Armstrong is at the head of an institute with more than 107,000 members across the UK and the Irish republic. His background is impressive, being a main board director of Standard Chartered and of the Metal Box Group. For 17 years, he held a number of personnel posts in British Leyland, leading all negotiations in the BL Cars companies from 1979 to 1984.
This interview was a chance for him to address concerns that the CIPD could be doing more to improve the standing of HR as a profession and that it has little to offer more senior HR practitioners.
As you would expect, Armstrong makes a strong pitch for the worth of the CIPD, arguing that This profession is both healthy and open. People should move through it, into it, out of it and into it again. In the near future, people wont get to be board directors or chief executives unless they have spent substantial amounts of their career at different times focusing on people management and development. Its an area that the brightest talent is going to have to become very proficient in managing.
He emphasises, The CIPD is a professional, exciting institute. Its value is high and potentially much higher.
Armstrong also has a message for CIPD members. Ultimately, he says, the CIPD can only be as good as its members. Our job is therefore to equip our members to be valued and esteemed even more in their organisations. But in turn there is a reciprocal obligation on members to feed the body of knowledge with their experience and learning and keep it alive and dynamic.
You describe your role at Standard Chartered as a change agent, someone who can respond to customer needs and, where necessary, turn things on their heads. Is that how you see your role at the CIPD?
Ive been at the CIPD for nine years, and yes, Ive done that in spades. When I came into the old Institute of Personnel Management (IPM) it really wasnt at the leading edge intellect-ually and its costs were out of control. It had a good reputation for its professional qualifications for people in their 20s and 30s and it had Harrogate and some good training courses. But it was not at the front of peoples minds in terms of helping to anticipate changes in the world of work.
What were your original priorities?
To turn the institute into a financially robust organisation, to position it at the leading edge through our research agenda, to provide information to members and to re-articulate professional standards and qualifications. Associated with that was the need to persuade members of the IPM and the Institute of Training and Development (ITD) that we should bring the two organisations together.
And the new improved CIPD would be...?
Dynamic. We wanted to carve out a new type of professional organisation. We didnt want a copy of the old type of institute focusing on regulation, gatekeeping, licence to practise... We wanted to be up there with members at all stages in their careers, giving them information, stimulation, case material, learning networks and access to people facing similar situations and problems.
What was the aim for members?
Members had to be technically proficient relied upon by employers to know about all aspects of people management, whether its employment law, training-needs analysis, psychometric testing or the evaluation of effectiveness of HR plans.
Overlaying that was a code of professional conduct we take people to task for dishonest behaviour. And to give them continuing professional development lifelong learning.
How far have you got?
I think weve established quite a lot. More or less anyone coming into HR would say getting CIPD qualifications is an absolute no-brainer. With our magazine, website, conferences, training programmes, were giving a great deal of value to people at those early stages in their 20s and 30s and up to the managerial and director-preparation levels.
And above those levels?
There is more to do at the top level. We are doing a lot already. You might not see it because we dont blow bugles about it. Were doing a lot with HR directors we have very extensive networks of the most senior people involved in our research programme and really senior people are always speaking at our events.
Give specific examples of what you can offer senior HR people
Theres a whole string of research, like the Sheffield Effectiveness Unit study in the engineering industry, which shows without challenge that of all the interventions you can make those in people management and development are far and away the most effective in terms of productiv-ity and profitability.
Weve had about half a dozen senior-level seminars recently which maybe 30 personnel directors attend and weve got extensive consultative networks either through face-to-face seminars or by sending people papers or having bulletin-board chats with senior people they are pretty lively and well-used.
But the CIPD has its critics...
I would say a lot of people youre getting comments and criticism from are at that age where it wasnt important to them to join the old ITD or the old IPM. They will have, in many cases, possibly gone through their careers without getting that qualification, and theyre probably not CIPD members now, so they dont see the things that were doing we publicise them in the magazine or theyre on the website. Its almost a self-fulfilling thing in a way, and in saying that, Im not criticising them, and Im not complaining about it, its just the way it is. Frankly, were not yet good enough at getting the message out about how much good work we are doing.
So whats your game plan?
The CIPD is a new sort of institute. Its about helping our members by spotting trends early, anticipating challenges they might meet and putting in place a range of stimuli, information services and training services to help them to be there when they are needed. Were pressing members to be bolder, assertive, more demonstrative of the value theyre bringing. If were going to be credible, we have to be seen as business managers first, functional specialists second.
How far do CIPD qualifications mirror this business focus?
