Biography
- Chairman of the Enterprise M3's Local Economic Partnership's Global Competitiveness Through People Board.
- Founding member of Business South and now Chair of the Business South HR Forum.
- Reference partner for Enterprise Ireland on human resource start-up companies.
- Southampton Fairness Commissioner.
- An advisory board member of the Iventiv Board- a knowledge exchange company for Senior HR professionals in leading companies globally.
- Geoff has been asked and has given presentations to audiences both nationally and internationally.
Geoff's highlight was joining the panel with a Swedish Government Minister, a leading member of the opposition and a Swedish Learning expert at Almedalsveckan on Gotland (an annual event when the Swedish political elite gather with interested citizens to discuss themes of importance to the country). His task was to discuss whether Sweden has what it needs in terms of competence to compete internationally. Geoff was honoured as a non-Swede to be involved on the panel.
Further information
Geoff has 32 years of industry experience, both nationally and internationally.
Prior to taking up lecturing in September 2014 Geoff was the head of human resources for the Ford Southampton assembly plant. In this role he oversaw the closure of the plant and the creation of two new Ford businesses in Southampton. He was responsible for developing a comprehensive social plan which helped to minimise and mitigate the impact of the plant closure.
Prior to returning to the UK in August 2012 Geoff lived in Sweden for six years, where he worked for the Volvo Car Corporation. He held the following global, vice president positions: learning and development, talent management and people and business strategy integration.
As vice-president of people and business strategy integration, Geoff was part of a small cross-functional team which developed the business plan for the “new Volvo”, which emerged after the purchase of the famous Swedish brand by a Chinese company. He took the lead on developing a new people strategy for the business. This strategy secured the support of the global operating leadership team and the board of the company. Additionally, in this position, Geoff developed the strategic approach to the transformation of the global HR function, necessary to support the new business direction and the new people strategy. He was also responsible for programme management of this HR change journey- one which involved structural, cultural and competence shifts.
Prior to this role Geoff was charged with establishing a new, global centre of expertise for talent management at Volvo Cars. His responsibilities included integrating the talent management activities within themselves and aligning talent management to the needs of the business. Developing strategies, frameworks, processes, products, services and tools to assist operating management to build the organisational capability needed to meet business commitments in the short, medium and long term.
His responsibilities included; workforce planning, employer branding/employer of choice, competence management, recruitment, competence development, leadership development, organisational development/change management, diversity, career and succession planning, work culture development, talent engagement and retention, non traditional partnerships and public funding.
During this time, Volvo was acquired by Chinese Company and Geoff gained a very good insight in to Chinese/European business similarities and differences. His team took the lead on the organisational development work to support the creation of a new, larger and stronger Volvo China, including the establishment of Chinese manufacturing facilities.
Prior to taking up this talent management role, Geoff was vice president, learning and development for the Volvo Car Corporation, from February 2007. He created a corporate learning and development business service centre from the functionally aligned training activities, which had previously existed in Volvo. As a result of this Volvo was able to realise "more for less" in terms of competence development activity and to assure the quality of learning outcomes on a corporate basis.
Prior to this, he had been working for Ford Motor Company in a number of different human resources positions both in England and overseas, interfacing with most of the company's business activities in the process.
