CIPD Annual Conference 2010 – #cipd10

This year as last the annual shin-dig of the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development CIPD (the UK’s professional body for HR, HRD & OD professionals) is taking place at Manchester.

Some interesting sessions attended so far.

The introduction by Jackie Orme – the CIPD’s CEO set the scene for the event. Pointing out that for an organisation to be a success required a unique blend of both financial health of the business with an appropriate level of social responsibility.

The CIPD being both politically and sectorally independent puts the CIPD in a unique position. Orme highlighted the importance of putting the people agenda back at the centre of HR work, meeting both the business needs and the needs of the people to deliver the business.

Orme announces a package of changes to the CIPD member offer to further develop the support to members and their growth throughout their career, recognising that cost of CIPD services may have been a barrier in the past. New services and price revisions are taking place to address this.

Orme suggested that HR needed to be more insight led rather than policy led for the future success of both our profession and our organisations.

Keynote

Ram Charan

A charismatic professional that started out by asking how many people used powerpoint for such presentations.. then proceeded to spend the entire session “out in the participants” – not using any visual aids and engaging with people eye-to-eye. I suspect that some of the audience may have felt a little intimidated by this.

He had some great messages.

His first was that to be a good athlete they need to train – not just with complex kit, but doing the basics like press-ups. Now the athletes don’t like this but they do it as practice and practicing the basics is fundamental to success. Using the analogy we were challenged as to what are the boring basics we need to practice in HR/ HRD? He suggested that relationships, influencing are amongst those things – and do we practice them often enough?

The future of HR is as the trustee of the people – much like the CFO is the trustee of finance. This means we need to understand the talent we have, where each person adds value and where they do not, and to make sure that key decision makers are aware of the latent talent so that it can be retained, grown and deployed.

The key role HR has were stated as:

1)      to be the trustee of people

2)      recognise the potential in every leader in clear and specific ways (actions not competence)

3)      to find people and find a fit for them and to develop them (note the order – not what is traditional, putting people into roles!

For Hr to do this properly we must not rely on 360 and other measurements – the human brain is better at this, we need to see them in action – in the “day job”. We need to be able to spot leaders with “bandwidth” capacity.

As HR professionals, one thing that we can add strategically to the business is to be able to spot “social trends” occurring both inside and outside our organisations and look for the organisational relevance and inform business leaders. HR is better connected than many other functions to do this.

He stated the obvious and yet it seemed in context – WTHOUT PEOPLE YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS.

This session covered a lot – too much to put here – when I have digested this maybe there will be a longer piece!