Business success in the upturn will be defined by companies’ human resources functions, with top performing companies making long-term plans now, delegates at the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) conference were told.

Peter Cheese, former managing director of management consulting firm Accenture, said HR departments become far more critical during a recovery: “Companies need to move from thinking in terms of a short-term crisis to long-term planning for workforce strategies, and those who do are going to be the ones that out perform the competition when we go into the next part of the cycle.”

Research from Accenture found human capital infrastructure, career development and succession planning were the pivotal difference between companies performing in the top quartile of business results and those in the bottom. Here these process were highly mature, as opposed to only moderately mature within the bottom quartile of the companies measured.

The key to HR strategic planning is increasing the investment in education, said Cheese. He recommends implementing a strategy straight away to avoid the dangers of ‘ghost redundancies’ by employees who will have more opportunities available to them when the economy recovers.

“At the moment there’s an ‘attitude of gratitude’ from employees, that doesn’t mean they are going to stay with an organisation in the long run,” said Cheese.  

Marketing a companies’ employer brand at the different segments of its workforce is also critical, and Cheese recommended an individualistic approach to flexible working, reward programmes and career models.  

Cheese told delegates that the recession provides an excellent opportunity for change in these areas.

 See Recruiter, 25 November for more from the conference.