17 February 2025
The FirstPort Group is pleased to announce the appointment of Andy Yarker as HR Director, to lead the people strategy for its 3,000 colleagues based across the UK.
Andy is responsible for providing strategic oversight across all HR activities, including recruitment, training, wellbeing, equality and diversity and internal communications. The aim being to deliver an effective and supportive experience for employees at every stage of their career and deliver the best service to our customers.
Andy has spent his career working in the Armed Forces. Most recently as the Chief People and Support Officer for the British Army’s 1st UK Division of over 30,000 people. He managed multi-disciplinary teams spearheading projects that focused on improving retention, culture and training. Andy has also worked as a Senior Mentor at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom where he was responsible for mentoring and assessing high performing senior leaders. He also held senior roles focused on workforce planning, providing robust strategic oversight to enable organisational decisions on the effective use of resource.
Commenting on his appointment, Andy says:
“Through my career in the Armed Forces, I have worked in extremely complex environments where clear and consistent communications and engagement with all colleagues is vital to success. I have always been passionate about supporting others in their work and career, whilst making sure they understand the wider business strategy. I look forward to working alongside FirstPort’s talented leaders to create an environment that supports our diverse workforce and contributes to making FirstPort the trusted property management company of choice.”
Martin King, Managing Director of The FirstPort Group, said:
“Andy displays the characteristics of an action-focused HR Director who has experience in leading significant change across large teams. His military background gives him a unique perspective, with transferable skills that will help us develop our HR offer so that it meets the needs of our changing industry and for the benefit of our customers. I look forward to working with Andy to create an industry-leading strategy.”
