The Tea and Sympathy Department comes of age!
The emergence and value of HR within the Professional Services sector is phenomenal. The significant growth of the sector has outstripped growth seen in other sectors.
Law, accountancy and management consultancy sectors remain the original people focused and people dependant businesses. They are all wrestling with the massive people issues of recruitment, retention, development and reward. As a direct cause-effect the HR function has had to shake off the old vestages of welfare, policy implementation and disciplinaries to embrace complementary and business critical services, solutions and interventions.
Fundamental staff (manpower) planning, budget management, training planning and recruitment strategies are being collated and managed by the HR professional while more is moving to managers and even partners outside the HR function in terms of operational responsibilities. These HR experts are most commonly sitting with their client groups and networking with their HR colleagues rather than sitting as an HR team and meeting their client groups on an adhoc basis. The impact of such change has been significant, including an influence in terms of the skills sought by employers, the structure and size of the HR teams, and competition.
