How do you build a first‑ever, modern HR function – complete with AI, bespoke L&D and data‑driven governance – inside a 120‑year‑old ASX giant that still sees itself as “a small company that does big things”?
When Belinda Armstrong walked into Washington H. Soul Pattinson (better known to many Australians as Soul Patts) in January 2024, she joined a company that has lived through every major economic shock of the last century – and kept paying dividends throughout all of them.
Founded in 1903 and long associated with the Soul Pattinson chemist brand, the diversified investment house is now one of the oldest listed companies on the ASX. Its portfolio spans everything from private equity and agriculture to brick manufacturing, listed equities, small caps and a fast‑growing private credit arm.
Yet for most of that history, there was no internal HR function.
Armstrong – now the company’s head of people and culture – has been tasked with building Soul Patts’ first dedicated HR capability, almost from scratch, inside a 120‑year‑old organisation that prides itself on being “a small company that does big things.”
For HR leaders, her experience offers a case study in how to modernise people systems in a legacy organisation without losing the culture and agility that made it successful in the first place.
She described the experience of stepping into such an established organisation as surprisingly “greenfields.” At around 55 employees, Soul Patts is a lean operation that long relied on self‑sufficiency, external legal advice and a basic HRIS rather than a built‑out people and culture team.
They were already using Employment Hero, not spreadsheets, to run payroll and core employee data, but the system’s potential was largely untapped: no real dashboards, little structured reporting, and limited curiosity about what the data could say about headcount or workforce trends.
Armstrong was brought in by COO Jaki Virtue as part of a broader “operations uplift” – a mandate to strengthen the way the business runs without losing its distinctive culture. Her peers sit across company secretariat, risk and compliance, corporate affairs and investor relations, and legal, giving HR a seat at a table that is explicitly focused on how the organisation functions end to end.
For HR leaders, the interesting tension is obvious: how do you build structure, governance and people systems inside a company that is proudly “a small company that does big things,” and determined not to become stale or bureaucratic?
Armstrong’s answer has been to “right‑size” everything. On technology, she has resisted the allure of heavyweight enterprise platforms, sticking with Employment Hero and making it work harder for a workforce of about 55, where Workday or SAP would be unnecessary overkill.
On policy, she inherited a suite of documents that “probably hadn’t been looked at in a little while,” and has focused on refreshing and formalising what matters most, with a sharp eye on governance and compliance but a clear desire to avoid box‑ticking for its own sake.
She is candid that much of the work has been about “standing everything up” – putting structure and rigour around how the organisation looks after its people, from EVP and benefits through to reporting and learning. But she is equally clear that HR’s role at Soul Patts is not to wrap the business in cotton wool. In a small, highly skilled environment, she wants people to remain self‑sufficient, to take control of their careers and their development, and to have “the right skills to have the voice” in shaping their work.
Nowhere is that philosophy more visible than in learning and development. Armstrong has anchored Soul Patts’ L&D approach around a simple message to employees: “Your growth, your career is your call.” The organisation promises to back people with tools, opportunities and support, but expects them to lead the way on where they want to go.
That stance is not theoretical. In a career that has spanned aviation, media, SaaS and fintech, Armstrong has seen the same pattern in exit interviews: employees complaining “no one developed me” despite having made little effort to seek out or drive their own development. At Soul Patts, development is meant to be a live topic throughout the year, not a once‑a‑year box on a performance review form.
The learning offer itself is deliberately eclectic and bespoke rather than funnelled through an internal academy. With a headcount under 60, there is no “graduate to VP” internal program. Instead, Armstrong curates a portfolio of external partners and targeted interventions.
Soul Patts has, for instance, a long‑running relationship with Growth Faculty, giving employees access to speakers, events, webinars and on‑demand learning. As a member of Women in Banking and Finance, it taps into specialist development such as webinars, masterclasses, mentoring and short courses for specific career stages and disciplines.
Some initiatives have been tailored to particular teams, such as a multi‑day program for the investments group on influencing with impact and negotiation skills for client work. Others, like a “communicating with confidence” program rolled out across investments, finance and operations, have been organisation‑wide, aimed at sharpening how people present to the board, subsidiaries and other external audiences.
Armstrong’s stance on providers is pragmatic: she has “yet to find any one product or partner that delivers on everything” and prefers to choose specialists that do one thing very well, rather than chase a mythical all‑in‑one solution. For HR leaders, it is a reminder that effectiveness often lies in orchestration, not standardisation.
Perhaps the clearest sign that this 120‑year‑old company is serious about modern ways of working is its embrace of AI. Soul Patts has partnered with Quantium to introduce Claude, via Anthropic, across the organisation – including the board. The rollout has been structured and top‑down, designed to ensure leaders understand both opportunity and risk, and to embed AI as a practical tool rather than a passing experiment.
For Armstrong, it has been one of the first truly company‑wide programs she has helped deliver, and a clear signal that HR’s remit now includes enabling safe, thoughtful adoption of emerging technologies.
All of this plays out against a backdrop that could easily lend itself to nostalgia. In one meeting room, the old pharmacy jars sit behind Armstrong’s desk – some still containing mysterious liquids like ethanol and rose water.
Nearby, people who manage swim schools, electrical manufacturing, agriculture, brickworks, private credit and listed equities move quickly between deals and strategy reviews. It is a business that holds its traditional history and values “with pride,” but describes itself as “young at heart and nimble” and is actively attracted to new markets and new methods.
For HR leaders working in historic organisations, Soul Patts’ story is a useful counter to the idea that age inevitably equals rigidity. A company listed in 1903 can still be building HR for the first time. It can use a lightweight HRIS instead of a global platform, and still be data‑driven. It can design learning that is bespoke and employee‑led instead of programmatic. It can roll out generative AI from the board down. And it can do all of this while keeping its people self‑sufficient, its culture intact, and its history visible on the shelves.
Armstrong’s experience suggests that the real opportunity in legacy organisations is not to drag them wholesale into someone else’s idea of “best practice,” but to treat HR as a carefully designed, fit‑for‑purpose capability: one that respects the past, equips the present, and leaves enough room for people to write their own future.
