Researchers at the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) have created a top 10 list of priorities for HR professionals, as the private sector emerges from recession but still generally faces tough economic conditions, and the public and third sectors face up to significant cost-cutting and redundancies ahead.
The top 10 issues are workforce planning, keeping the organisation agile, enhancing capability of learning and development strategies, engaging people in the ‘teenies', managing talent in tough times, managing performance and reward beyond the financial crisis, managing older employees, organisational development and transforming HR for the future.
Duncan Brown (pictured), director of HR business development at the IES, said: "As we move forward to a new decade, we have been reflecting on key priorities we see for organisations as they start to emerge from recession and look to the future. Although 2009 was one of those years that many of us will be glad to see the back of, it has taught us some salutary, if sobering, lessons about organisational life.
"The potential contribution of people to organisation performance has never been clearer, but the challenges in harnessing that potential, as well as measuring and demonstrating the links have certainly increased in such a tough, cash-constrained climate. The value of those HR and organisational development professionals that can really contribute to successfully changing their organisations, inputting at the strategic level but also partnering managers at the front-line to put their grand policies into practice and genuinely engage their people, has never been more starkly apparent."
