Caltex marketing executive Magdalena Roel Batchelor is Spanish, was raised in Germany and went to university in England. Her career has taken her from London to Switzerland to Asia to America to India and almost everywhere in Europe. In 2008, her heart led her to Australia but not at the cost of her career.
Upon relocating from the United Kingdom Roel Batchelor joined Caltex as the manager of the lubricants marketing division. Quickly the unit became one of the major profitability drivers in the business. She helped develop and implement an integrated growth strategy for the division which led to a profitable market share growth from 14.5% in 2008 to 22% in 2010. In 2011, Roel Batchelor helped to meet the 2013 stretch targets and she was also named as The Australian Financial Review Young Executive of the Year.
“I was tasked with developing a strategy in Finished Lubricants and we managed to achieve what was first deemed to be an impossible target two years early,” she says. “It seemed insurmountable at the time but everyone did really well.”
She attributes the results to a workforce that is willing to adapt.
“I really appreciate how you can make change happen much more quickly in the Australian market,” she says.
Those results are the reason Roel Batchelor was selected to be part of the new Caltex Innovation & Growth Team. She was on maternity leave with her first baby when she was approached about taking on the role driving new growth strategies for the marketing business.
“I consciously took 12 months off with my daughter,” she says. “I was very clear about that. I wanted the full time. I am now back working full-time but I do two days a week from home which is a big help.”
It’s not the first time, however, that she’s worked from home. And assisting employees with childcare responsibilities isn’t the only reason why she ensures everyone in her team does it regularly too.
“Even before I became a mother I was very cognisant that flexibility is important. It’s a live issue for everyone,” she says. “Working in an office every day is not always the most productive way to work or the way to make people blossom.”
She said the expectation that everyone will be in the office every day, can be stifling, particularly when working in strategy. When she was working as the marketing manager for lubricants, she realised tinkering with the status quo might create better results.
“We were all proactively doing our jobs but not having any ‘out time’ to create work instead of just responding to work,” she says. “We decided everyone would work one day a week from home – to increase our productivity and create more balance for everyone.
The system meant her team didn’t need to request work from home time, and it has been a great equaliser.
“Males are sometimes hesitant to request flexibility because the expectations are still that it’s not necessarily for men,” Roel Batchelor says. “It created a well-rounded team. Opening flexibility up in every organisation will mean mothers aren’t the exception anymore and it will also facilitate fathers to take a more active role.”
Roel Batchelor was destined to be an influence in the world of business from early on. In her second year of university, where she was completing a degree in her third language, she was offered a one-year internship in Switzerland with scientific equipment manufacturer Rotronic AG.
“It was very exciting and it was paid which was terrific as a poor student,” Roel Batchelor laughs. “I did anything and everything from export, to logistics, to customer service. I then worked alongside the managing director – I got tremendous insight into how he operated which was wonderful.”
After graduating from England’s University of Hull with First Class Honours with distinctions in Business Studies and European Studies, she faced a familiar dilemma.
“Like every student I thought, ‘Right what will I do to pay off my student debt?”
she says. “I loved the UK because it seemed to be a very equal society with lots of opportunities for females.”
She ended up taking a position with British Steel, a large steel producer, on its graduate trainee program.
A few years later, keen to utilise her language skills (she also speaks Portuguese, French, Italian and basic Japanese), she was persuaded to apply for a position with BP. Soon enough Roel Batchelor was identified for BP’s accelerated development program.
A few years later she was seconded to the British Government in the Department of Trade & Industry where she served as a policy advisor on world trade to Ministers during the UK Presidency of the European Union.
“It was a really interesting role and a very different environment,” she says. “I learned how to be effective in a bureaucratic setting and it was very stimulating and robust.”