Chief people officer appointed at Benenden Health

Benenden Health has appointed Mike Hay as chief people officer.

Hay (pictured), who has served in the role on an interim basis for six months, has significant experience in the financial and mutual sector, including chief people officer at Saffron Building Society, HR director at Nationwide Building Society, associate partner at AON and director at Deloitte, where he focused on supporting the healthcare sector.

He will focus on people strategy, ensuring Benenden has the right workforce to support its members and foster a positive, inclusive culture with wellbeing at its heart. He will also be instrumental in supporting its digital transformation rollout from a people perspective, helping employees adopt AI and other new technologies into HR and wider business systems.

Commenting on his appointment, Hay said: ‘The employees at Benenden Health have shown me in such a small amount of time that they are experts in their field, and they use this expertise to benefit our membership during a wavering time in the healthcare sector. The team at Benenden Health has also proven to be just as dedicated to the wellbeing of each other. We recently celebrated a 31% uplift in DE&I awareness internally, and in 2024, fundraised the most amount for local charities than we have in previous years of running our CSR. All of these things and more show an engaged and empathic workforce.’

Benenden Health CEO Tom Woolgrove added: ‘Mike has been a great asset to Benenden Health’s executive team since he joined in October last year and I’m very pleased he is now a permanent member of the team.

‘Mike has wasted no time in leading in employee engagement activities, learning and development initiatives and being a positive advocate for maintaining a DE&I culture in our workplace, and in our thought leadership activity.’