The
Personnel Manager's
Yearbook
Foreword - Coming of Age
Jackie Orme
Chief Executive, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Jackie Orme is the new Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
(CIPD). She’s taken on her role at a time of global economic turmoil. Here she reflects on the
implications for people management and development professionals.
At a time of economic turmoil, it is a challenge writing a foreword for a publication that will sit on people’s desks
for a year. By the time you read this, it may be that the credit crunch has uncrunched. It may be that oil prices
have receded. But the chances are that the economy is still a dominant theme affecting your organisation.
So, you’ve battened down the hatches. Cut back on training and development. Cancelled the leadership
development programme planned for implementation this year. All those employee engagement initiatives
have been reined back as you focus on delivering the planned redundancies. Right?
Some of this may be true for some of you, but I’ll bet not for the majority. At the CIPD, we are pretty sure that
this slowdown will be different to many that have gone before. Barring a full-blooded recession, we expect the
war for talent to go on, even if the intensity subsides a bit as the labour market slows. The credit crunch may
have made headlines throughout 2008. But, in our view, it is the talent crunch that is the enduring problem for
the UK and the global economy. Against this backdrop, firms are going to have to continue to innovate and
excel in the way they recruit, retain and engage people to deliver competitive advantage.
There’s been a big shift in perceptions of the role of the HR profession in the last decade or so. We have
moved from being a kind of unglamorous corporate lifebelt defined by our capacity to keep the organisation
out of trouble – be it on employment relations or legislative compliance – to a place where our role in delivering
business success is far more universally recognised.
The work we do in managing talent and culture is now highly valued by organisational leaders for the
competitive edge it can deliver. Instead of having to justify this, we can concentrate on determining the best
levers to pull to maximise that competitive edge.
Costs have always mattered in HR. But in the past there was perhaps too much of a tendency to see HR itself
as just a cost. Nowadays, it is much more likely for HR to be able to play a part in delivering responsible cost
savings in a way that doesn’t damage overall business objectives. For example, pay and reward is far more
sophisticated in its capacity to drive productivity. So even where there is pressure to cut the overall wage bill,
it is possible to add value by ensuring that systems are reinvented to reward performance.
Equally, the value learning and development delivers in terms of improved skills, capacity and organisational
agility is not just nice to have. It is essential in the globally competitive world in which we live. Here the
challenge is to identify the appropriate mix of learning interventions to balance budgetary realities with
organisational need.
So HR has much value to add during an economic slowdown. There is plenty of evidence that the
organisations that invest effectively in hanging on to and developing their talent, and attracting the new talent
needed to deliver against business objectives, are better placed than their competitors to deliver future
success
I also think it is important not to lose sight of the importance of the role of HR as an employee advocate. During
the years when the profession needed to battle to establish its business credentials, there was something
of a drive to prove HR was tough, understood business metrics and was capable of cutting costs. All that is
important. But so too is the employee advocate part of the role. We need to maintain the courage to retain a
balance between organisational needs and employee needs. That balance can play a huge part in ensuring
the organisation has a well-motivated workforce, capable of sustainable high performance.
The changes in attitude to things like flexible and family-friendly working and diversity that have occurred in
recent years look set to comfortably survive these tougher economic times. The role these practices play has
been shown to be a positive one in delivering engagement and motivation. Sometimes advocating the needs
of employees on matters such as these can be just as important to the long-term success of the business
as driving down costs. The return in terms of greater employee engagement and motivation may not show on
any balance sheet, but the sustained boost in business performance it can deliver certainly does.
There may be elements of this part of the role that hark back to the historic “workers’ welfare” role fulfilled by
the early practitioners of our profession. But it is not about employee rights for employee rights’ sake – it is
about the business case for progressive people management practices.
While some of our role may have parallels to the past, there are plenty of new challenges for us too. The
future of HR is a borderless one. Many of us now need an inherent understanding of how to work across
boundaries and borders. And we need to be capable of developing the leaders, the policies, the systems
and practices that work on the same basis.
As I work through my first year at the CIPD I’m determined for us to continue to anticipate the changes and
challenges facing the profession, and to deliver the research, practical advice and guidance, and the services
and networks needed by our members.
I’ve got the good fortune to be leading an Institute built on firm foundations. The demands we face may
change. But we have the opportunity to play a huge part in unlocking the nation’s talent. This is at the very
top of the priorities of CEOs and government alike. We can really help to equip people managers and British
business as a whole to make the most of their people.
I hope you’re not peeking at this from underneath battened-down hatches. Uncertain times bring challenges,
but they also bring tremendous opportunities. Those that seize these opportunities have the chance to deliver
tremendous competitive advantage to their organisations for the
