Credit Management January February 2024

RISING STAR
THE CREDIT
WHISPERER
A young, talented professional chose credit
management over accountancy and has never
looked back.
BY MELANIE YORK
WHEN Hayley Earle ACICM
left school, she had ambitions
to become a chartered
accountant. Having a talent
for numbers, she applied
to the University of West
of England and started her
degree course. However, in her second year, she took an option in
credit management, run in partnership with the CICM, where she
found her real passion and the start of a successful career.
“The tutor was just so passionate and engaging it changed my
mind about what I wanted to study and what I would do after
university,” she says. This was during the 2008 credit crunch, so it
was relevant, meaningful and exciting. “So I took another module
in my third year, which was credit risk analysis, which I loved. I
have not looked back since.”
Today, Hayley is Head of Credit and Collections for Amey Group
Services, a leading provider of full life-cycle engineering, operations
and decarbonisation solutions for transport infrastructure and
complex facilities. She attributes her success not to her inherited
numeracy skills but to the communications skills she has learned
along the way, and planning her career carefully.
Getting to know people
Through her university courses and the CICM qualifications,
which she completed later, Hayley began to realise how much
she enjoyed working with other people. She also recognised how
the communications skills she was being taught could impact the
effectiveness of the credit management team and, ultimately, the
business.
“Understanding clients and what makes people tick, along with
their customers’ payment processes so that they pay when they
are contractually due, determines how to get the desired outcome
for the business,” Hayley continues. “Getting paid ahead of your
competitors, for example, is about pulling all stakeholders together
and getting them on board.” In order to build that understanding,
listening to customers and stakeholders within the business and
the team – and listening well – is critical. She was given one piece
of advice early in her career, which she shares with her team today:
“Just listen until the other person stops talking,” she says, “rather
than trying to insert your opinion or trying to give your advice.”
Through her CICM training, she learned that technique works
even with angry customers on the telephone: “Eventually when
they hear that you're not speaking, they will feel truly listened to,”
she says.
Today, Hayley takes the same approach with all her stakeholders
the business and her team. However, she admits learning to listen
isn't easy: “People’s instinct is to try and jump in first because
you always have assumptions of what people are going to do and
say,” she explains. “But if you listen, there are always nuggets of
information that you pick up on and can pass onto the team.”
As well as listening, Hayley has also learned that good
communication consists of using the appropriate style of language
when writing emails or having telephone conversations with
clients and internal stakeholders: “We were taught to tell rather
than ask. It's amazing how changing a few words can impact the
message you're trying give,” she says. “Using active rather than
passive language can make a real difference in the results.”
Challenging times
When it came to the biggest challenge of her career those
communication skills would prove vital. Hayley was originally
working in Oxford close to her hometown. Then, the credit
function was relocated to Liverpool where she was asked to
become the new Head of Credit and form a new team. Two
weeks after starting with the team in Liverpool, the pandemic
hit.
Hayley immediately noticed one significant difference the
lockdowns made: the ability to listen to the team within the
work environment: “When I was a junior,” she says, “I listened
to senior staff, or my peers speaking. You would pick up so
much information even though you weren't involved in the
conversation.”
Brave | Curious | Resilient / www.cicm.com / January & February 2024 / PAGE 40