Meet our people

Video transcript

“Hi, my name is Helen, and I’m on the HR Graduate Scheme. I studied history at Warwick University.
I work in the Employment Relations team within UK Retail and Business Banking. I’ve got quite a big team, and they’re responsible for managing the relationship with our trade union ‘Unite’.

They also manage employment policies and procedures, as well as disciplinary, sickness and bereavement cases – and handle any complaints which come to the Senior Executives’ attention.
I’ve been exposed to lots of different things because my team is so varied. I attend the monthly Unite consultation, and manage the relationships we have with Unite and our HR business partners. That’s really interesting, because it gives me an understanding of the change programs we’re currently involved in. I’m also involved in policy projects, dealing with issues such as contracts and secondments. In addition, I’m learning how we deal with employment cases, when members of staff have grievances or disciplinaries.

Obviously Barclays is a large corporate organisation, and people know it from its high street branches and Barclaycard. But once you join, you realise the exposure we have in lots of different global markets, and find out more about all the areas we work in. You can do placements in all these different areas, and I’ve done my first two in completely separate ones – one in the Retail network, and one in the functions head office corporate environment. And then my third one, which will start is September, is totally different again. So you see that Barclays has so much variety and opportunity to offer its graduates.

I chose to work with Barclays because it was one of the few financial organisations which offered a straight HR Graduate scheme, and I was interested in joining an organisation to do HR. When I researched more about this scheme, I found out about the placements and the opportunities that are involved – as well as the support and training such as the SCRPD, which I could be involved in.
I have lots of support networks at Barclays. We have the team that we are working in, and also our Graduate team, which organises graduate events and training and that kind of thing. We also see a lot of the other Barclays graduates at social and work events, and we all get on really well.”