The UK statistics for young NEETs get quoted often enough that most HR leaders can recite them without needing a source. Young people not in education, employment or training are a growing share of a generation, a share seemingly lost to any kind of rewarding future. That is not the point I want to make here.

This is not a social policy story HR gets to watch from the sidelines. It is a workforce planning problem, and most organisations are not treating it as one. Worse, in a lot of cases organisations are actively making it worse through decisions that have nothing to do with youth unemployment policy and everything to do with how they think about entry-level hiring.

Capability sits beneath strategy, not beside it

I keep coming back to Kodak and Blockbuster when I talk about this, not just because I am of an era where those are names that really mean something to me – when I was young, I assumed that all cameras and film were made by Kodak – but because the lesson generalises further than most people want it to. Neither company failed because it lacked a strategy. Both failed because the workforce capability underneath the strategy was not there when it mattered, and nobody had been tracking that gap early enough to close it.

• Register now for The HR World’s webinar on this subject: The Lost Generation – the challenge and opportunity for HR: 19 August, Free and online.

A growing NEET population is a leading indicator of exactly that kind of gap. It shows up years before it becomes a hiring problem, and by the time it becomes a hiring problem it is too late to do much about it through recruitment alone. Workforce planning is supposed to be the discipline that catches this sort of thing early. Mostly, it doesn’t, because people aren’t actually looking terribly far ahead.

Forecasting is the wrong tool here

Most of what gets written on this subject treats it as a forecasting exercise. Bigger number this year than last year, projected to keep growing, here is what that means for GDP or benefits spending in a decade. That framing is fine for economists. It is not much use to a workforce planning function that needs to decide what to do next.

“Stop treating this as a corporate social responsibility topic that sits next to workforce planning rather than inside it. This is talent supply chain risk.”

The job here is judgement under uncertainty, not prediction. Nobody can forecast precisely how many entry-level roles a business will need in five years, or exactly which skills will matter by then. What can be decided now, with the information available, is whether an organisation is building any pipeline of its own or simply assuming the external market will keep supplying what it needs. Those are two different postures, and only one of them is a plan.

None of this happens through a single lens. It sits alongside apprenticeships, graduate schemes, entry-level headcount, an ageing senior workforce, and the way AI is reshaping what work looks like at every level. Pulling those threads together into a single coherent view of where the risk actually sits is synthesis, and synthesis is the fundamental art of workforce planning. Not forecasting, not modelling, but synthesis. Treat any one of these threads in isolation and it will always be somebody else’s problem. Bring them together and it becomes something a planning function can can interpret for an organisation to actually act on.

The changing shape of the organisation

The traditional workforce shape is a pyramid: wide at the entry level, narrowing as it rises to the lofty peak of seniority. Now picture what happens when organisations keep cutting the base while leaving the middle and top largely intact. The pyramid stops being a pyramid. It turns into a diamond, and eventually a diamond standing on its edge. That is what is happening. The lower reaches of the pyramid are presumed to be fair game for AI and automation in general to step in and replace what used to be entry level workers.

But a diamond balanced on its point is not a stable shape. It is a succession faux pas waiting to happen. There is no broad base feeding people up through the organisation, no volume of early career talent to select from and develop, and no depth to fall back on when senior people leave. Organisations that keep hollowing out the entry level are quietly reshaping themselves into something that is likely to fall over, and most of them have not noticed the shape they are becoming; or, which is worse, they’re doing so consciously without having considered the longer-term consequences. 

Have we got this wrong?

I think the continued move against early career hiring, the steady reduction in entry-level roles that so many organisations have been quietly making, is a mistake. Not a minor one either.

Some of this is being driven by AI, as I have said. Entry-level roles are disproportionately exposed to that change, because a lot of what used to sit at the bottom of the ladder was exactly the kind of structured, repeatable work that automation handles well. So organisations cut there first, because it is the easiest place to cut and the impact is least visible in the short term. That fits the prevailing narrative that AI must reduce costs and investors are expecting instant results.

