Spark New Zealand announces Heather Polglase as new HR Director

Spark New Zealand announced today that Heather Polglase will become Group Human Resources Director on the Spark Leadership Squad, effective 1 September 2019. Ms Polglase will succeed Joe McCollum, who is stepping down after seven years in the HR role. 

In another change, Andrew Pirie, Corporate Relations Lead has decided to leave Spark in December 2019, with a successor to be appointed in due course.  

Currently Lead HR Partner, Ms Polglase joined Spark in 2013 and has since led a number of important HR initiatives, including as a key architect of Spark’s Leadership and Development programme. “Heather has proven herself as a very talented HR leader with the courage to challenge the status quo and I believe she’ll be a fantastic addition to the Spark Leadership Squad,” said Spark’s Chief Executive Jolie Hodson.

Ms Hodson paid tribute to Joe McCollum’s role in the transformation of Spark: “The Spark of today is a very different company to the Telecom of 2012 and Joe has been a guiding hand throughout.  During his tenure Joe created a new way of working in HR – with many local and large global companies coming to Spark to learn more about this way of working. He has been an amazing supporter and friend to me throughout my time with Spark and although he will step down from the HR role on 31 August 2019, I’ve asked him to help lead some specific projects on my behalf for the next couple of months until leaving the company.”

Ms Hodson said Andrew Pirie had led Spark’s Corporate Relations function for the past seven years, through an era of unprecedented change:  “Andrew has done an outstanding job managing some colossal communication challenges – particularly the rebranding from Telecom to Spark, and more recently the Agile transformation.”

Effective 1 September 2019, the Spark Leadership Squad will be as follows:

• Chief Executive Jolie Hodson
• Customer Director Grant McBeath
• Finance Director (CFO) David Chalmers
• General Counsel Melissa Anastasiou
• HR Director Heather Polglase
• Marketing Director Matt Bain
• Product Director Tessa Tierney
• Technology Director Mark Beder

For media queries, please contact:

• Andrew Pirie
• Corporate Relations Lead
• +64 (0) 27 555 0275

For investor relations queries, please contact:

• Dean Werder
• Finance Lead Partner – Product and Performance
• +64 (0) 27 259 7176