Penny Taylor, HR Director at Compare The Market: From Failing A-Levels to Leading with Kindness in HR

My Duvet Flip by Jack Parsons

Jack Parsons

Business, Careers

4.2 • 5 Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Episode Guest

Penny Taylor is the HR Director at Compare the Market, where she leads with a passion for inclusivity, kindness, and commercial impact. Her career journey spans retail, travel, and people leadership, grounded in real-world grit and deep empathy.

Episode Timestamps:

0:00 Introduction & Why This Chat Matters

1:15 Penny’s Early Years & Academic Setbacks

3:10 The “Floater” Role — Learning Every Part of a Business

5:00 First Jobs, Travel & Finding Direction

7:25 Transition Into the Corporate World

9:10 Discovering HR: From Regional Manager to People Leader

11:30 The Heart of HR: Doing the Right Thing with Kindness

13:45 How to Be Fair, Inclusive & Honest in HR

15:50 Dealing with Mistakes, Taking Responsibility & Resilience

18:00 Money Lessons: Worst Regrets & Pension Tips

20:10 What Makes a Great HR Professional

22:00 Embracing AI: How She Uses Tech in HR Today

24:10 What Gets Her Out of Bed: The Duvet Flip

25:30 Final Reflections & Advice

Episode Partners

📊 Compare the Market

Discover how you can make a difference at Compare the Market, the company behind one of the UK’s most popular comparison sites. From tech and data to marketing and operations, they’re on a mission to simplify decisions for millions.

https://bit.ly/4i53Svj

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I love Jeremy Clarkson and his. I cocked up my A-Level post every year. I did brilliantly at GCSEs, so I got this licked, went and did my A-Levels, mucked them all up. I was going to go and be a lawyer that all went out the window. I wanted to be an architecture and I saw that it was seven years and I was like, can't do that. Hello, my name is Penny Taylor. I'm HR director at Canter the Market. We have 800 colleagues across the UK in France and this is my duvet.
0:24.6	You have a lot of resilience. Where's the resilience come from?
0:27.6	My parents fostered children with disabilities.
0:30.6	One of those babies sadly passed away.
0:33.6	It was the worst thing that could have happened in my life at that time.
0:36.6	So my feeling in life is, what's the worst that can happen?
0:41.3	I love that mindset. Anything that could be done, let's give it a go.
0:44.3	How do you make sure that you're being there to everyone?
0:48.3	It's not in the have we got multicoloured food for Pride Day, which we do.
0:53.3	Inclusivity is actually in the small moment where HR shows up the best is where you get someone
0:58.6	that you don't like and you do the right thing anyway.
1:01.9	What's your do they for it?
1:02.9	What gets you out of bed in the morning to flip the duvet?
1:06.0	What gets me out of bed in the morning is... Hello, my name is Penny Taylor.
1:13.6	I'm HR director at Compare the Market.
1:16.6	I'm feeling fine actually before I see Jack.
1:17.6	I think it's pretty good fun.
1:18.6	I think I'm most excited to talk about inclusion at Compare the Market.
1:22.6	I said yes to coming on DoVay Flip because I passionately believe that young people are our future
1:27.6	and therefore we need to try and help in any way we can.
1:30.8	I've never met Jack before so I'm quite excited about what he's going to ask me.
1:34.3	Most people have very zigzag careers.
	...

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