HR’s Moment of Truth: A Time to Lead

The world of work has changed dramatically over the last five years.

AI, productivity, skill shortages, employment legislation and the changing employee expectations have all put people, leadership and organisational performance firmly on the board agenda.

This podcast is all about looking ahead, but we kind of have to start with today, really, when talking about the HR journey.

If each of you had one sentence to describe the state of the HR profession today, what would it be? I'll come to you first, Chris.

I'm going to start by trying to reflect the external narrative, which is not particularly confident or complimentary, but I think it's one we have to face into.

as we think about what needs to happen,

where we need to go.

So the narrative really is a profession sort of verging on the irrelevance, perhaps unconfident, maybe less than capable, with very mixed view about its contribution to overall organisational performance, and potentially a profession that is now over-invested in versus other more productive parts of the organisation.

That might be unfair.

It probably is an unfair characterisation of some of the very best in our world.

But it's a narrative we have to deal with.

And unless we deal with it effectively, I think we're going to find there are abilities of profession to contribute to organisational performance and success is going to be undermined.

OK, that's a really interesting way to start.

Chloe, how would you follow that up?

I would build on Chris's themes there and talk about the fact that this is a vital moment for the profession.

And in the words of, for example, Mercer's global talent trends, it's now or never for HR reinvention.

The reason for that, I think, comes actually particularly from one of the perspectives I bring to the CIPD, which is part of the public benefit.

Why would a former Secretary of State be interested in supporting the CIPD on its journey? The answer to that is because it's economically essential.

HR has such a role to play in what adds up to the national and indeed global economy.

But to do that, we have to help the profession to take those steps.

And I suspect that's what we'll spend some time talking about today.

OK, Neil, Chloe and Chris have described the challenge very eloquently in that way.

I mean, what's the opportunity that you see most clearly?

I think for us as a group of professional leaders, whether we're HR leaders in employers or we're inside the functions of the CIPD, you've heard, I think from Chris, and Chris put this in a speech recently really well, about some of the challenges that the HR function is facing.

But those are challenges that the HR function is facing.