In the recent edition of Personnel Today 22 May 2009 (newspaper for HR professionals) Kat Baker reports that:
“HR directors are queuing up to admit there are more “bad” people in the profession than good, and that they limit the power of the function.”
Can this be true?
Have we as a profession really lost sight of what we need to do to improve the quality of our own provision?
Whereas the CIPD (HR professional body) refuses to be drawn into the debate, the article claims that several HR chiefs have joined the claim and echoed these thoughts, expressing concern at the state of the profession.
Simon Nash, HR director at legal firm Carey Olsen, told Personnel Today he thought just one in 10 HR professionals were “really fit for purpose”, and that many people should leave the profession. “I have recently been recruiting for my team and I have been disappointed by the quality and motivations of many of the HR people I have seen,” he said.
Wow, this is damming – rather than focus on HR overall, it does force us at OFQT to question the HRD professional specifically and ask “what exactly is the HRD professional doing to improve their quality of their skills and their service provision?”
When we first established OFQT our main purpose was (and still is) to improve the quality of training in organisations.
We used our associated research and discussions with many different HRD professionals in the course of our regular work and began to notice a trend in responses, organisations were raising the same difficult issues to do with HRD and Training and practitioners were voicing difficulties they found in their roles.
We have colleated this anecdotal evidence into four main areas highlighting in each case a target group, the key problem they are facing and the associated risks if left unattended.
1. HR Directors and Training Managers:
Problem: Having to provide evidence as to how training is actually impacting on the business bottom line
Risk: Leaves Training function (HR function) vulnerable to budget cuts and loss of jobs if unable to ‘prove’ impact on service and performance improvement
2. Trainers, Coaches, Mentors, Facilitators:
Problem: Needing to show, more regularly now, their own quality assurance systems and personal development actions
Risk: Getting labelled as no longer ‘fit for purpose’ (as in article) or out-of-date in their approach / not having a ’safety net’ when dealing with difficult coaching and facilitating situations that demand more than they can provide
3. Interim, Mobile and Flexible workers in the organisation
Problem: Missing out on training that is provided by the organisation meaning it is hard to keep up-to-date / taking knowledge with them when they leave
Risk: Repeating learning programmes again and again is costly / organisation loses knowledge, innovation and memory
4. Individuals, Teams and Services needing to handle change:
Problem: Acquiring the knowledge and the skills is no longer enough to make change happen, meaning that change repeatedly fails or is unsustainable after change management training
Risk: Waste of training investment and no real steps forward, staff become demotivated which affects climate and attendance
We feel that by increasing the results and presenting these clearly to show the impact that HRD and Training can have on the business we will go some way to turn the tide of discontentment away from us being viewed as the bad ‘guys’.
Following the publication of this Personnel Today article, it appears that our initial beliefs behind OFQT – were correct. Our hope while we work on improving quality is that we are not all tarnished with the same ‘HR’ brush.
Read the full article for yourself and make up your own mind
We are a privately-owned company based here in the UK and our aim is to improve the quality of training management systems, training provision and learning methods so that businesses can see a real return on their training investments and training providers will be recognised as the vital component in business development.
Visit our main website by clicking on the link at the end of each post or phone us on +44 (0)207 193 5292.
We can help you ensure that your training makes a real business difference!
Don’t tarnish us all with the same brush May 24, 2009
Posted by ofqt in Comment.1 comment so far
In the recent edition of Personnel Today 22 May 2009 (newspaper for HR professionals) Kat Baker reports that:
“HR directors are queuing up to admit there are more “bad” people in the profession than good, and that they limit the power of the function.”
Can this be true?
Have we as a profession really lost sight of what we need to do to improve the quality of our own provision?
Whereas the CIPD (HR professional body) refuses to be drawn into the debate, the article claims that several HR chiefs have joined the claim and echoed these thoughts, expressing concern at the state of the profession.
Simon Nash, HR director at legal firm Carey Olsen, told Personnel Today he thought just one in 10 HR professionals were “really fit for purpose”, and that many people should leave the profession. “I have recently been recruiting for my team and I have been disappointed by the quality and motivations of many of the HR people I have seen,” he said.
Wow, this is damming – rather than focus on HR overall, it does force us at OFQT to question the HRD professional specifically and ask “what exactly is the HRD professional doing to improve their quality of their skills and their service provision?”
When we first established OFQT our main purpose was (and still is) to improve the quality of training in organisations.
We used our associated research and discussions with many different HRD professionals in the course of our regular work and began to notice a trend in responses, organisations were raising the same difficult issues to do with HRD and Training and practitioners were voicing difficulties they found in their roles.
We have colleated this anecdotal evidence into four main areas highlighting in each case a target group, the key problem they are facing and the associated risks if left unattended.
1. HR Directors and Training Managers:
2. Trainers, Coaches, Mentors, Facilitators:
3. Interim, Mobile and Flexible workers in the organisation
4. Individuals, Teams and Services needing to handle change:
This is fundamental to all organisations and we are delighted that we have made it our business to address these problems ‘head on’ see our website if you want to know more about how we do this
We feel that by increasing the results and presenting these clearly to show the impact that HRD and Training can have on the business we will go some way to turn the tide of discontentment away from us being viewed as the bad ‘guys’.
Following the publication of this Personnel Today article, it appears that our initial beliefs behind OFQT – were correct. Our hope while we work on improving quality is that we are not all tarnished with the same ‘HR’ brush.
Read the full article for yourself and make up your own mind
http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2009/05/22/50819/hr-bad-guys-hinder-success-of-profession.html
The OFQT Team