Rachel Woodcock is People Director at Hickory’s Smokehouse, where she has spent the last ten years helping to shape the Team and culture behind the growing restaurant business.

Rachel is passionate about creating workplaces where Team genuinely enjoy coming to work, feel valued for who they are and have the opportunity to grow. As Hickory’s has grown, her focus has been on protecting the culture and values that made the business special in the first place, while making sure its approach to people continues to evolve.

She believes the best people strategies are often the simplest ones, listening to your teams, developing great leaders, being brave enough to have honest conversations and never losing sight of the experience people have every day at work.

Rachel works closely with the operational teams across Hickory’s and is particularly passionate about developing talent from within and creating opportunities for people to build long-term careers in hospitality.

She doesn’t claim to have all the answers and believes she is still learning every day, usually from the Team working in Hickory’s restaurants. For Rachel, great culture isn’t something written on a wall or in a mission statement; it’s what people experience every day, how they are made to feel and, ultimately, how we behave.