Heshow Abdollah
Head of HR @British Grammar School - Erbil
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WORK HISTORY
Head of HR @British Grammar School - Erbil
Erbil, IQ
Founded and built the school’s HR department from the ground up, joining as the first dedicated HR professional in a fast-growing international British overseas school with a diverse workforce spanning local, expatriate and internationally recruited staff categories. ∙ Built the school’s complete HR infrastructure from scratch, including employment contracts, staff handbooks, onboarding workflows and a comprehensive policy library covering all operational areas. ∙ Deployed and configured BrightHR and Blip as the core HRIS and attendance platforms, automating absence tracking, leave management and payroll-ready reporting. ∙ Designed payroll governance controls and salary structures across multiple staff categories, improving compliance visibility and reducing payroll discrepancies significantly. ∙ Created safeguarding-aligned HR policies and compliance frameworks referenced against UK DfE and ISI standards, ensuring full regulatory readiness ahead of inspection. ∙ Managed end-to-end recruitment operations across multiple hiring pipelines, coordinating safer recruitment processes to support the school’s growth plans. ∙ Designed and delivered onboarding, safeguarding and compliance training programmes for a diverse workforce across blended formats. ∙ Introduced absence analytics and departmental reporting dashboards, enabling data-driven attendance management across the whole school. ∙ Established an L&D calendar and training needs analysis process aligned to whole-school development objectives.
EDUCATION
The University of Salford
Bachelor’s Degree, Multimedia and Internet Technology
SKILLS
ABOUT HESHOW ABDOLLAH
Over the course of my career I have specialised in designing and delivering HR infrastructure, people systems, and operational frameworks in environments where little or nothing existed before. Whether joining a small start-up in Manchester or founding the HR department of a growing international school, my instinct is always the same: understand the organisation, identify what is missing, and build something that lasts.At JDS DIY I joined as the sole HR professional, grew the team significantly from a small founding group, founded a marketing department from scratch through an apprenticeship programme, and supported the wider business across operations and e-commerce. At British Grammar School in Erbil I established the school’s entire HR function from the ground up, implementing HRIS platforms, payroll governance controls, safeguarding frameworks aligned to UK DfE and ISI standards, and compliance training programmes for a diverse international workforce.Earlier in my career I spent four years at Ashurst LLP in London designing and managing digital learning content for a global legal workforce, and completed a contract with Meta delivering large-scale training programmes internationally.I am comfortable operating across the full People spectrum, from the strategic to the deeply operational, and I bring a systems mindset to everything I do. I particularly enjoy the moments where an organisation is ready to professionalise its people function and needs someone who can lead that transition with clarity and credibility.Outside of core HR, I have a strong background in digital learning design, instructional content, and e-commerce operations, which means I tend to bring a broader commercial lens to the people agenda than most.
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