The public sector is well prepared with the necessary talent in place to respond to increased industrial action, according to Gillian Hibberd, past president of PPMA and strategic director resourcing and business transformation at Buckinghamshire County Council.

Hibberd’s comments follow a report by YouGov on behalf of Croner, which shows more than half (54%) of senior HR professionals in the UK are working in teams in which nobody has experience of dealing with trade union action.

Hibberd told Recruiter: “The results of the survey doesn’t surprise me. You have to go back a long way to the 1980s to find industrial action taking place across most sectors of the economy. There has been small pockets here and there.

“Unfortunately, there are few of us that were around to deal with industrial action then. The profession was built on those very strong industrial relation type skills in the 1970s and 1980s. Because they have not been needed recently, HR has been recruiting people with very different skills such as business partnering skills and organisational development skills which is where the profession has shifted.

“There is going to be a swing back to those hard employment relation issues that need to be dealt with particularly in the public sector. The public sector is not in the same position as the private sector because we have had to deal with some industrial action in the last few years particularly around pay and pensions issues.

“I am confident the sector is geared to up to respond quickly and professionally. I am more concerned whether the private sector would be in the same position if they suffer from industrial action.”