From Sky to Ground: Orikan CPO Emma Norman Drives Growth

If Emma Norman, CPO at Orikan, could go back in time and advise her younger self as she embarked on her HR career, she would recommend focusing on self-compassion and building a supportive network of women.

“In my 20s, I had a real chip on my shoulder – I was so concerned that I wasn’t good enough,” Emma said, reflecting on her early career. “I think what I would say to her is ‘just be a little bit gentler on yourself and recognise you are surrounded with amazing women. They will lift you up, support you, champion you and your career.”

Emma’s HR career path has been anything but linear. It began, almost by accident, in Dublin, where she found herself working as a recruitment consultant – a role she quickly discovered didn’t align with her strengths.

“I discovered that I loved working with people, but I didn’t like selling them,” Emma candidly shared. This early realisation prompted her to pursue a career in HR, where she could work more closely inside businesses to create positive employee experiences.

Building a Diverse Career Portfolio

Emma’s career has been characterised by diversity, spanning large corporate environments, scale-ups, and now in a PE-backed business. She has worked across financial services, superannuation, investments, and operations, accumulating valuable experiences that have shaped her approach as a people leader.

A critical moment in her journey came when Emma was working at ME Bank as a business partner and felt ready for a new challenge. When the Chief Marketing Officer mentioned Emma’s ambition for change to the executive team, the COO offered her an opportunity – if she could pitch for it.

“I agonised over it,” Emma recalled. “I wrote this whole thing, playing on the bank’s brand: ‘Pick ME’ about the role, about me, about what I could bring to it, what I didn’t have and why that was okay, and how I had transferable knowledge.”

Emma’s pitch did the trick. She was appointed Head of Complex Customer Disputes, managing a team of lawyers and specialists dealing with the bank’s most challenging cases, despite never having spoken to a bank customer before. The opportunity proved to be invaluable, providing her with insight into how HR functions are perceived by others within the business.

“As part of a large Operations function and senior leadership team, I got to drive in the ‘mechanic’s car’, and I realised how opaque people functions can be to deal with,” she explained. “I realised the amount of language and terminology we use (in HR) that makes total sense to us makes no sense to others... and I realised that the time we often expect leaders to dedicate to engaging and leading their people can be unrealistic within the constraints of a day… For some in HR it’s a full time role to think about how to build, manage, grow and motivate teams, but if you haven’t understood the broader complexity of the average day, week or year of the business leaders in your organisation, even the best intentioned initiatives will fail to cut through to value.  You need to be willing to ask yourself, your team, and your business stakeholders, will those ideas really work in this business? Is that what’s needed in this business now, or is it just what the latest HR focus is? I learned a lot about what didn’t work about the way in which HR can fail to cut through during my time in that job. And I just loved it.”

The Private Equity Difference

Emma’s transition to Orikan presented a new set of challenges. Unlike her previous experiences in established corporations with robust infrastructure, working in a PE-backed company required her to be more strategic with a smaller team.

Compounding the challenges, Orikan was the result of a recent merger between three companies in Australia and New Zealand.

Starting “almost from scratch” she had to build a people function while simultaneously merging three distinct business cultures and ways of working: within the confines of a tight budget.

The pressure to deliver results quickly is significant in the PE environment, Emma said; however, she has found this refreshing.

“It’s very clear what you’re there to deliver. You’re there to deliver a very crisp return in a relatively short period of time, and it sharpens you in a way that I think is quite refreshing.”

Managing Diverse Teams

At Orikan, Emma manages an incredibly diverse workforce – from blue-collar warehouse workers to large teams of IT developers – requiring her to adapt her communication styles constantly.

“It challenges you to think creatively... how do you find ways to create and communicate solutions that will connect with a parking officer who has email and Teams on their phone but isn’t necessarily interested in either?”

To find solutions, she found herself drawing on her previous experience at DeepBlue Company, where she managed a team in the Philippines. This experience, she said, taught her to be flexible in her leadership approach, recognising that different cultural contexts require different frameworks.

“It took me time to genuinely understand that in a culture and in a community where trust in government or the systems around you can be low  – because they simply don’t operate in a way that we have the privilege of here in Australia – people have a different approach to work and life… they operate by strict rules because that provides security. Because I’m not policy-driven or rules-based, I had to challenge myself and learn how to provide people with appropriate structure while empowering them to feel safe to make decisions, knowing that they’re not going to be punished if they make a mistake.”

Practical Approaches to People Management

Emma prides herself on being pragmatic – so much so that external leadership partners call her the “Cheerful Pragmatic Officer”. And her practical approach has shaped Orikan’s people initiatives, focusing on simple but effective programs rather than complex frameworks.

For example, she launched a ‘Success Framework’ which simply connects Orikan’s success to individual success through a clearly defined activity, reflection and feedback cycle.  This framework utilises positive and constructive language, designed to alleviate the fear and anxiety associated with traditional performance frameworks.   She also created a recognition program called “Extra Milers” (the parking theme) – a simple peer nomination system that generated an impressive 280 nominations in a business of 400 people within just a few months.

“It’s about identifying things that make people feel good about coming to work, that help them feel seen, recognised, celebrated and connected,” Emma explained. “It’s not rocket science. It’s helping them understand why the business exists and believing that the work they do adds value to that.”

And as a leader of a small team, she said she is responsible for both strategising and implementing HR programs “from sky to ground”.

Her approach has yielded impressive results. In just 12 months, Orikan’s engagement score jumped from 64 to 72, a significant improvement that reflects the effectiveness of Emma’s people-first strategy that supports an organisation delivering exceptional performance across every business metric.

Continuous Learning Through Connection

While Emma admits formal education isn’t her preferred learning style, she continuously develops her skills through connections and curiosity.

“I’m a bit more of a magpie – a true generalist. I listen to podcasts and YouTube and learn through doing and observing others who are at the top of their game; I have such a firm belief that this is the best way to learn.”

Her network of professional women has also been instrumental in her development and career opportunities. “Women are the best,” Emma enthused, acknowledging that often it has been her female colleagues who have championed her and created opportunities throughout her career journey.  She is also proud to have been able to do the same for others.

Like the traditional ‘old boys’ network, it’s this ‘middle-aged women’s network’ as she jokingly calls it, that continues to support her professional growth and development as she navigates the challenges of being a CPO in a fast-paced private equity environment.