People and organisation development strategist Jon Ingham believes that while science is undoubtedly crucial to the success of HR strategy, art also has its place.
"HR art is a more emotionally rich and intuitive approach, which can also guide decisions about people," he said. "The difficulty is that art is by nature more varied and intangible and is therefore harder to describe or define, which may be one reason we tend not to focus on it as much."
Ingham also believes the two approaches can be combined to form a successful HR strategy.
"Blending science and art is where the magic happens," he said. "So we need HR data scientists, but we also need wisdom artists – people who can extract meaning from data and information – including the sort of fuzzy information provided to us by our intuition, and develop great, innovative, tailored strategies that drive our organisations forward."
The art of HR is the focus of a new global HR conference being run by Cotrugli Business School in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from 13-16 November 2014.
Dave Ulrich, professor in the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, will be speaking at the conference about future HR trends.
HR magazine is a media partner of the Art of HR conference. Editor Arvind Hickman will be moderating a panel of HR directors to discuss findings from research being launched today.
The survey seeks to understand more about the role of art in HR and how this can help HR to be successful.
The results will be published in the October issue of HR.
Details of the conference are available here and you can participate in the research here.
