The annual HRM conference at the Westminster Business School on Wednesday 2nd April hosted a range of speakers on the theme of HRM in Transition. David Smith, Economics Editor of the Sunday Times drew students from Economics and Finance to hear his thoughts on labour trends. The UK was not alone in struggling with its recession as every advanced economy featured a deep recession with a weak recovery and the UK had tried to retain employment by sacrificing productivity and wages. Susannah Clements of the CIPD pointed out that UK productivity was 20 points below the other G7 which suggested that people had more to give to their organisations.
Organisations with higher engagement figures outperformed rivals. James Beckwith of Babcock International shared the challenges of taking their “Trusted to Deliver” ethos to Brazil, Australia, Canada, and Bulgaria and the challenges of cross cultural working. Professor Shaun Tyson summarised the first session and introduced his new book Managing People in a Contemporary Context (Parry & Tyson, 2014) which looks at the new challenges recessionary and post recessionary working presents for organisations.
At the networking lunch some 200 delegates and staff mingled before returning to hear Kirstin Furber, People Director of BBC Worldwide talking about implementing change. The questions she took brought her back to emphasising the values that BBC Worldwide has espoused and lived by, to see them through difficult times. Allowing regular communication in change and maintaining a constant dialogue was prized as essential to the success of the change initiatives. The day was rounded off by the consultant Geoff Trickey introducing his people risk metric He has invited us to work out which type of risk taker we are by taking the resistance to change quiz before May 2nd free to you by logging onto:
www.psy-key.com
Enter access code: WESTMINSTRRTC
Michael Moran of 10eighty as chair summarised the key points and volunteered that he had an app which we could access to look at career development. Candidates left with much to think about and two new pieces of technology to access. The podcasts will be available shortly and links provided but below is a link to the 2012 conference with Head of People at McDonald’s, David Fairhurst.
Podcast Links from 2012 Devolving to the Line
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