Part of the IT Leaders 100 - a list of the most influential IT leaders in the UK
Phil is a CIO and CTO with extensive international experience in business transformation, digitisation and technology. His expertise lies in using process change and technology to provoke and facilitate business change and disrupt established thinking. His mix of technical and commercial experience, having built a business from scratch and grown it until acquisition, have stood him in good stead in his career, working in businesses of many different sizes to plan and execute key changes.
Phil has been in the IT industry since the '80s, starting as a programmer at NMW Computers in 1984. Since then he has worked at a variety of organisations including Royal Mail, Kier Group and National Grid ESO.
How do you ensure diversity is taken into account in your IT recruitment?
Diversity and inclusion is always tough, but I've found using a diverse group of people to help with recruitment is the best way of attracting diverse talent e.g. videos of people from different backgrounds talking about why the company mission and change agenda is so exciting, and making sure that unconscious bias is removed by having diversity in the attracting and interviewing processes. That's how, at RMG, we had twice the national average female representation in IT.
Which technology are you currently most excited by?
I'm a massive fan of digital twins to search for process and digitisation improvements, plus we are only scratching the surface of analytics for most sectors.
What do you to unwind?
I walk and read - then travel when there's the opportunity. The world is still an amazing collection of peoples and cultures.
If you were an animal (other than human), which animal would you be and why?
I'd have to be a big-ish friendly dog, like a Labrador.
What makes you laugh?
Slapstick makes me laugh, as do my son's schoolboy jokes (most of which you know you've heard before, but they are still funny).
How did you get into IT?
I got into IT by chance. Needing a job, a school friend gave me her invite to an aptitude test. I was 'uninvited' but passed the test. And they gave me the next job going!! All history after that. I was also lucky to have done computer studies from 11, not many kids in the '70s got that early exposure!!
