Meet the Team

Our Mission

We don’t have a fancy mission statement; our aim is simply to help, support, enable you to realise your full potential and live the life you want, personally and professionally. We’ll help you overcome the obstacles, the limiting beliefs that get in the way and clear the path to creating a better future. We are passionate about what we do and never forget how privileged we are to be helping you create a better life in the areas that matter most to you. You’ll find us easy to work with, honest, flexible, challenging, supportive and of course, confidential.

Neena Sharma

Neena is the founder and Managing Director of Next Steps HR.

Neena is committed to equality and diversity in the workplace and has spoken internationally on workplace culture and preventing bullying and harassment.

She is a skilled, experienced and qualified coach with many years boardroom experience having built her career as a Human Resources Director and Learning and Development Specialist.

With her experience of managing people and thinking strategically in a broad spectrum of commercial environments internationally, including Retail, Professional Services, Financial Services, Property, she is adept at working with teams and individuals to challenge limiting beliefs and behaviours to bring about sustainable change.

Her passion is for working with individual clients at a holistic level to improve wellness and quality of life. She puts her heart and soul into inspiring them to be their best selves, to fully connect with all their possibilities and love the life they live. Her intuitive, emotionally intelligent approach, together with her natural warmth, enables her clients to engage with their emotions, their senses, attitudes and beliefs. She has found that by firstly improving their relationship with themselves through better habits, confidence, self esteem, they are able to improve their relationships with those around them in all areas of their lives.

In addition to being a qualified coach and human resources professional, Neena is also qualified in Occupational Testing and Personality Profiling and has experience of Mindfulness, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Neuro Linguistic Programming.

Neena leads Next Steps HR alongside her trusted team of associates and partners.

Amanda Bayliss

After many years of working in HR across a variety of different industries, Amanda recognised that not all businesses require a permanent HR function – just as long as they have access to expert support and guidance as and when they need it.

A chartered member of the CIPD, her most recent corporate role has been as Head of HR for an established and very successful professional services organisation, working with a large number of owner-managed businesses.

Experience gained across a wide range of industries including printing, manufacturing, retail and healthcare has given Amanda the knowledge, skills and flexibility to provide HR solutions in any setting. She is confident and skilled in giving practical employee relations advice, managing recruitment, retention, absence, disciplinaries, grievances, appraisals, pay reviews, as well as identifying and supporting the strategic HR needs of a business.

With a real passion for making a difference, Amanda offers a straight-talking and pragmatic approach to achieving the right people management solutions for your business. Why not book a free HR review with Amanda?

Pamela Whitehead

Pam has over 30 years’ business experience across a range of industries and professions working with both SMEs and top FTSe 100 Companies which enables her to deal effectively with a wide range of civil commercial and workplace disputes in her role as a skilled mediator. Pam applies her business acumen to offer a practical, problem solving approach to helping parties achieve a workable and sustainable agreement. Pam is also a Human Resources professional and a fellow of the CIPD. She has a wealth of experience in HR, mediation, project management, coaching and learning and development.

Pam is passionate about her work with The Prince’s Trust and is an individual business mentor, guiding young entrepreneurs in the first two years of launching their own businesses. To date, she has made a positive contribution to the lives of over 100 young people.

As Head of HR Mortgage Operations and Scottish Widows Bank, for Lloyds Banking Group, Pam was responsible for 4,500 colleagues across the UK and India. In partnership with the Operations Director, she shaped and developed the Mortgage Story which served the strategic direction of the newly formed organisation focusing on integration of colleagues and sites across all brands in the UK to form a unified Lloyds Banking Group mortgage team. During her time at Lloyds, Pam was the HBOS Head of Performance Culture and prior to that, Head of Learning and Development.

In her role as a skilled professional mediator, Pam has trained and accredited in excess of 200 mediators and delivered programmes in both the United Kingdom and internationally. Pam looks forward to working with you.

Carol King

Carol is an energetic and creative learning and development professional – a real people person; her passion is for developing people and helping them to achieve their full potential.

A qualified and experienced consultant, trainer, facilitator, coach and NLP practitioner, Carol specialises in management and leadership development, behavioural and team change. She has a wealth of experience coaching, facilitating,designing and delivering bespoke training solutions which support individuals and teams to achieve business and personal success and maximise performance.

Carol’s commercial experience includes heading up Learning and Development teams for both Accountancy and Legal practices where she was responsible for all aspects of people development from onboarding to senior development and executive coaching. Her design and implementation of talent management and graduate development programmes has resulted in a number of awards including inclusion in the Sunday Times Best Companies to work for list and being recognised as an Investor in People Champion.

Dave Leverton

Dave is a hugely experienced and successful senior executive with a genuine passion and talent for unlocking huge potential in individuals, teams and organisations. He has a wealth of experience in developing and leading high-performance teams across multiple sectors and channels across multiple global territories.

From his first role collecting supermarket trolleys to becoming Chief Operating Officer for a multi-national retailer, Dave has become an astute and dynamic operations expert capable of driving and delivering change, growth and sustainable transformation in businesses of all sizes. He has extensive experience and skills covering Operations, Human Resources, Learning & Development, Sales & Marketing, Audit & Compliance and logistics, having worked with organisations such as Sainsbury’s, WHSmith,, DFC Global Corp, The Money Shop, Greenalls and Herbert Brown.

As a successful COO, he understands the complex challenges of delivering high-growth strategies in the same way he does about leading organisations and individuals through periods of adversity, change and restructuring. As Royal Navy veteran, Dave has successfully adapted the senior service skills of team building, problem solving and self-determination into his commercial approach which has led to exceptional results and long-term benefits.

Dave is a qualified and hugely experienced business coach, skilled in a range of coaching techniques and methodologies, affording him the agility to be able to ensure the most effective approach for every situation. Dave’s key coaching talents lie in his ability to work with senior and middle managers in overcoming limiting beliefs and attitudes, developing self-confidence and personal accountability, enabling them to achieve personal and professional goals they previously believed to be out of reach.

Dave is accredited by the International Institute of Coaching and Mentoring and is a certified Practitioner of Life Coaching.

Why not take advantage of our free HR review and see how we can help you?

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