Looking after yourselves, your people and their families
I recently returned from the HR Summit in Bangalore, India where I gave the opening keynote address around the topic of Learning and Development Strategies for Human Resources Effectiveness. There were more than 450 delegates in attendance and they all had one thing in common – they were looking to advance the standing of their profession and the opportunities of their organisations.
I explained that they were the custodians of the future success of their organisations and they had to take their learning and development roles seriously. Rather than simply being a support function, their role was the engine room for growth. More importantly, I said, when we stop investing in our people, both personally and professionally, we stop investing in long term viability and competitiveness.
We need to remember that we have living, breathing human beings driving our organisations, not just numbers. Whilst, I recognise that business is inherently a “numbers game”, once we lose sight of the people factor, we also tend to forget that our customers are people too. Soon we will quite literally be “running on empty”, as consumers look to businesses with heart and personnel move to employers of choice who value their input and show them a pathway where they can think and grow.
When labour is cheap, you can always throw more people at a problem and get it done. However, as the demand for skilled labour increases, and concurrently, the expectations for working conditions and remuneration also increase, we have to learn to do more with less. Stretching our people professionally and building a learning organisation therefore becomes the new learning and development mantra.
In the keynote I suggested that the prevailing global trend for HR effectiveness was to look after ourselves, our people and their families. The best investment we can make is in the human capital that drives a business forward and this starts with the professional development of individuals. Pat Galagan wrote in the December 2011 edition of T&D Magazine that “HR will play a significant role in advancing thinking and practice about work/life balance in a digital age.” At this time of the year, it is also important to take time to reflect on whether this balance is actually happening for our people. Further to this, Ian Ziskin (Organizational Dynamics, October 2011) suggested that “we are in an age of agile co-creativity”, where people want to be co-producers of business success. Moreover, he said that “organizations are moving from hero leadership to collaborative leadership”, which demonstrates a shift, both in expectation and in the very nature of how business operates.
The race for talent is back on and the organisations that consider learning and development as the centerpiece of their people management will prevail. The challenge will be in wrestling the steering wheel from management teams that seem satisfied in using 19th century practices to solve 21st century problems.
Marc Ratcliffe
CEO, MRWED Group
Follow Me on twitter: @MRWED_CEO