College of Science & Engineering

Lucy McCormack - HR System, MI & Data Coordinator

I have loved languages, travelling and learning about different cultures for as long as I can remember so when I left school, it felt natural for me to study for an undergraduate degree in French and Spanish. As part of my degree, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to spend a year in Granada in the south of Spain, working as an English Language Assistant through the Erasmus programme. When I graduated I briefly considered teaching, however, I quickly realised that it wasn’t for me so after some time out travelling and intrigued by the prospect of working with people, in a classroom environment, I decided to venture into the world of Human Resources. Through a temporary summer job, I was able to get a flavour of HR and found I enjoyed working in this field to further my knowledge and career I undertook an MSc in HR Management at Edinburgh Napier University.

After completing my MSc I worked in generalist HR for a number of years gaining experience in the public and private sectors. Immediately before joining the University of Glasgow, I worked in the HR Department at the University of Stirling and it was there that I began to feel that a career within the higher education environment was something I wanted to explore further. In November 2014 I joined the University of Glasgow in a hybrid role where I was based between two teams, Performance, Pay and Reward and Organisational Development, primarily providing administrative support for the Early Career Development programme. After a few years at the University, an opportunity arose within the Systems team and the rest is history! 

I have been working in my current role as an HR System, MI & Data Coordinator for more than four years now and I am responsible for producing much of People & Organisational Development’s People data as well as supporting colleagues with system queries or data requests and, together with colleagues in my team, continuously developing the HR System.

Providing support to colleagues and helping them develop knowledge and skills that can enhance their roles or allow them to become more efficient is important to me and I’m fortunate that my job provides me the opportunity to do this on a day-to-day basis. Over the last two years, I have worked on the implementation of Insight, the new reporting tool within the HR System. This has been a significant project but the introduction of this new tool has been a huge success and has meant that access to People data can be rolled out to a wider audience providing staff, schools and services the opportunity to gain better information to support their roles.

Accurate and reliable HR analytics are essential for any organisation, they provide us with a better understanding of our workforce, help us problem-solve and enable us to make evidence-based decisions. Together with my colleagues, I’m working to continuously develop our analytics and reporting capacity which in turn will enhance capability at individual, team and management levels enabling colleagues to have easier access to the data they need to support their roles and ultimately, to deliver organisational priorities.

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First published: 29 August 2023