Katherine Wenbourne

I started my career in 2003 as an HR Administrator for a recruitment company in London and joined the Banking team at A&O a year later. Over the next six years, I progressed to Senior HR Manager, supporting fee-earners across various practice groups. I gained generalist HR experience and valuable insights into the business whilst building up a strong internal network.

After the birth of my first child in 2011, I took advantage of A&O’s flexible working policy and reduced my working week to four days. During my second maternity leave, we moved out of London to Suffolk. I expected that I would need to find a local role, as a long daily commute would be unmanageable. However, after discussing these concerns with my manager, I was delighted to be offered a global HR project role on an annualised hours basis. This allowed me the flexibility to work from home more regularly. In this role, I worked on varied and interesting global initiatives such as rolling out our new approach to performance development, launching our employee satisfaction survey, embedding our flexible working policy, and leading the work around our employee value proposition. The projects role not only fit around my growing family, but also gave me exposure to strategic discussions with senior leaders across the business, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Although I loved the projects role, I was keen to continue to push myself and remained open to trying something new. My husband and I had talked about living overseas prior to having children but hadn’t considered making the move with a young family. Nonetheless, my interest was piqued when I saw an internal posting for a Head of HR role for the Middle East. The more we discussed the opportunity, the more excited we became. Once I was offered the role, the global mobility team organised a pre-visit for us to look at schools and nurseries and explore possible areas to live, which was invaluable as I’d never been to Dubai. Within three months, we were boarding a plane for the start of our new adventure.

My husband took on some flexible consultancy work when we arrived and embraced the opportunity to spend more time with the children. Once his job search began, he initially found it challenging to find a suitable role, so we were grateful for the local spousal support that A&O provided. The face-to-face sessions helped him to navigate the local job market, and he is now in a role that he finds both fulfilling and career enhancing.

The support I received from my new team, the Middle East partners and management team, and the wider A&O network, was invaluable, and certainly aided my transition into the role. In particular, the encouragement and sponsorship I received, both from my manager in the UK and the managing partner in Dubai, gave me the confidence to ‘give it a go’! I haven’t looked back, and today I oversee a large jurisdiction, which allows me to be involved in all aspects of generalist HR such as partner development, coaching, talent management, employee relations, diversity, wellbeing and payroll. I have also implemented initiatives I led during my project role in London.

Although I was initially worried about uprooting the children, they have really benefitted from attending an international school and spending weekends at the beach and the desert. Since moving to Dubai almost three years ago, we have enjoyed a stream of visitors from home, which has helped to maintain connection with friends and family. The longer we are here, the more settled we feel, and we have made some wonderful friends within the expat community. It will be difficult to leave when the time comes!

A&O is a fantastic global organisation, and I’ve seen an increasing number of people moving around the network during my time here. My advice would be to always remain open to opportunities and new challenges and to be brave and ambitious. Going on secondment or transferring to another office provides you with the same benefits as starting a new job – gaining new experiences and building connections – whilst remaining with A&O and having the security and support that provides.