There is a sharper irony sitting underneath this. The young people being kept out of the market are, in most cases, going to be better at working with these technologies than the experienced staff currently being retained and having their own work augmented by AI. I say this as someone well into their seventh decade who prides themselves on remaining broadly current with technological development but only fractionally competent compared to their own grandchild. So organisations are choosing to keep the cohort less fluent in new tools and locking out the cohort that would be inherently more fluent in them. That trade only looks sensible in the short term, because the experienced staff being retained will not be there forever. One day they walk out the door, or they get carried out. Either way, the organisation loses the capability it chose to keep and for which it never built a replacement.

The problem is that entry-level roles are also where new capability used to come from more generally. Organisations are removing the first rung of the ladder without asking what replaces it, and in a lot of cases the honest answer is nothing does. That is not a hypothetical risk sitting somewhere in the future. It is a decision being made right now, in budget conversations that have nothing to do with workforce strategy on paper, and everything to do with it in practice.

In any case, we’re now seeing two very clear developments that don’t fit the prevailing narrative about an AI-driven jobs catastrophe: AI changes the composition of remaining work rather than simply cutting headcount; and it’s not exactly creating the tsunami of job losses everyone expected.

What to actually do before the year ends

If you’re thinking about next year’s plan rather than next decade’s economy, then consider this:

• Put early career capability into workforce risk as a named line item, not an assumption buried under “external hiring will cover it.” If it is not written down as a risk, it won’t be managed as one.
• Make the build versus buy decision on purpose. Structured entry programmes and apprenticeships are a deliberate choice to build capability internally. Continuing to assume the external market will supply what is needed is also a choice, it just rarely gets made consciously.
• Look honestly at where AI is removing entry-level roles inside your own organisation and ask whether that was an intentional decision or something that happened by default because it was the easiest place to find savings

Finally, stop treating this as a corporate social responsibility topic that sits next to workforce planning rather than inside it. This is talent supply chain risk. It deserves the same seriousness as any other supply chain the business depends on.

None of this requires a grand strategic reset. It requires organisations to notice that they are already making a choice about early career talent, whether they mean to or not, and that the next few months of planning is where their course either gets corrected or locked in for another year. The trend is one visible symptom of a much larger decision most organisations have not consciously made, and nothing I’ve seen about current hiring practice suggests it is about to reverse on its own.

Q: Can you give an insight into your business from a people perspective? How many people are you employing and in what kind of roles? Where are you needing more people and skills?

A: At its core, Salute is a people business that happens to operate in data centres. Our success is built upon the expertise and commitment of our people. Today, we employ over 2500 people globally, with teams across North America, EMEA, and increasingly APAC, supporting clients in over 100 markets.

Our work spans the entire data centre lifecycle, from design and build, through commissioning and integration, to day-to-day operations, facilities management, smart hands support and decommissioning. This means our workforce includes everything from critical facilities technicians and engineers to commissioning specialists, project managers and operations leaders.

Right now, our strongest area of growth is in Europe. As demand for AI-driven and hyperscale data centre capacity continues to increase, the industry is facing a shortage of skilled technical talent. To meet this growing demand, we are continuing to expand our EMEA operations and are actively hiring critical facilities engineers, technicians and commissioning professionals across the region, while also maintaining strong growth across North America.

Q: How is your talent management strategy impacted by being a global company? Do you move talent around the world and is your business structured according to where the talent lies?

A: Being a global business shapes how we think about talent. We’re structured around the regions we support, across North America, EMEA and APAC, each with its own leadership team and local talent strategy. It’s an important approach because every market has different hiring practices, employment laws and technical accreditation requirements. 

At the same time, we operate as one global company with shared values, consistent standards, shared training and the same technology across our teams. 

That regional structure doesn’t mean talent stays static. While we focus on building strong local talent in every region, we also have the flexibility to move specialist expertise across borders when our clients or projects need it. For example, we’ve brought commissioning and engineering specialists from one region to support growth in another, particularly as we’ve expanded our footprint across Europe. 

So it’s less structured entirely around where talent lies and more that we build local depth in every region while keeping the ability to move specialist skills globally when it’s needed.

Right now, with the market evolving so quickly and growth accelerating in new regions, we’re seeing similar talent challenges wherever we operate. Our approach is never ‘one size fits all.’ We tailor our talent strategy to the specific challenges and demands of each region, ensuring we’re meeting both local needs and client expectations. 

Q: You look to military veterans for a proportion of your talent. How did this come about and what does it mean for recruitment/development of talent in the business?

