Just 3% of organisations ranked developing their HR team as a first or second-place priority for 2011, compared to 34% in 2010. However, 74% of respondents said that developing people to achieve growth and competitive advantage was paramount (up from 69% in 2010), according to the Corporate Learning Priorities Survey 2011 carried out by Henley Business School’s corporate development team.
Despite the reduction of focus on HR capability, HR must continue to develop and transform in 2011, said Nick Kemsely, co-director at Henley's Centre for HR Excellence. HR functions need to address gaps in their content, structure, process, system and skills to ensure they are meeting the needs of organisations – or risk being sidelined, he added.
"This change must happen quickly. HR will need to live the values of the post-downturn world – speed, pragmatism, tangibility, impact – in its own evolution, or else risk being left isolated in a business world which has to get on with things with or without its help.
"If HR can pull this transformation off, then the kind of work which happens within the function will be genuinely business-critical and offer both enormous opportunity and challenge for those who want to, and are able, to work like this. HR would be a place where a connection with business strategy and performance was immediate and tangible," he said.
Retention of talent was the second highest priority for development activity, with 73% identifying it as crucial, a rise from 63% last year. Concern about managing change came third with 64% naming it as a learning objective, compared with 60% in 2010.
Henley surveyed 2,500 HR and non-HR senior managers from private and public sector organisations employing in excess of 500 people. Hugh Evans, vice-dean and director of corporate learning at Henley Business School (pictured), said performance management was a key theme emerging from the survey.
"There is clear recognition that the skills and behaviours of talented people are fundamental to business recovery and high performance. Leadership development has perhaps never been more important for the senior team and, for the second year running, middle managers in particular. When change sets an organisation off in a new direction, leaders have the challenge of taking people with them; inspiring, facilitating, engaging, coaching and communicating."
