editor's welcome | ISSUE 182


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EDITOR’S WELCOME Welcome to the


HRDIRECTOR - the only independent publication dedicated to HR directors.


CONTACTS


Founder & Managing Director Peter Banks


EDITORIAL Jason Spiller


A decade ago, the best-selling book The Secrets of CEOs, called HR’s credentials into question because the profession’s CV “lacked numbers”. With a legacy of people-centric transaction barricading HR in a deep silo, its reputation as a vanilla department with limited range and scope seemed set for good.


Since then, data and analytics has been a real game changer, switching HR from reactive to predictive. Frustratingly though, HR is failing to capitalise on this new power, due to a lack of analytics skills in the ranks, and shortcomings in commercial strategy continues to be a ball and chain. Consequently, commercially- skilled HR professionals are in high demand, and they are few and far between. The reality is, how organisations view their HR function is radically changing and, at the core, is enterprise.


The skills shortage crisis is putting the handbrake on global expansion ambitions and a constraint on the pace of international commercial potential, just as opening up emerging markets becomes business critical. Building global workforces across borders has always been a fine line judgement of how to use expats and hiring and training locals, but expats with the requisite capabilities are in short supply, so hiring, onboarding and training locals is severely disrupted. Without a cohesive network and continuity, global plans are sunk.


Today’s complex nature of business operations is rendering the simple and rigid organisational pyramid to history. In its place is not so much a structure, as a constantly shapeshifting matrix, with the capacity to evolve multilaterally and multifunctionally. Firms at the leading- edge are experiencing greater agility and reactivity, as well as all-important prescience, as coordination and knowledge sharing drives the agenda. Amazingly, business competitiveness is not hinged just on product quality or


4 | thehrdirector | DECEMBER 2019


customer satisfaction, but on operational integrity and agility, and there is clear blue water between more and less matrixed organisations, as talent is inclined towards the former and is repelled from the latter.


Any significant business decision that is not based on the most conclusive data and thoroughly interrogated by analytics is the commercial equivalent of Russian roulette. Yet despite sitting on a veritable Klondike of data, HR is rarely informing at a decision science level, and it is certainly not for the lack of data. Moreover, it is perception, mindset and approach. Rather than reading data to inform resourcing decisions, HR must position TM in organisational strategy, which informs more directly on actual business planning decisions.


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PANELLISTS Ravi Chand


EDITORIAL Chief People Officer, Department for International Development (DfID)


Gemma Dale HR Consultant Harvey Francis


Executive Vice President Skanska UK Plc


Dr Anthony Hesketh


Department of Management Learning & Leadership Lancaster University Management School


Makbool Javaid Partner


Simons Muirhead & Burton


Michael Kerr VP & Chief Officer


Aston Martin Lagonda Brian Newman


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JASON SPILLER - EDITOR editor@thehrdirector.com


Jo Moseley HR Director Salvation Army


Graham White Former NHS Director of HR


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ISSN 1754 0224


theHRDIRECTOR is published by Pure Strategic Media Ltd Registered in England & Wales No. 7878098


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