HR’s role during the recession, Personnel Today 2nd December and 20th January

As a follow on from Kelloway’s contribution there are two short but interesting articles in Personnel Today, both about the HR role during the recession, one with good news and one with bad news. The good news was in December when the article spoke of the important role of HR people during the downturn, making sure that staff are fully briefed and that there are encouraging suggestions for responses to hard times.

These points came from the highly regarded CEO of Diageo Paul Walsh, who, contradicting the points made by Lucy Kellaway above, said that HR’s role of inclusion and communication was vital and that they must be ‘in the vanguard of talent development’. Another CEO, John McDonough of Carillion emphasised the need to maintain training investment – which of course we strongly endorse!! – to take advantage of the upturn when it comes; the CEO of John Lewis also made similar points about the importance of the HR role.

The bad news from the January article was a poll taken out by Roffey Park, which showed that only 30% of line managers felt that HR was adding value to the organisation. This is apparently down from 33% and 34% in previous years, results which must cause concern, even without the recent downturn. Can between 60% and 70% of managers really believe that the HR function is adding no value? Those who are interested in finding out more should approach Roffey Park; it would be interesting to see how the question was addressed and, if possible, how this compares with other functions.

Apparently one of the issues was the failure to be proactive and take timely initiatives. One comment in the article from an HR Director – Barry Hoffman of Computacenter – perhaps illustrates the problem. His solution is for ‘managers to engage creatively with their HR Departments …. , allow us to add value, ignore us at your peril’. Say no more!

It might be interesting for readers from the HR function to carry out their own internal surveys and make comparisons. From our observation of the image and levels of pro-activity of our clients’ HR functions, it is hard for MTP to relate to these results.



To access the articles referred to go to http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/12/01/48533/business-big-wigs-heap-praise-on-motivational-role-of-hr-in-tough-times.html and http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2009/01/15/48987/hr-profession-urged-to-stick-to-guns-despite-sniping-from-line-managers.html