A: This is actually where Salute began. When the company was founded in 2013, our leadership recognised something the industry had largely overlooked. Veterans leaving service and starting to transition into civilian careers already have hands-on experience operating complex mechanical, electrical, communications and critical systems. They also have the skillset and ability required to perform under pressure which are invaluable in the data centre industry. 

Rather than filtering candidates out because they did not have direct data centre experience, we built our recruitment and training model to recognise those transferable skills and help veterans transition into long term careers within the industry. 

Since then, we’ve hired, trained and placed several thousand veterans and military spouses globally, and that pipeline continues to grow. Through pathways like our Salute Military Community Pathway and our SkillBridge programme, supporting veterans remains a central part of how we recruit today. As we scale in EMEA, we’re applying the same model there, and plan to apply the same approach to other talent markets. I’m proud to help drive that work as our Armed Forces representative for Infrastructure Masons in the region.

This approach is a core part of our business strategy.

“I loved the learning that came from applying HR in such different settings,” she says, “from dockside in the shipping business to data centre in web hosting.”

Ives joined the NHS after working for a short spell as a freelance consultant. “I got to know the NHS as a client and I was blown away by the people that I worked with and when they asked me to join them, I didn’t hesitate,” she says. “I love learning and have continued studying through my career, which has been a juggle at times. I studied part time for my MSc in Occupational Psychology and then pursued my FCIPD and I am still studying.”

Creating a Great Place to Work

As Chief People Officer at Solent NHS Trust, Ives designed and delivered the organisation’s ‘Great Place to Work’ strategy. The project earned her the Innovation in Practice Award from the British Psychological Society for work on leadership development. This approach to values-based leadership put people first and stems from a belief that organisations are stronger when they inspire a strong sense of belonging, inclusion and connection to a common purpose. The Trust also won the HSJ Award for Engagement as a result of this work.

Ives was seconded to the NHS England team as workforce and training lead for the Covid-19 vaccination programme at the end of the Summer in 2000 becoming part of the inception of the vaccination programme which she regards as having been a great privilege. She then went on to be the Chief People Officer for the Hampshire & Isle of Wight healthcare system and took on the role of accountable Executive for the vaccination programme, delivering over 4 million vaccinations in the time she was there.

“Our success was delivered through workforce innovation,” she says, “accessing a completely new talent pool of people not currently working for the NHS, training to task as a vaccinator, and delivering across a range of workforce models, for example, volunteers and reservists.”

Interestingly, Helen Ives’s first degree was in psychology. During this time a careers talk from an Occupational Psychologist at Ford inspired her to think about applying psychology to the world of work, leading to a dual career pathway, starting with work experience in HR and then moving on to a second degree in Occupational Psychology.

Feeling of Purpose

“It’s the feeling of purpose that got me hooked,” she says, “the sense of contributing to something that makes a difference to so many people. That’s also what brought me to NHS Professionals; to quote one of our values, ‘we care, it’s personal’.”

One of the aspects of the job that continues to inspire Ives is the chance to shape the future of work. She finds the changes that occurred around the pandemic – and consequently the aspects of work that remained changed fascinating to consider and looks forward to playing her part in the continuing evolution of the workplace.

Developing an effective HR strategy means adapting to the changing face of today’s workforce

Throughout my HR career, one feature that has always been highly rewarding is being a meaningful business partner supporting organisations to navigate and weather significant challenges.

As everyone knows, today there’s a spectrum of topics on HR teams’ agendas as they develop strategies to help employers unlock the value of their people and drive positive change. From transforming company culture and supporting health and wellbeing to ensuring learning and development and tackling recruitment and retention challenges.

Navigating these is a significant challenge, but scratch the surface, and one, single, direct approach could be examining how to adapt to the changing nature of today’s workforce. Specifically, adapting to new generations of colleagues coming to the fold.

By carefully considering how to nurture a multigenerational workforce as the central tenant of a HR strategy, HR leaders, and entire organisations, can adapt their mindsets to one that is more conducive to weather major challenges.

A multigenerational workforce represents a melting pot of experiences, cultures and outlooks

It’s a fact of life that in the workplace different generations come and go. Each comes with a label that many of us are familiar with. In total, today five different generations are making up today’s workforce ranging from The Silent Generation, Boomers and Millennials right up to the youngest: Gen Z. 

