As the HR and business change stream lead for the new $520m greenfields factory at Darfield, there were some specific challenges for us to overcome. Fonterra was building eth world’s largest spray dryer and I needed to ensure we could source in excess of 100 highly skilled people to run a state of the art plant, close to a provincial town. In addition to this, as we were recruiting from other internal sites, as well as direct competitors, we were highly focussed on ensuring that we developed the positive culture and environment that would enable people to succeed; and to not just allow an unintended culture to develop organically. I also needed to ensure that all of the complex training needs were met to ensure that plant could meet it commissioning targets. We developed a clear and specific sourcing and integration strategy that identified clear competencies, technical skills and behaviours; as well as a very robust onboarding and development programme to ensure success.
This “once in a lifetime project” was highly successful and as well as all resourcing being in place on time, the factory performed extremely well and exceeded performance expectations extremely quickly.