If you look at our core qualifications, about one third is to do with business management, and weve restructured the other two thirds to make it clear what the organisational context is.
What are your thoughts on the poor reputation of HR in industry?
People management is often under-regarded inside organisations, but we are sometimes our own worst enemy. We go in for self-criticism and self-flagellation. Often its because the sort of people who go into HR are quite self-questioning and reflective theyre thinking all the time about the sensitivities of the organisation itself and they apply the same to themselves. Im on a presidents sub-committee at the Institute of Chartered Accountants and theyre going through exactly the same uncertainties. Theyre saying the things that weve traditionally measured are no longer the main drivers of value for organisations, we havent got a way of capturing intellectual capital, human capital or social capital to our satisfaction... They can see the writing on the wall if they dont find the answers. Were not alone.
So what does the profession have to do?
A lot of managers still think that people management is an intuitive skill or faddy. The reality is that it is no less strategic and rigorous a discipline than any other in management. It has to be a hard contributor of distinctive value to the organisation, or it will be discredited.We also have to show that the ways people are managed and developed add distinctive value to the bottom line.
We have to be fearless in setting and quantifying targets that we expect to be able to achieve. The fact that its not as simple as the return on investment or capital investment when you put in a new piece of kit shouldnt deter us from being rigorous in measurement and targeting and evaluating the impact of interventions.
What about the CIPDs relationship with the Government?
As a profession, I think we are increasingly valued and esteemed. Certainly, we work extensively with government these days to help it frame its thinking and legislation. Were not a campaigning body you wont see us marching with flags down Whitehall, but we aim to be valuable to the public policy-making process by virtue of the practical experience our members have in managing people and leading change.
Are you happy with your conferences?
Our conferences are much admired. The CBI has just started to bring in the sort of speakers weve been using for years. We deliberately positioned Harrogate and HRD week so that they are business conferences aimed at people specialists rather than personnel conferences aimed at technicians. We were the first to bring in Michael Porter, Gary Hamel, C K Prahalad, Charles Handy, Rosabeth Moss Kanter... were deliberately trying to bring people a whole range of stimuli.
But isnt Harrogate these days just a conference for the office junior?
No. The attendance at Harrogate is about 2,500 delegates. The delegate profile is very varied and you cer-tainly get junior people there, but the median group is people in their 30s on 50,000-plus a year. But it really is quite a senior, strategic-level audience for the most part. Admittedly, the most senior people tend not to go to conferences unless theyre speaking, but thats true across all functions.
Why arent you courting more media attention to raise your profile?
Our voice is increasingly being heard. Most days there are probably half a dozen radio and television interviews from members of our staff. They dont necessarily get picked up by the written media and, if youre at work, you might not hear them, but it is amazing how much is going on. But I admit that weve still got a big job to do to communicate how much is going on.
Wouldnt you agree that for senior HR people, track record is what counts CIPD qualifications are irrelevant
When youre hiring a finance director, you dont look whether someones a chartered accountant you simply take it as read.
What sort of feedback do you get from the profession?
Recently the HR director at Vodafone called me to say that he was making CIPD qualifications essential for all his HR staff because he was so impressed with what were doing. We often get that. Were working extensively with Shell around the world theyre taking our flexible learning approach to qualifications and were working with them in Brunei and parts of Africa...
Who are you impressed by?
Sir John Browne at BP is one. He gave one of the most seminal interviews Ive seen to the Harvard Business Review a couple of years ago on knowledge management. It was a very clear exposition of how knowledge and learning were key resources for BP without which he couldnt achieve the very ambitious strategies he is pursuing.
Does Chartered status add anything of substance to the IPD?
Ive always seen it more in terms of removal of a negative than achievement of a positive. There are positive things of course. It represents recognition at the highest level that there is a profession to do with people management, that there is a discernible body of knowledge, understanding and experience that is systematically learnable, and that there is an ethical code of conduct and standards. But its more a sign of coming of age it takes away a negative if, for example, our members work with chartered surveyors or chartered accountants and they wonder why their profession isnt recognised in the same way. But its not going to catapult people onto the board, or get them a higher salary although CIPD members do earn more than non-CIPD members...
How do you see the CIPD changing over the next five years?
I would see membership still growing, predominately web-based, providing thought-leadership, looking for significantly enhanced European coverage, more involvement at EC level, wide recognition that people management and development is a core part of business and I would see us having lots of evidence to demonstrate this. Professional institutes are going to succeed or fail to the extent to which they equip their members and the colleagues of their members who are not in the profession to do their jobs better in our case in the field of people management and development. That requires a lot of work.
