Natasha Cuthbert, AHRI’s 2023 HR Leader of the Year Award recipient, has devised innovative strategies to infuse a “blokey” culture with gender equality and inclusion.

When Natasha Cuthbert MAHRI explained to her children what she did at work, she used to say, “I help people be happy in their jobs.” 

It’s a simplistic description that echoes her professional purpose: to create a workplace where everyone can be their best self.

“It’s important to be our authentic self at work rather than having a work persona and a home persona,” she says. “Creating a diverse and inclusive environment is what really drives me.”

Happy employees are also good for business, she adds, which is why Cuthbert feels frustrated when people label HR a “soft profession”.

“HR people have to have a really strong backbone and commercial background. It’s about getting the best out of people to get the right commercial outcomes, but doing the right thing by them while you do it. I think making that connection is the most powerful thing you can do as an HR professional.”

Cuthbert’s achievements as Chief People and Culture Officer at Viva Energy Australia led to her winning AHRI’s 2023 HR Leader of the Year Award, a recognition she describes as “very humbling”.

“It’s a very positive endorsement of the great job we’re doing in terms of looking after our people, making the employee experience amazing and delivering our business strategy through a really great people strategy.” 

Of Cuthbert’s win, the AHRI judges said she “clearly understands the importance of listening… in developing HR activities”.

“Her capacity to truly ‘hear’ the voice of her workforce has led to the design of a meaningful EVP framework, leadership framework and D&I framework, which has created true business impact,” they said.

While Cuthbert has no doubt the award will benefit her career, she confesses she had to be “coaxed” into the nomination. 

“While I’m always very keen to make sure that our Viva Energy LinkedIn profile highlights the great things we’re doing on gender equality, flexibility or family, for example, I’m not really someone who personally works ‘out loud’,” she says.

An unexpected passion for inclusion

Though it could appear Cuthbert was always destined for a career in HR, it wasn’t her first ambition.

“My initial degree was in Zoology. I wanted to care for endangered species. I was very passionate about the environment and conservation,” she says.

But then a working holiday role in the UK after university gave her a taste of HR. She dipped her toes into performance management and wrote disciplinary reviews, which she found surprisingly interesting. 

“It’s in those challenging environments where you can really make a difference as an HR professional.” – Natasha Cuthbert MAHRI, Chief People and Culture Officer, Viva Energy Australia

Returning to Australia, she worked for a consulting firm that guided organisations on their strategic vision and values, before working on graduate and mid-level leadership programs.

“I became fascinated by organisational dynamics, team culture and how to get the best out of people at work – so human behaviour, as opposed to animal behaviour.”

Three years later, an offer from Coles Myer gave her the chance to work within the heart of a business, and she revelled in new opportunities to manage operational HR through the supermarkets business and then move onto more corporate programs, such as improving Indigenous employment across supermarkets, early work on the gender pay gap, and starting to think about how to embrace LGBTQIA+ Pride.

But after 15 years at the retail giant, she was hankering for “a really big challenge”.

When an opportunity came up at Viva Energy in 2020, it was the perfect marriage of her environmental passion and desire to make a real difference to people’s lives.

“Oil and gas has to change; we won’t be putting petrol in cars forever,” she says. “And the only way a business like Viva Energy is going to thrive in the future is to have a really strong transformation plan. 

“[The company] has a very clear vision of how it needs to change and I wanted to be part of driving that transformation. For the first time, I have the whole HR department reporting to me. That has been instrumental in reshaping how the people and culture agenda impacts the company. To be given that opportunity has been pretty special.”

Challenging assumptions about gender equality

Passionate about diversity and gender inclusion, Cuthbert also knew that in such a “male-dominated industry that has a bit of a blokey culture”, she could have a real impact. While there was already a push underway to recruit more women, there was a long way to go.

“In our 2020 employee engagement survey, there were comments like, ‘Why do you have to be a female to get a job around here? Men do a better job. They’re better qualified.’ I could see it wasn’t great and that there was plenty of work to do on changing attitudes.”

Fast-forward four years and it’s a completely different picture.

By challenging the assumption that these roles need to be performed on a full-time basis and that prior industry experience is necessary, the representation of women in frontline shift-based roles at Viva Energy’s Geelong refinery has increased from nine per cent in 2018 to 26 per cent in 2023 – an increase that impressed the AHRI judges.

Furthermore, Cuthbert has broadened its diversity pillars from Gender and First Nations to also include Culture, Families, Abilities and Pride.

Among other initiatives that helped secure her the title of AHRI’s HR Leader of the Year, she introduced the ‘Say it Again’ campaign, designed to give employees a safe phrase to use if they experience casual sexism or racism; extra domestic and family violence leave, which is paid time off for employees to find safe and secure housing; and culture and ceremonial leave, which enables team members to observe a religious or cultural day of significance.

“HR people have to have a really strong backbone and commercial background. It’s about getting the best out of people to get the right commercial outcomes, but doing the right thing by them while you do it.” – Natasha Cuthbert MAHRI, Chief People and Culture Officer, Viva Energy Australia

“If people see that our organisation supports MidSumma Pride March, that we’re working with specialist autism services, that we love to see people dressed up in traditional Indian clothes for Diwali, inclusivity feels real and genuine,” she says.

“In our employee engagement survey we no longer see comments about why you’d hire a female over a male. Instead, we see comments like, ‘I have a gay daughter and it’s amazing that I feel that I can talk about her freely at work.’”

While Cuthbert says there’s “always work to be done”, she’s very proud of Viva Energy’s progress.

“It’s in those challenging environments where you can really make a difference as an HR professional. That’s rewarding.”

A values-based approach to transformation

Cuthbert has further challenges on the horizon in terms of Viva Energy’s transformation journey. The company took over Coles Express in May, which brought the number of people across the business from 1500 to 7500. With its more recent acquisition of convenience store operator On the Run, the number of employees will swell to 15,000 later this year.

Cuthbert’s team will be tasked with uniting the three different businesses.

“Each business unit will have a unique culture – the convenience and mobility unit will be different to the culture in our infrastructure business, and that’s okay.”

As the world moves into more sustainable fuels, Cuthbert is aware that business will need to evolve.

“How we morph into a different organisational shape in terms of purpose and vision is very much on our minds.”

She’s confident her Smart with Heart concept will help to cultivate Viva Energy’s leaders of the future. This is a framework defining the competencies that enable its leaders to be successful, and includes things such as: safety first, strategic vision, customer centricity, collaboration, performance and accountability.

“We have a lot of clever people here, but if you’re smart without the heart, you’re not going to get cut-through. We want people to be business leaders and people leaders. So we built a set of smart competencies and heart competencies that frame our leadership program.”

Cuthbert believes a good HR strategy is not only about attracting and retaining top talent, but also about asking the right questions. 

“Getting the complete picture is crucial whether it’s a personal or an organisational matter,” she says. “That’s how we find solutions and create a positive impact.”

A longer version of this article first appeared in the February/March 2024 edition of HRM Magazine.

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