The SME Stream

Brooke Campbell’s career has taken her from HR specialist to a role spanning people, corporate affairs, communications and sustainability across an international business.
In this episode of HR Unlocked, Brooke joins Lisa Oakley to unpack what she has learned along the way, including why some of the most valuable development for an HR professional happens when they become curious about what sits outside the traditional HR remit.
As Chief People and Corporate Affairs Officer at Skyline Enterprises, Brooke is part of the executive leadership team helping shape organisational capability, culture, stakeholder engagement and sustainability as the New Zealand-headquartered business continues to grow internationally.
For Brooke, becoming an enterprise leader meant moving beyond the mindset of only contributing when the conversation was explicitly about people. She argues that the “magic” happens when People leaders are thinking about marketing, P&L and commercial opportunities, while operational and finance leaders are also thinking about people.
That does not mean HR should take ownership of everything.
Brooke describes the trap of becoming the organisational “letterbox”, taking an issue, doing the work and handing the answer back. Instead, she encourages HR teams to focus on supporting outcomes by coaching, challenging, questioning and providing expertise while leaving leaders accountable for leading their people.
The conversation then looks at what those ideas mean across a global workforce.
Brooke shares Skyline’s experience of taking a New Zealand business and culture into international markets, while recognising that values may be expressed differently across locations. Skyline’s core values, “We’re brave. We care. We do.”, were surfaced through employees rather than created solely in a boardroom, and became particularly important as the organisation navigated COVID across multiple jurisdictions.
Brooke and Lisa also discuss talent attraction in Queenstown, the importance of aligning the external employer brand with the lived employee experience, and the wider ecosystem required to attract people and their families to a region.
Her legal background brings another dimension to the conversation. Brooke argues that HR professionals need to understand how to apply the law, rather than simply follow a process, recognising that the legally safest answer may not always be the best people answer. Legal guardrails still matter, but so do judgement, organisational risk appetite and the unique circumstances of each employment relationship.
The episode finishes with Brooke’s perspective on AI in tourism and a simple challenge to leaders: get into the business, listen to what people are actually experiencing and stay curious about what is happening beyond your own function.
What You’ll Learn
How Brooke moved from specialist HR roles into enterprise leadership

Why curiosity is an important modern leadership capability

Why HR professionals need confidence to step outside the traditional HR lane

What cross-functional thinking looks like in practice

Why people issues are also commercial, operational and strategic issues

The difference between supporting outcomes and delivering outputs

Why HR should not become the organisational “letterbox”

How coaching and challenging leaders builds stronger accountability

Why trust and relationships matter when influencing leaders

What Brooke has learned from supporting an international workforce from Queenstown

Which basic employee expectations remain similar across cultures

Why getting on the ground matters when working across different countries

How local cultural context can reveal issues that are difficult to understand remotely

Why Skyline calls Queenstown its “support office” rather than its “head office”

How corporate affairs, sustainability and people strategy can connect

Why employees should also be understood as a stakeholder group

How shared organisational values can coexist with different local cultures

How Skyline surfaced its global values

What COVID taught Brooke about crisis leadership

Why values become especially important when there is no existing playbook

The importance of maintaining a long-term view through crisis

How Skyline balanced organisational survival with employee care

The challenges of communicating with a predominantly frontline workforce

Why organisations need to intentionally embed lessons after a crisis

How Brooke’s view of organisational change evolved after COVID

What Skyline has learned about attracting talent to Queenstown

Why recruiting a person can also mean considering their partner, family and wider support system

The relationship between external brand and internal employee experience

Why existing employees and leaders can be an organisation’s strongest ambassadors

The wider infrastructure challenges involved in attracting talent to resort towns

Why applying employment law is different from simply following process

How organisational risk appetite affects HR decision-making

Why employment relationship problems often begin long before HR becomes involved

How expectation setting and feedback can prevent issues from escalating

Brooke’s call to move from discussion to action on women in leadership

Where AI could create value in tourism

Why AI may be most useful in removing friction around the customer experience

Why leaders need to spend time where the work is actually happening

Key Takeaways
HR needs to understand the whole business. Brooke believes People leaders create more value when they contribute to commercial, operational and strategic discussions rather than remaining inside a functional box.

Curiosity creates opportunities. Brooke describes her own career as more opportunistic than deliberately designed, with curiosity helping her step into new areas.

Do not confuse influence with ownership. HR can coach, challenge and provide expertise without taking responsibility for every people outcome.

Relationships matter. Being able to say “I told you so” is less valuable than maintaining enough trust for a leader to seek your advice again.

Global consistency does not require identical local experiences. Shared values can provide the foundation while different cultures bring those values to life differently.

Values matter most when the playbook disappears. Skyline’s experience through COVID reinforced the importance of knowing who the organisation is and what it stands for.

Getting the basics right still matters. Respect, meaningful work, fair remuneration and clear communication remain important regardless of where employees are based.

Talent attraction is bigger than the candidate. Location, family, housing and support networks can all influence whether someone can realistically make a move.

The law is a guardrail, not a substitute for judgement. HR professionals still need to understand context, risk and the human consequences of decisions.

Many employment problems start much earlier than the dispute itself. Recruitment promises, expectation setting and feedback can all influence whether a relationship later deteriorates.

AI should help people deliver better experiences. Brooke sees opportunity for AI to remove transactional friction rather than replace the human core of tourism.

Leaders need to get closer to the work. Brooke’s closing challenge is to listen, observe and engage directly with the people doing the work rather than attempting to lead entirely from a distance.

About Brooke Campbell
Brooke Campbell is the Chief People and Corporate Affairs Officer at Skyline Enterprises.
She leads Skyline’s people, corporate affairs, communications and sustainability functions and is a member of the organisation’s executive leadership team. Her remit includes organisational capability, culture, governance support, stakeholder engagement and sustainability strategy across the international Skyline Group.
Her career has developed from traditional HR and employment relations experience into broader enterprise leadership, giving her a perspective that connects people strategy with commercial performance, corporate affairs, sustainability and international growth.
Why This Episode Matters
HR is often encouraged to “get out of its lane”, but Brooke’s perspective adds an important qualification.
Getting closer to the whole business does not mean taking responsibility for everything.
It means understanding enough about commercial performance, operations, customers, risk and strategy to ask better questions, provide better advice and help leaders make stronger decisions.
That distinction becomes even more important as organisations face international growth, workforce change, AI and increasingly complex employment environments.
Brooke’s closing message is particularly practical: get into the business and listen.
If leaders are not talking with the people on the factory floor, in the kitchen, in the office or at the frontline of the customer experience, Brooke questions whether they can really understand what their people need or lead as effectively as they should.
Resources & Links
Skyline Enterprises: https://skylineenterprises.co.nz/
Connect with Brooke Campbell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brooke-campbell-7063a015/
HR Unlocked: https://linktr.ee/hrunlocked
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