LEADING UK outsourcing specialist MITIE has appointed Katherine Thomas as its new Group HR director, overseeing 57,000 employees at the FTSE250 company.
Katherine brings a wealth of experience to the role, having previously worked at competitor Serco Group plc as head of its best practice centre.
She is a member of the executive board and reports to the CEO Ruby McGregor-Smith, and will be mainly based at MITIE’s London headquarters.
The 44-year-old joins from BT plc where she was group talent and leadership director, responsible for the end-to-end talent agenda for BT’s 105,000 employees across the globe.
Her brief at BT included all aspects of talent management: from recruitment, identification and development, to deployment, engagement and retention. In this role, Katherine was a member of BT’s HR Leadership Team, the group who set BT’s people agenda.
Before joining BT in 2005, Katherine was managing director of the Serco Best Practice Centre.
Previously she was a management consultant for eleven years, working at both Deloitte Consulting and HayGroup.
Welcoming Ms Thomas, Mrs McGregor-Smith said: “We are delighted to welcome Katherine, who has the skills and experience to ensure that all of the talented individuals at MITIE get the best possible opportunities to grow and develop their careers.
“It is an important position and we all look forward to working very successfully with her.”
Katharine said: “I am delighted to be joining MITIE Group, a leading UK employer which clearly recognises that its employees are at the heart of its success and acts accordingly.
“The huge diversity of the business, with so many units spread across multiple sectors, means this will be a challenging and exciting job.
“Every company says their people are their greatest asset – it’s my role to ensure that this is a genuine differentiator for MITIE.”
-ENDS-
For further information and a picture of Katherine Thomas please contact:
Chris Watts, Bell Pottinger
T: 020 7861 2859 / 07738 817 912
E: cwatts@Bell-Pottinger.co.uk
Notes for editors
What is MITIE?
We’re the strategic outsourcing company. What does that mean in practice? We manage facilities, properties and assets for our clients across the UK and beyond.
We work with our clients in three ways; some take full advantage of our whole range of expertise, others may only need one aspect of what we do:
Strategy and consultancy
+ Facilities and project management
+ Service delivery
Our strategic input can add value at the highest level by helping clients to manage their assets, while our practical management expertise can save customers money and reduce their carbon emissions. We work with a vast number of clients in every industry across both the public and private sectors and deliver the broadest range of services that can be found in one place: from integrated facilities management to engineering maintenance to lifecycle energy management and much more.
There’s a lot more to MITIE than you probably think. We’re a big company with big ambitions – a leading FTSE 250 support services business, with more than 56,000 people, revenues in excess of £1.7bn, and a reputation for being the best.
Visit us at www.mitie.com