Virtual Chief People Officer Service

Our virtual Chief People Officer (vCPO) service offers your business the benefits of having an experienced and highly skilled CPO without the cost of hiring someone full time. We believe that all businesses (no matter what size) should be able to access fantastic People Experience talent for their organisation and for this reason, we’ve created an exciting new service where we will work alongside you, within your budget and toward your specific needs to bring in some incredible vCPO talent. 

FAQs

  • A virtual Chief People Officer fulfills all parts of a Chief People Officer’s role, but in a part time capacity, focusing on the areas that you specifically need at that time in your business’ journey and making the best use of your time and money. Depending on where your business is at and the needs you have for your people, your virtual Chief People Officer could be focused on:

    • Building great talent pipelines and recruitment processes to help you scale well

    • Helping with retaining your current people, very important in this market!

    • Creating policies and processes to help you support your organisation to thrive and grow

    • Setting up your people strategy and being involved in the strategic planning of your company

    • Providing a general sounding board for your people and responding to their needs as they learn more and become part of your team

    • Many more things

    The idea is that it’s super flexible to suit your needs so it can look like whatever you’d like!

  • We believe that our mission and values, our experience and our community makes us a great partner for you and your business. We truly live our values and that means that when you work alongside us to bring great talent into your organisation, you can trust that they’re also values-driven and will truly live our BloomHQ values as well as your organisation’s values. You can read more about our values here (please do!).

    When you bring in a vCPO with BloomHQ, they will also be a part of a wider team of ‘Bloomers’, other HR and People Experience folks, who will provide them with the support, resources, training and insights to help them grow their own skills while working with you. This is a hugely important part of this service - we believe that building a strong network that sits behind our vCPOs is key to making sure we’re all staying on top of trends, best practices, learning new and innovative ways of doing things, and taking them back to your business to embed and improve outcomes for your organisation and your people.

  • When beginning this journey with us at BloomHQ, we will work with you to understand where you’re at and find someone who would be a great fit for whatever stage your company is at, for your specific needs and for your values. Once we’ve talked about your specific needs, we will go out to market to find you a great vCPO to interview and make sure they’re the right addition to your team. This may even look like finding someone at a different experience level than C-suite level too, such as a People Experience Manager or Coordinator - we’re really open to hearing what you need and responding to what is best for the stage of your company.

    What the recruitment and onboarding journey looks like can be really different depending on your needs so we’ll work with you on what this can look like. From there, once we find the right person for you, we will set up great communication processes between you, BloomHQ and your new vCPO so that there’s tonnes of support and ongoing evaluation of your needs. As your needs change, we’ll work with you to pull different levers to match those needs - this could look like increasing the hours your vCPO spends with you, bringing in additional people or finding more specialist support.

  • Get in touch with us today to discuss your needs and we’ll work together to create an incredible partnership to support your people and your company. Email us at hello@bloomhq.co.nz to set up a chat.

Our virtual Chief People Officers

Tamara Buckland

What is your experience? Where have you worked before BloomHQ?

I've worked in many cool places, from banks to government departments, VFX studios, software development agencies, fintech companies and more. I've also run my own businesses, including owning and managing a live music venue in Wellington for many years. I've done a lot of stuff and for me, that's one of the biggest strengths I have - the ability to jump into different contexts and understand how to create bespoke experiences that are appropriate for that business.

My main experience in the HR/PX space was with Sharesies, starting as the Head of People Experience and growing a brand-new team of 9 amazing PX practitioners across NZ and AU. That was a hugely impactful experience that gave me the gift of learning to navigate many growth challenges and cement my own values as a PX leader.

What part of VCPO-ing do you excel at, or love doing?

Honestly, I love all of it because I love the variety that being a vCPO gives you. I love jumping from recruitment into talking about organisational structure and then straight into a convo about leadership development. It's all juicy stuff!

I really excel when it comes to the early stages of our vCPO relationship where we're assessing the needs of the org appropriate to where you're currently at and where you're heading and then resourcing those areas and prioritising projects based on that. Essentially just getting clear on how we're going to meet your strategic vision from a people perspective and then just getting those things prioritised and done.

I also very much enjoy supporting businesses with their strategic planning, not only from a people perspective but more broadly than that - helping companies to get really clear on where we're going together, how we want to empower your people to get there and what shifts we need to make to get it really humming.

I've had excellent feedback participating and making space for crucial conversations. I enjoy helping companies to grow and flex their courage muscles so that we can have honest and empowering conversations, even when they're touching on difficult subjects.

Why you? Why should a company choose you?

I think if you're up for having someone that is deeply empathetic but also isn't afraid to say things that need to be said, then I'm your person!

I've worked hard on cultivating skills to help me manage the balance of being someone who creates lots of safe and empathetic spaces while also being someone who isn't afraid to share hard feedback or challenge an organisation to do things differently/better if I believe it will serve your people and business well.

I believe you should work with me if you also want a vCPO who is going to be able to quickly understand your environment and adapt to your vibe so we can start getting into value-add stuff straight away.

This looks like not trying to put in processes that are too big for your company or make things too complicated and it also looks like listening to your people to get a sense of where priorities are.

I'm also funny (or at least I think I am) and build rapport quickly with teams which can put a lot of companies at ease about bringing in part-time vCPO.

What is your vision for the future of business?

I would love to see all companies feel a lot more confident and capable in building an environment that serves their people and communities well. I think there's way too much variance in what ‘employee experience’ is between different companies and the impact that has on people, their communities and the planet is huge. I'd like to see a world where we all understand what good looks like and we're all trying to aim for that and hold each other accountable too. I reckon a lot of that has to do with leadership capability and behaviour and so I'd like to see more courage in the way we talk about leaders and their role.

Nik Shute

What is your experience? Where have you worked before BloomHQ?

I have worked in finance, insurance, banking and product management for 16 years. I was a people leader for almost all of this and have worked with HR teams to solve many people-related opportunities and challenges.

A few years ago, I left the product management/banking world behind and dove into the tech industry in a PX/HR space. I found my calling here! In a purely PX/HR capacity, I have worked with tech companies, charities, research and training org, builders, mortgage advisers and a company that created and maintains an Ethereum virtual world.

What part of VCPO-ing do you excel at, or love doing?

Oh my gosh, there is too much to decide from... performance and growth development frameworks that create love and empowerment. Supporting organisations to create values and missions that live and breathe throughout the organisation and become helpful in making decisions. Creating and weaving in wellbeing and psychology safety practices throughout an organisation so they can be more productive, effective, and maximise profit potential!

Why you? Why should a company choose you?

I have worked across many industries now, and many different-sized organisations, as well as those for and not-for-profit. My experience of the operational/implementation end of things HR and PX means I can relate to what it is like to live HR policy and processes.

I have seen where they can really support a person, and also (unfortunately) where they have let someone down. It has been my mission to make PX and HR an empowering support system for all members of an organisation.

I have implemented many programmes, frameworks and directly supported many organisations, from their internal communications, hiring and onboarding approach, values, mission, vision, strategy creation and/or review, employer branding, wellbeing strategy, performance and growth framework, facilitated team connection sessions, run re-organisations, competency frameworks, policy and process review and creation, senior and people leadership coaching and support, psychological safety and trust work, and much more.

I have loved the partnership with each organization and creating PX solutions that fit the values and needs to achieve their mission and vision, and our mission to support the creation of thriving organisations!

What is your vision for the future of business?

Work environments where the whole authentic human is supported and celebrated will enable each organisation to work towards their 'why' in the most effective way possible.