Originally posted November 2013

What do these business issues have in common?

A poor recruitment process leads to the appointment of a bank chairman who knows the price of cocaine better than the assets of his bank.

The government announces that hospitals must publish staffing ratios and recruit more if needed to ensure safe levels.

There is widespread condemnation at Executive pay-offs in the BBC.

The organisational “culture” is blamed for the ways in which newspapers behaved in adopting illegal practices to get stories,

Industrial relations “brinkmanship” leads to the threat of a major industry being closed.

A report talks about how businesses waste the skills and knowledge of older workers.

The simple answer is that they all reflect HR issues within a company. Not Finance. Not Marketing. Not Quality Control. Not Business Processes. But HR.

Despite the odd article prophesying the death of HR, the CIPD have recognised this sea-change within business and its Chief Executive Peter Cheese recently told its annual conference that “we can help shape the business agenda of the next decade and beyond”

But the real challenge is what is the HR profession going to do about it?  Are we simply going to luxuriate in the knowledge that we were right all along? Personally, I don’t want to look back in 5 years’ time at a business world where nothing much has changed, where the bean counters rule and HR people spend their time moaning that no-one takes them seriously. So what are we going to do to seize the moment?