Future of Work and Agility
HR in Challenging Times
In 2009, Director of CRF Learning, Nick Holley, carried out 27 interviews looking at the impact of the recession on HR with HR Directors and line leaders from a number of organisations, including BBC, BT, Centrica, GSK, National Trust, Oracle, Orange, Oxfam, Panasonic, Siemens, Shell, Sony, Travelport and Unilever. One thing that struck him was how few had reviewed their learning from previous recessions and applied them to help them through the current one.
Today, we again face a lot of economic uncertainty: Are we entering a recession or not? Has inflation peaked? Will energy prices continue to fall? Indeed, we have seen that during COVID and many previous recessions, the business needs HR more than ever, but to be most effective HR needs to get closer to the real business issues.
What does this look like?
To start with, HR has taken the need to be ‘lean and mean’ and contribute to the bottom line to heart by saving costs, but as a result has sometimes lost ‘bandwidth’ and the ability to respond meaningful to key issues. Is this really the right time to divert HR’s attention to HR internal transformation, in a period when business needs HR to be focused on business needs?
There is a need to rebalance activities in favour of the short term, but we shouldn’t drop the long-term outlook or the need to be the corporate conscience. HR needs to deliver consistently, to a high standard, without getting side-tracked on new initiatives that divert attention from the business. At the start of COVID, one of CRF’s event speakers talked about the need to survive but at the same time reset so we can thrive. We need to be ambidextrous, not either or but both.
Moreover, the relationship between Group HRDs and Operating Companies (OpCos) is tougher in a recession as central initiatives often don’t respond to very different issues facing individual OpCos.
It is important to look at consistency and delivery versus yet another new HR initiative that has the potential to confuse and divert attention from the business.
Most organisations should also seriously consider their need to ‘upskill’ more HR people to be credible business partners.
There is a need for much better communication skills in HR.
Finally, it is important to notice the contrast between HR directors who talked from the perspective of the management team first – in other words, those who talked about ‘us’ – and HR directors who talked about their good HR practices first and mentioned being part of the management team almost as an aside – those who talked about ‘them’. Many line managers also talked about HR (‘them’) as if they were not full members of the team. It is easy to lose track of the fact that HR is part of the business, not a partner who sits outside it.
Want to learn more about how to be an effective HR Director, to avoid some of the issues above and help your business thrive during difficult economic circumstances? Check out CRF Learning’s Becoming an Effective HR Director Open Programme.
