 - 100 Employee
-
Staffing Manager
-
Jan 2000 - Dec 2000
With over 50 000 paid, contract and volunteer staff in the Games Workforce, this project required the mobilisation of the largest peacetime workforce in Australia’s history. • Responsible for overseeing the Human Resources function of all 40 Olympic Venues with duties including management support, public record archiving, and media liaison. • The creation, adaptation, and maintenance of staffing policy & procedure. • Driven by operational necessity, facilitated major staff redeployments, contingency development and correct management practices including community engagement.
-
-
-
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C.
-
United States
-
Hospitality
-
700 & Above Employee
-
Assistant Director Of Human Resources
-
Oct 1996 - Dec 1999
Began HR career at The Ritz-Carlton, Double Bay (Sydney) Australia, before quickly being transferred to The Ritz-Carlton, Rancho Mirage in California USA, where I ran the HR Operations function. • Direct involvement in benefits administration, employee relations, recruitment and retention, employee communications, learning and development, workers’ compensation and legal matters • Two-time recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award where quality improvement and problem- solving procedures were applied, and standards established for all processes. • Participated in the pre-opening HR taskforce teams and mass-hire events of several hotels including: The Portman Ritz-Carlton Shanghai, The Ritz-Carlton New Orleans and The Ritz-Carlton Wolfsburg Germany.
-
-
Education
-
2016 - 2017
University of Gloucestershire
Lean Organisation Management Techniques
Community
