The Appointment: Tom Bowring has an appetite for innovation

As we emerge from the pandemic, the Council must adapt to a much-changed world - fortunately, Tom Bowring has an appetite for innovation (and curry!).

Like all organisations, the Council faces a very different working landscape post Covid-19, while other fundamental shifts in traditional attitudes and ways of operating are also afoot.

Tom, the newly-appointed Director of Corporate Resources, is one of the central figures charged with setting the Council’s vision for the future.

From spearheading Project Zero, the Authority’s commitment to become carbon neutral, to crafting the new Corporate Plan, Tom is at the heart of some of the Council’s most important work.

But beyond these high-profile initiatives, Tom is also passionate about driving another change – one involving the very culture of the organisation.

He wants to remove outdated notions of professional hierarchies and encourage diversity, with the aim of creating a working environment where everyone feels comfortable and valued.

Linked to this is the view that all staff – and indeed Vale of Glamorgan residents – should be fundamentally involved in the decisions that affect them, rather than those being taken independently by senior management.

“I’m really encouraged that our Strategic Leadership Team believes the issue of involving colleagues is so important. There’s genuine commitment to our staff engagement work and creating a workplace where everyone feels comfortable to be themselves,” said Tom.

“I’m grateful to Miles (Punter), who’s been our senior LGBT+ Champion for the last few years, and his support for setting up of the GLAM network has been really appreciated. Going forward, I’ll be taking on the role as senior champion for LGBT+ issues and I’m looking forward to working with GLAM colleagues to drive more change alongside the other diversity networks and to creating new ones. 

“I want to play my part in taking us further on the journey we’ve started. I want everyone who works with us to be themselves when they come to work. I want them to do a fantastic job but have the right conditions to do that.

“I think we need visibility of our senior leaders. I want to be a visible and an accessible director. I don’t, along with the rest of the management team, believe in outdated hierarchies.

“We’re all here to do different jobs. It’s about respecting that we all have different roles, but they are all complementary roles. What makes our organisation such a good place to work is that we work together as a whole team.

“The staff engagement work that we do is really important. I’m looking forward to working with Tracy (Dickinson) and the team to develop an even more enhanced programme of some of that wellbeing and engagement work.

“We need to be open to different views and different ideas. We don’t all have to agree but having that healthy and constructive discussion is really important.”

Tom took up his new position in April following a shake-up of the Senior Leadership Team structure that also saw Marcus Goldsworthy appointed Director of Place.

The Director of Corporate Resources is responsible for the financial and performance management of the Council, the delivery of all professional support services and for championing customer service.

Tom will also lead on the allocation and prioritisation of resources through the annual budget-setting process, striving to achieve value for money and continuous improvement.

It is the latest step in a swift rise up the career ladder since he joined the Council in 2005.

Originally a Programme Support Officer working on the introduction of Oracle, new payroll, I Procurement and customer relations systems, Tom became Business Process Reengineering (BPR) Team Leader a few years later after a spell working to set up the contact centre.

A period that included spells focusing on Revenues and Benefits and the Social Services Budget Programme followed before he landed a role managing BPR, procurement and insurance.

At this point Tom undertook a Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) course, becoming exam qualified and winning a string of awards after gaining the highest marks of the year on several of his papers.

Tom was appointed Operational Manager for Policy and Performance in 2015 and Head of Policy & Business Transformation four years later.

“When I started with the Council, we were very much doing change to people, everything was very top down,” he said. “That’s one thing we have really moved away from. Involving people in the process is very much the approach now and central to the Public Participation Strategy and how we take decisions, whether with our colleagues or with citizens.

“Before becoming Operational Manager, I was working on Reshaping Services and looking at ways in which the organisation could transform internally, but in the context of huge reductions in available finance.

“Then I moved out of the finance arena and more into one of change and working to develop the Corporate Plan and the performance arrangements that went with it. We wanted to move away from silos of Directorate Plans to a more cross-cutting wellbeing-focused plan.

“I worked with colleagues to look at how we altered the conversation around reshaping to cover reshaping our services but also reshaping our workforce, introducing the Big Conversation, the first example of our major staff engagement work.

“I got really interested in how we set corporate policy and strategy and how we work alongside our politicians. Also, I realised how important it is that the culture of the organisation is right and people feel they can come to work and be the best of themselves. We must have ways and means in place to help people do that.

“This is a brand-new job so it isn’t one that the Council has had before and it’s only possible because we’ve got excellent people heading up our corporate services.

“The job is about bringing together the excellent corporate core services and has an eye on transforming so we keep being the high-performing organisation that we are.”

Tom completed a degree course in Business Studies at Brighton University that also included a year spent in industry, working for Sun Microsystems, a company that make IT equipment and software.

He was part of their Europe, Middle East and Asia (EMEA) Global Marketing Team, spreading his time between a modern Google-style campus in Basingstoke and an office in London Bridge.

After completing his degree, Tom, a self-confessed food lover, enrolled on a graduate trading scheme with Asda that saw him train in Leeds before returning to South Wales.

But though the Penarth native enjoys eating out, running the butchery counter of a supermarket delicatessen failed to provide the same thrill.

“I very much like food. I like trying new and interesting restaurants and I like trying food from different parts of the world. But when I was exhausted from working a 70-hour week and my hands were freezing from stacking bacon in a fridge one Saturday night, I thought I can’t do this forever. I want to go into something else,” smiled Tom.

“The trading stuff was good fun, but it just didn’t work for where I wanted to be and I missed the project planning experience that I’d had at Sun. I’d thoroughly enjoyed the nature of project work, so I applied to join the Council.”

Away from the office, Tom is the secretary of CIPFA Wales, working with the Welsh President to support the development and delivery of events for its members.

He is also a keen runner, regularly cares for a sausage dog named Milo and further indulges his culinary curiosity by cooking, often with his nephews.

Tom has sampled many eateries around the world, though not all are memorable for the right reasons!

“My Saturday morning treat is to take my nephews for pancakes in Brecon, then we walk and feed the ducks on the canal on the promenade.

“The eldest likes to be taken to the market to buy food that we then cook together.

“My worst culinary experience was eating goose barnacles in Spain, but only because a friend and I ate the wrong end. It was horrendous!

“The best food I’ve had outside the UK was probably in the middle of Marrakesh. One night in the square in the medina. That was just eating a crazy selection of Moroccan stuff from streetfood vendors.”

With a key part to play in Council plans on a number of fronts, it looks like Tom has a lot on his plate.
But that’s just how he likes it.

Submissions can be made for a Question Time event with Tom that is being held at 1pm on Tuesday, June14.