Simon Eade

Simon is in charge of HR and facility management for Volvo Cars’ sales companies in the UK and Ireland. He is responsible for handling all local HR issues and the application of corporate HR guidelines in the market. Simon is also part of various project groups and networks within Volvo’s HR organisation that look at the development of corporate guidelines and tools especially within the area of learning and organisational development. He recently moved from the Head Office in Sweden where he was responsible for corporate leadership development. In this role, Simon worked out a new segmentation of leaders and project managers for the company and reworked the entire leadership development offer in line with this segmentation. Volvo’s training offer was revamped to incorporate blended learning, a new IT platform to support classroom activities and managerial involvement, as well as the usage of social media to support learning. From 2011-2013, Simon was head of the organisational development project rolling out Volvo’s revised company culture organisation-wide using the top 150 leaders to drive a cascading “leaders training leaders” concept. In addition to this,Simon also worked in a project to form a European dealer training organisation whereby dealer training staff would cooperate across the region whilst ensuring local delivery in the markets, working with alignment and execution. Simon’s extensive experience as a line HR manager in two countries (France and the UK)  and four and a half years in a central function (Sweden) rolling out corporate guidelines, projects and organisational development initiatives,gives him credible insight into the politics of internal HR departments. He is currently the only person working in Volvo’s HR organisation today with such extensive experience working both within corporate HR and  markets outside their historical home in Sweden. He will be applying his expertise during the workshop on Day 1 defining ‘How to unleash the strategic power of HR Business Partners’.