HR Creating Business Impact
Organisers Tucana, following up the hugely-successful People Analytics 2015 conference in April, have secured a dazzling line-up of senior practitioners for this year’s third instalment. Chief HR officers from Tullow Oil, Cofra Group, Millward Brown and DHI Water & Environment join SVPs and Senior Directors from Kuehne + Nagel, GlaxoSmithKline, DHL, LEGO, Vestas, Siemens and BBC Worldwide.
Particularly noteworthy appearances include Sharlyn Lauby, author of the famous HR Bartender blog, making her first-ever appearance at a European conference. Also causing some excitement is the promise of a session with Rachel Stock, Group HR Director at Trinity Mirror. Given the theme of culture change and the role of HR, there is undoubtedly a fascinating story from the troubled tabloid newspaper industry waiting to be heard.
What is also refreshing to see is a strong balance with public sector and privately-held organisations, offering some valuable practical lessons on transformation in traditional (and perhaps bureaucratic) environments. Leading this charge is Paul Taylor of the NHS, who will be explaining how they created a participatory transformation process through a bespoke mobile app, which is now freely available for all. His explanation of how this can be used by others to create a collaborative process for organisation-wide culture change will surely be one of the highlights for anyone facing this huge challenge.
Performance is a key theme throughout the two days, as is collaboration across functions. A CFO and COO will be showcasing an approach that has led to enormous growth for the AIM-listed GB Group, and the lessons learned in Finance Transformation at Vestas Wind Systems will be show to offer new perspective and insight for HR transformation by their Director for Business Transformation, Anders Andersen.
London Metropolitan Police will also be present, this time on the side of Technology and Analytics. Head of Workforce Planning & Analytics Martin Oest will be presenting a fascinating insight into a transformation project to drive data-driven insight in a large and traditional organisation, they have a story that is both enviously successful and intriguingly creative, and the session is sure to be enlightening for the rest of us.
Aside from big names and emerging innovators, one of the major draws of these events are the Roundtable Sessions, since nothing quite beats the value gained from sitting around a table for 50 minutes with nine other professionals facing the same challenges you are, drawing on the collective wisdom and experience, and hammering out some creative solutions for everyone to take back with them.
If there is one company that will always create a buzz whenever they step out and share their insight on HR, it’s Google. The question of how to create a culture of innovation couldn’t be more relevant right now, since an innovative company builds an engaged workforce and a strong employer brand, and Google has few equals in this respect. That’s why there can’t be many better ways to round off the breakout part of the conference than a session from one of their leading Change & Transformation Managers, Karolina Lewandowska.
The mouth-watering finale for the two days takes the form of an executive panel debate, featuring CHRO of Tullow Oil Gordon Headley, CHRO of Cofra Group (the company behind the C&A clothing retailer) and former Philips CEO Erik Geilenkirchen, former SVP Global Talent at Hertz Car Rental and well-known thought-leader Karl-Heinz Oehler, and CIO columnist and former Microsoft Product Evangelist Matt Ballantine. The topic is how to develop commercial and financial acumen in HR, and what HR professionals need to know and do to succeed in business. There couldn’t be a more crucial subject for HR right now.
In a time of identity crisis and a rethinking of all aspects of HR and its place in the organisation, this is a conference whose time is very much now. The clear focus on practical material – rather than high-minded theory and flow charts – is resonating well with the global HR community, and the fact that people fly in from as far away as Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur, San Francisco and Hong Kong to attend this event is testament to how essential it is for HR to become wiser and more savvy in these areas.
Any organisation facing major change – be it change in workforce demographics, changing operational demands, changing corporate culture or a changing organisational structure – must rely on HR to be a leading part of this change, since people are the key to any successful change initiative. This means HR must step out of its comfort zone and take the bull by the horns: rethink processes, reassess how it delivers value, and be prepared to take bold and powerful steps to integrate with a new organisational direction. Only this way can it be the strategic force in the boardroom that it deserves to be.