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Athalie Williams

Athalie Williams

HR Leadership
Digital Transformation
Change Management
Talent Management
Cultural Transformation
Professional Status
Employed
Available
About Me
Seasoned C-Suite executive with over 30 years of global expertise in business and workforce transformation. This profile demonstrates exceptional leadership in driving complex enterprise-wide transformation programs across telecommunications, mining, and financial services sectors. With deep specialisation in Human Resources, this executive has successfully led digital transformation initiatives, cultural change programs, and strategic workforce planning for major corporations including BT Group and BHP. Proven track record in delivering measurable business value through talent management, diversity & inclusion, and organisational redesign at the highest executive levels.

Chief People Officer

BHP
2015 to 2022
  • COVID-19 Response
    • Key member of BHP's Global COVID-19 Crisis Management Team
    • Led the rapid response to continuously changing requirements regarding people impacts, which encompassed moving substantial numbers of people, changing rosters and protecting our people
  • Leadership & Culture
    • Embedded an interconnected system of culture and capability development where culture is seen as a key enabler of business results
    • Launched new Engagement and Perception Survey (shifting from an annual survey to one every 100 days using Qualtrics), coupled with leader dashboard and analytics support to drive faster local action
  • Industrial Relations
    • Designed new IR strategies to support Chile and Australia and guided successful negotiations of multiple employee agreements which were concluded within mandate and with zero negative impacts on production
  • CEO & Executive Succession
    • Defined CEO talent and succession process with the Chair and the Board in preparation for future CEO change when it arose, subsequently supported the succession, selection and transition of new CEO and executive team
    • Partner with the CEO to maintain a robust and current slate of successors for Executive leadership roles, ensuring all have appropriate development plans in place
  • Future Skills
    • Led Board and management to define the strategic capabilities needed to execute BHP's business strategy, including sourcing, development and access to critical skills
    • Identified as an area of concern the widening gap between current skills and future requirements to successfully mine in the future. Assessed the baseline, and developed and launched the Digital Fluency learning program
  • Inclusion & Diversity
    • Spearheaded BHP's aspirational goal to achieve gender balance by 2025. In the 5 years since setting the goal female representation has increased from 17.6% in FY2017 to 29.7% at the end of FY2021 and a quarter of leadership positions are now held by women
      • Redesign of roles and work tasks to ensure universal accessibility, improved safety and efficiency and enable genuine flexible working options
      • Building inclusion and diversity into supply chain through industry engagement with partners
      • Mitigating bias through an annual gender pay gap review along with an ethnicity pay review pilot
      • Increased focus on eradicating sexual harassment and assault including improvements in security and facilities at residential camps
  • HR Transformation
    • Drove end to end redesign of HR function, established partnership with Accenture to outsource delivery of HR operations services, defined HR Digital (technology and data) roadmap and deployed leading HR technology solutions to transform HR delivery, Talent Acquisition, Learning and HR analytics
    • Focused on improving both customer experience and HR service delivery through a "zero based redesign" of the HR function, which subsequently reduced HR costs and headcount by more than 40%
  • BHP Operating Model Transformation
    • Led the evolution of BHP's organisation structure from a decentralised, regional structure to a global operating model, including enterprise review of spans of control, reduction in organisation layers and simplified ways of working to reduce costs and accelerate opportunities for further productivity under a global model