The odds-on favourite

If you were a betting soul, you’d probably put an accumulator on Karen Myers to land at a big brand. During her career she’s gone from M&S, to Barclays, to Tesco, to BT, to RSA Insurance, and has just arrived as the new HRD of William Hill.

In her previous role at RSA, she introduced successful apprenticeship and mentoring schemes, made all the more impressive by her truly epic commute — three and a half hours each way, necessitating a wake up time of 5:15am. We get tired just thinking about it. Hopefully her new job is a little closer to home.

William Hill has been busy lately, what with a flurry of royal baby name betting and preparations for last minute election punters. The company also posted its worst ever recorded week of betting which happened in January, after a long string of favourites won their games in the Premier League.

Karen Myers describes herself as a big Wolverhampton Wanderers fan, so she probably doesn’t worry too much about such troubles at the top.

Despite new taxes on gaming machines and that shaky Q1, William Hill has generally been hitting steady profit for a long time. It’s not hard to see why: just the other day somebody placed £30,000 on the Conservatives winning an outright majority – despite all current pointers suggesting that they will fall short of that mark. It is estimated the public will bet £100 million on the outcome of the election.

Whatever the election results, she’s odds on favourite to do a bang up job for their HR. We wish her the best in her new role.

About the author

Jerome Langford

Jerome is a graduate in Philosophy from St Andrews, who alternately spends time writing about HR and staring wistfully out of windows, thinking about life’s bigger questions: Why are we here? How much lunch is too much lunch? What do you mean exactly by ‘final warning’?