Friday 1 January 2010

HR 2010: The Year Of Value Creation

I thank you dear readers for the overwhelming success of the 1st Annual Issue of the The Human Factor. We received the largest number of Letters To The Editor ever, mostly appreciating our efforts and some critical, but all most helpful. Your feedback is deeply appreciated and encourages us to work harder to make the magazine even more contemporary, actionable and cutting-edge.

The new year has arrived in the midst of positive economic activity and key indicators show that we are slowly but certainly on the road to recovery. The last couple of years of economic downturn, job cuts and salary freezes were bad news for all concerned but especially so for the HR community, as we faced the immense challenge of keeping the morale up in trying times. While the downturn brought distress, it also pushed us to develop new and innovative tools and techniques to enhance productivity and engage employees within a tight budget. The industry and employment landscape has inescapably changed, as happens with any major economic event, and to deal with the new realities Human Resource departments will have to be flexible, adaptable and innovative in even their day-to-day activities. I have a feeling we will have a lot to thank for the lessons learnt during the slowdown, to deal with challenges arising in the years of economic growth that will follow. What the slowdown has definitely taught us is that we cannot rest on our haunches, and need to keep augmenting
I thank you dear readers for the overwhelming success of the 1st Annual Issue of the The Human Factor. We received the largest number of Letters To The Editor ever, mostly appreciating our efforts and some critical, but all most helpful. Your feedback is deeply appreciated and encourages us to work harder to make the magazine even more contemporary, actionable and cutting-edge.

The new year has arrived in the midst of positive economic activity and key indicators show that we are slowly but certainly on the road to recovery. The last couple of years of economic downturn, job cuts and salary freezes were bad news for all concerned but especially so for the HR community, as we faced the immense challenge of keeping the morale up in trying times. While the downturn brought distress, it also pushed us to develop new and innovative tools and techniques to enhance productivity and engage employees within a tight budget. The industry and employment landscape has inescapably changed, as happens with any major economic event, and to deal with the new realities Human Resource departments will have to be flexible, adaptable and innovative in even their day-to-day activities. I have a feeling we will have a lot to thank for the lessons learnt during the slowdown, to deal with challenges arising in the years of economic growth that will follow. What the slowdown has definitely taught us is that we cannot rest on our haunches, and need to keep augmenting technical, functional and behavioural skills to survive.

Writing my first editorial for 2010 I could not avoid the temptation of writing about what should be our New Year resolution as a community of HR professionals. I can hear readers groan about the futility of New Year resolutions, but humour me a little, let us give this a shot.

At every meeting and conference on Human Resources we keep hearing about strategic HR and aligning HR with business, and how HR can transform business. The reason we keep talking about this is because while we have achieved some measure of success in certain industries and forward-looking organisations, we have not as yet as a community of professionals been able to take positive steps to achieve what we aspire to become. We should possibly work towards transforming HR as a whole before HR can transform business. This would mean becoming a proactive function that understands the business and the management direction for the future, and plans activities whose outcomes would positively impact the bottomline while increasing capabilities to be competitive and ahead of the competition in the future. A key to achieving this would be to attract and retain the right talent to the Human Resource function; talent that is eager to keep learning and is open to new ideas. We need to move on this year and concentrate on improving HR talent and creating the behaviours and insight needed to add value to business. Let 2010 be the defining year where we renew our journey of HR excellence through creation of value for our businesses. The Human Factor’s New Year resolution is to push the agenda for value creation through HR in 2010, and as always we need you with us to achieve our goal.
technical, functional and behavioural skills to survive.

Writing my first editorial for 2010 I could not avoid the temptation of writing about what should be our New Year resolution as a community of HR professionals. I can hear readers groan about the futility of New Year resolutions, but humour me a little, let us give this a shot.

At every meeting and conference on Human Resources we keep hearing about strategic HR and aligning HR with business, and how HR can transform business. The reason we keep talking about this is because while we have achieved some measure of success in certain industries and forward-looking organisations, we have not as yet as a community of professionals been able to take positive steps to achieve what we aspire to become. We should possibly work towards transforming HR as a whole before HR can transform business. This would mean becoming a proactive function that understands the business and the management direction for the future, and plans activities whose outcomes would positively impact the bottomline while increasing capabilities to be competitive and ahead of the competition in the future. A key to achieving this would be to attract and retain the right talent to the Human Resource function; talent that is eager to keep learning and is open to new ideas. We need to move on this year and concentrate on improving HR talent and creating the behaviours and insight needed to add value to business. Let 2010 be the defining year where we renew our journey of HR excellence through creation of value for our businesses. The Human Factor’s New Year resolution is to push the agenda for value creation through HR in 2010, and as always we need you with us to achieve our goal.