Ethics, not rulebooks, will make HR central to long-term strategy, says CIPD chief executive in keynote address
People are at the core of every change affecting our world, said Peter Cheese in his opening address at the CIPD Annual Conference in Manchester. From geopolitics to economic instability and the emergence of cyber security risk, “in every area we are seeing a much greater recognition that at the heart of the debate is people”.
The big contextual shifts around the world of work are raising questions, said the CIPD chief executive, of “how we engage people, how we train people, how we develop them. As the economy grows, we’ll face a shortage of high-end skills, and a market that is unable to provide the jobs that match the skills people are leaving education with.”
All this means that organisations will have to shift from short-term thinking to long-term strategy – one that is founded on “accountability, not accounting”, said Cheese. “All the changes we want to make can’t be achieved by writing more rules. Our profession understands the roots of individual and collective behaviours, and how you influence that, more than anyone else.”
It’s time to “go back to the ethics and morals of good people management and good business practice, and how we’re all in this together”, he said. “In the light of corporate scandals such as Volkswagen and Thomas Cook, truly ‘the only way is ethics’.”