Breakfast Club

What does the future of HR Leadership look like?

December 2022 — Brook Calverley

On a drizzly November morning we were delighted to kick-start a bright new Breakfast Club — the first one since lockdown!

The purpose of Breakfast Club is to create a space for people from different backgrounds to come together, share ideas and make new connections.

This time, we invited a group of HR and business leaders to discuss the question ​‘What does the future of HR leadership look like?’

It was great to be back, and reminded us why it’s so important to gather different perspectives around big topics such as this. As always, the question sparked some fascinating conversations around a number of aspects, including the role of values, the importance of purpose and the broader evolution of HR and its impact on organisation and business design…

As food for thought, we’ve pulled together some of the big themes that emerged during the session :

  1. We agreed that the HR function has grown into a far more strategic operator for the business: the custodian of Purpose, ensuring it’s embedded throughout the organisation
  2. Related to this has been the integration of HR leadership into customer experience, and its role in helping organisations adapt to change 
  3. This has happened because there’s been a big shift in thinking, as more and more organisations acknowledge how brand and culture are so deeply interlinked
  4. As a result, HR has now started to evolve into a significant driver of business reorganisation…

And here, things got really interesting! We discussed that as profound changes in talent patterns place new constraints (and create new opportunities) on what businesses can deliver and how they deliver it — leaders of the people function are finding themselves inevitably shaping service and organisational design.

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This of course has a big impact on how HR is positioned within the organisation; on the skills and capabilities that HR leaders will need to develop; and on the implications of strategic HR decision-making. Strategies around talent and culture — and on recruitment, retention and engagement — now reverberate across all aspects of business.

It will be interesting to see how these changes play out, but one thing’s for sure — the people function and its leaders have never been more vital to help businesses survive and thrive in these strange times…

The next Breakfast Club is due late January — if you’d like to join the session, drop us a line!

At People Made, we advise businesses at all stages of growth to help define their culture, values and purpose.

Get in touch: hello@​people-​made.​com