Interview with Cordelia Morgan-Cooper

Hello Cordelia! It is lovely to meet you. You have experience in HR and recruitment for more than 10 years. Can you tell us more about how your journey started?

Sure! Thanks so much for having me!!! I started working in recruitment in early 2013 after completing an internship in my local town with the UK’s largest family-owned recruitment consultancy, Reed. This started my whole career as I then moved to London to become a recruitment consultant and worked within senior finance for 6 years, moving into more of a leadership role after a couple of years. I loved working within the agency environment, we all had a lot of fun, very competitive and results-driven, but I think that’s where I got my resilience from—there were some tough times in those early days of missing out on deals and then feeling the financial hit hah! This is what led me to move to Malta as Reed had a head office here, and I relocated as a Business Manager. I then started my in-house experience working for an online dating business and then moved into gaming when working at Catena Media (where myself and the team hired 500 people over 3 years) and then KaFe Rocks. I thought I would be here for a year (max) and 6 years and 3 months later I’m still here—not sure where the time has gone!

Why did you decide to start CMC Consulting? What is the fundamental idea behind it?

This is such a great question and I guess I’m still figuring a lot of it out as I started the business in early April. I’ve always dreamt of having my own business and was out for a swim thinking about what the future could hold, and I suddenly just had this real urge that now was the time to go it alone and to see if it would be possible. I updated my LinkedIn and had 1 client confirmed within an hour, so I felt like now was the right time for me! The idea behind my business is to offer a consultative approach (be it in recruitment or more general HR) to gaming and crypto businesses worldwide. CMC Consulting is a boutique executive search and selection business where we are super strict about the clients we work with. From my side, I only want to partner with businesses where I would personally like to work, and I think this makes the company unique!

You are someone who started a business at the cutting edge of changes in human resource management; as an HR professional and business owner, tell me how employers can impact people's well-being at work nowadays.

This couldn’t be a more relevant question for the world we are living in right now, and it’s something that I had the pleasure of speaking about at both Sigma in Dubai and then on a panel at Casino Beats in Malta in May about this exact topic. I personally feel that businesses need to offer flexibility – this can be shown in many different ways – from benefits to hybrid working. A happy workforce is a more engaged workforce, and so I think it’s essential that business leaders are able to support and develop this.

What are the industries you are focusing on in your HR consultancy?

My focus, for now, is Gaming and Crypto, but I will also start to look at other areas as the businesses scale.

Is there any difference between operating in the iGaming industry and others from an HR perspective?

I think the iGaming industry attracts dynamic individuals who are not afraid to speak up, and that’s why I love it! We really are cutting edge when it comes to so many things.

When we look ahead to what may happen in the marketplace regarding work culture, we can observe that remote work is becoming increasingly popular. What are your thoughts about it?

Fully remote or at least a hybrid work structure I think is essential for attracting generation Z and will be the future of work.

How will the future of remote work impact us?

Training and mentoring junior staff in a remote set-up does have its challenges, but I think that it also has a lot of opportunities—to be able to hire people literally all over the world increases the talent pool a hundred times over (if not more!).

What do these changes mean for you personally?

We are living in a new era when it comes to workplace expectations and company set-up, and I think this is what makes things so exciting.

Communication at the workplace is fundamental, and communication channels have changed a lot in the last 10 years (Zoom, Google Meet/Microsoft Teams, Slack). What are your thoughts about it, and how does this make the work more or less effective?

Yes, they really have! We have seen a digital revolution when it comes to meeting tools, and I think we will move even further to perhaps interact in the metaverse in the coming years! Any tools that are able to mimic human interaction and support culture development are crucial for remote teams, but it’s all about choosing the ones right for your own business.

When you look forward to your vision and aspirations, what challenges are you prepared to overcome?

For me right now it’s about building and developing my business—networking where I can, attending as many conferences as I can and really getting out there. Business is really booming at the moment!

If any company has concerns about managing people, what is your approach to helping them?

With the businesses that I partner with on the HR side, it’s about getting to know the teams, the leaders, and their strengths and areas for development. None of us are perfect, so it’s about how I can best support them to help them deliver what they need to.

Having a work-life balance and hobbies is vital to stay motivated and inspired. Some people are hesitant to have a vacation because they are passionate about their work. What are your thoughts about the unlimited vacation policy?

This was actually my proposal at KaFe Rocks and something which we then implemented—by giving unlimited vacation you are setting a clear precedent that you want the workforce to be rested, happy and recharged. Of course, the expectation is still that employees do go to work but that they feel that when they need a rest they can indeed take it.

You are an accredited yoga instructor. Can you tell us more about why you decided to progress to become an instructor?

Yes absolutely—it’s been on my bucket list for a number of years and now that I work for myself I just thought why not go and do it! I booked it on a bit of a whim (I’m not a very spontaneous person usually) and 6 weeks later I was sitting in a beautiful villa in Paphos, Cyprus about to begin my teaching journey. I think I underestimated how physical it would be – I train every day, but this was about 5 hours a day of physical practice + theory time too – there’s a lot to learn if you want to become an accredited instructor. I absolutely loved my 3 weeks though – it gave me time to pause, take stock and really assess things – I don’t think we ever have time to ask ourselves “am I happy?” and “what do I want from life” and I was able to at least take some time to consider these questions.

Having completed the course, the next thing I needed to think about is where I can add value as an instructor. One of my clients, Tom Galanis from TAG Media has just launched This Years Rule which is an initiative to support the workforce by being able to spend a proportion of our working week spreading love and kindness in the world (however that looks to each of us) and so that’s when I decided that I would go and teach Yoga in old peoples home in Sliema. We had a full house last week, and so I will be going once or twice a week to help with mobility and flexibility. I love animals, and so I will also be spending some time working with a cat charity that I have supported before and was fostering some kittens during the Covid-19 lockdown,

What is the most exciting thing you have read/watched this month?

Every morning I read the Daily Stoic—it helps me focus on an idea for the day and the meditation or lesson for the day is just one short page. I bought it for a friend, and we often compare the meaning to us individually- it gets my brain started in the morning!

If you got stuck on a desert island, what is the one thing you would take with you?

My yoga mat- It’s hard to do Yoga on the sand, haha!