Listen: In this episode of the Employee Benefits podcast, Beverley Hamblet-Bowes, director of HR at Nominet, talks about how the organisation takes a total reward approach to benefits, and how it ensures that it is fair and consistent among all employee groups.
Hamblet-Bowes explains that Nominet’s aim is to provide a wide range of benefits that allow individuals to tailor their package to meet their needs, whether this is by using salary sacrifice arrangements for nursery fees or to buy an electric vehicle, schemes that support health and wellbeing, or discounts on the products and services they use regularly.
At a glance:
Nominet is the official registry for .UK domain names and, as a public benefit organisation, is driven by a commitment to use technology to improve connectivity, security and inclusivity online.
For 25 years, Nominet has developed an expertise in the Domain Name System (DNS) that now underpins sophisticated threat monitoring, detection, prevention, and analytics that is used by governments to mitigate cyber threats. Its social impact programme provides funding, support and opportunities to help tackle some of the most important digital issues facing young people in the UK today.
Some of the typical job families in Nominet include project management, corporate functions, engineering and technical, product development, data management, sales and customer service, and executives.
It has between 250 and 300 employees. The average age of staff is 41 and the average length of service is five years.
Primary business objectives that impact on benefits for the coming year:
- Continue to reinforce Nominet’s role as a public benefit organisation.
- Grow its business units.
- Transform its technology.
- Ensure it lead an efficient and sustainable business.
- Attract and retain talent.
Career history
Beverley Hamblet-Bowes joined Nominet in May 2017, having held the previous roles of group HR business partner and global head of HR for transformational change at RS Components, and head of HR – support centres at New Look.
While at RS Components, Hamblet-Bowes worked on a regional Asia-Pacific (APAC) transformation project with colleagues from each operating company. “There were significant cultural challenges and experiences working to create a people strategy and function to deliver the growth ambitions and changes across the region,” she explains. “But I’m most proud as it supported the APAC team to grow and develop, as well as myself, working with so many different cultures and HR contexts.”
Hamblet-Bowes is also proud of the work she has done to change the perception of HR and persevering with introducing true business partnering into the organisation to get a seat at the table. In her current role, she is proud to “build a great HR team at Nominet to keep evolving the employee value proposition (EVP) and people strategy to support business delivery”.