“That's not in the budgetâ€', five simple words that can send a brilliant idea hurtling into the too hard basket.

Many of us HR folk are familiar with this soul crushing phrase, none more so than Michelle Farrar-Eagles, GM HR of General Pants. But this hasn't stopped her pushing for what she wants to achieve (she recently spearheaded a recruiting campaign that saw 20,000 people join their talent community in just two weeks).

She's found a clever way to overcome the ‘no budget' hurdle in order to find the all-important money to drive HR innovation.

Watch this 2 minute video from her presentation at HR Innovation & Tech Fest 2016 to discover her simple idea.

Transcript

I don't have a massive budget, we're a retail business, but if I had a dollar for every time he said to me, “You know what? It's not in the budget…â€' I challenge you guys, when you go back to your department for next financial year, delete everything that you did last year and look at the actual pool of money that you have and work out where you're going to get the best results to spend it. Is it with your current vendors? Is it not? Is it going to be doing the same things that you've been doing year after year after year, or do you need to do something differently? And then look at what you've got and how you can spend it, because if it's not working for you, there's no point in continually doing the same thing over and over again.

I remember one of the first comments that the team shared with me when I first joined General Pants. Summer Casual Recruitment was coming up… and for those that are familiar with the amount of people that need to be recruited in a short period of time, know it's an intense experience. They said “It's so manual, we use so much paper from resumes, to contracts, tax file dec etc ….…â€' and I'm like, “Right, so what are we going to do about it?â€' and they're like, “What do you mean?â€' and I'm like, “Well, if it didn't work last year, why are we going to do the same thing this year?â€' and they're like, “What else can we do?â€' and I was like, “Let's find a solution – we can change this,  what do we want to do?â€' A lot of end-to-end solutions can sometimes cost a lot of money. Sometimes you don't need the end-to-end, you might need one or two sections of it to integrate with what you're doing to make a difference and solve a problem.

I've had numerous debates over the years about whether an end-to-end solutions versus lots of other products integrated together is the answer, and to be honest I don't know, because at the end of the day it comes down to what our individual challenges are within our businesses and what problems we're trying to solve. For some businesses it might be an end-to-end solution, but for others that are a bit more niche or have different needs, it might be the integration of a lot of different solutions.

Sometimes if you want to make things happen, and you really want to make things happen, you've got to let go of something else. We can't afford to do everything. I can't afford to buy all the clothes I'd love to buy, so you've got to choose what's important to you. What are your priorities, and ultimately what experience do you want your consumers to have? What do you want them to go out and say about the experience of applying for a role or working for your business? And then you've just got to do it, you've got to take action. There's a lot of talk about people trying things or wanting to do things, but it's all in the execution, and if you don't actually do anything you're never going to get the results.

Previously a lawyer, Michelle Farrar-Eagles swapped the courtroom for a retail fitting room. As the GM HR at General Pants, she builds and leads high performing teams that partner with the business to drive commercial outcomes, strong relationships and operational excellence – all with the two end goals in mind the employee and customer experience. She has a passion for technology and is constantly challenging the boundaries traditional HR people tend to play in.

Michelle was a top-rated speaker at HR Innovation & Tech Fest 2016.