Did you read that the CIPD (Chartered Institute for Personnel development) conference discussed how HR should become more business savvy to increase their impact.

Too little influence
For years the CIPD have been moaning that HR has too little influence at senior levels in so many businesses. One solution given to the conference was to “Discuss business challenges as opposed to HR Issues”.

Changing attitudes
The problem with this strategy is to persuade CEO’s, Directors and other Executives that HR is able to discuss “Business issues” when they have been used to discussing only HR and as a reaction to events as opposed to a developer of strategy.

In my experience such a change in emphasis would be easier for a “New Hire” HR Director or manager rather than a current incumbent!

It’s been noticed that over the past few weeks Maria has been identifying those people with real influence in the organisation. A particularly important strategy for any new hire.

So far she seems to be making an effort to engage with the Sales Director, Project Manager and Company Secretary.

The Sales Director views having the Personnel Manager on his side as being a very useful alliance as he has some changes in mind for the structure of the sales teams and he will need help and advice to implement these correctly.

Developing a network seems to be going well for Maria. There is one fly in the ointment however. She was overheard running down some members of her team to the Sales Manager saying, “I’m not sure how Christine (her assistant manager) would be much help to you, I think she’s overrated. If you need some help, come directly to me”.