But beyond simple labelling, the reality is that today’s workforce represents a melting pot of different experiences, cultures, outlooks and expectations.

Coupled with different personality traits which often feed into unhelpful stereotypes, the world of work that each generation faced when they started their careers has changed significantly in recent years.

What employers are left with is a range of colleagues that require engaging and nurturing if they are to play a vital role in supporting organisations and promoting productivity.

This also presents a golden opportunity for HR teams to expand their capabilities and work to influence change amongst their organisation’s leadership.

There are plenty of knock on benefits to an effective, multigenerational workforce

Many organisations, with the support of their HR business partners, are already working on making progress when it comes to strategies, policies and programmes that build and nurture a diverse and inclusive workforce.

As this trend continues, it will be a marker of progress for organisations and a differentiator amongst competitors. But there are other proven, significant benefits to diversity and inclusion that revolve around the conducive mindset it creates.

Beyond representing today’s modern world, it ensures that organisations value and harness the lived experiences, contributions, presence and perspectives of a diverse workforce. This helps expand horizons and ensures colleagues automatically consider a diverse set of needs, improving strategic and decision-making skills.

Of course, this happens with any equality markers, but if employers consider how they can develop and nurture their multigenerational workforce, wider diversity and inclusion should come more naturally.

HR teams can start by leaving no stone unturned when analysing their workplace policies and practices.

It’s no secret, the success of an organisation is intricately tied to the skills, abilities, and knowledge of its people. When people are offered avenues to acquire experience and pursue personal growth, they become more invested, motivated, and committed to the shared goals of the organisation.

Our purpose “To help people thrive in the brave pursuit of next” is the north star through which we look at people growth. Our values of “Learning Mindset”, “Embracing the Future” and “Partnering for Client Impact” remind us every day how we enable our people to transform, and have access to new age learning courseware.

At Publicis Sapient we are focused on 10X growth and that can only be achieved if we help our people with the right avenues to grow and learn new skills. To do so we are focused on building a culture of 3E’s – experimentation, entrepreneurial and equity where all our people are enabled at every step.  This is crucial to building a motivated workforce that is better equipped to tackle complex challenges and drive meaningful impact.

Organisations that prioritise their people’s growth and development, is crucial to creating an environment where individuals can chart their own path, build their careers, and develop in ways that bring their potential to life. This commitment to personal and professional development is a key factor in building transformational solutions that have a positive impact.

So, what does this philosophy on enabling people’s growth involve and how do we operationalise it in a virtual and globally distributed environment?

Creating the right environment

A work environment that is both inclusive and collaborative, where individuals feel psychologically safe to bring their authentic selves is crucial. There is value in providing people with the freedom to choose their own career path, without any limitations. When people have space where they find a purpose and can openly discuss their ideas is when organisations are best positioned to create a high-performing work culture.

Creating the right experience 

As an organisation that enables digital transformations for clients, we also value the importance of internal transformation. As digital experts, we recognise that the experience we provide in fostering growth is essential for individual development. With that in view, we are continuously improving our systems, processes, and tools such that our people have the right resources to pursue their personal and professional growth.

Operationalising the ecosystem

Focusing on the foundation through a skills matrix/taxonomy to lay the foundation for people’s growth, we have co-created a global data architecture at both the people and organisational levels. This structured system categories and organises various skills and capabilities according to job roles. By focusing on proficiency levels, we ensure there is a clear understanding of skills required for each role, enabling people and their managers to identify areas for growth and development.

Believe it or not, I never set out to have a career in HR, but I knew I wanted to make a difference and find a path that gave me the opportunity to constantly stretch me and be creative. After successfully completing my English degree at the University of Hertfordshire, I decided to focus on having my family first with my career coming after. When the children were very young, I wanted time and location flexibility and over the years set up two very different companies that I could run from homer – real estate and weddings! They were both really successful, but as the children reached school age I decided to sell up and develop an external career. After a brief stint selling company cars, I secured my first HR role at a US tech company called 3Com as an HR Admin.

I was fortunate to work for some amazing managers, who gave me a broad range of opportunities and as a consequence I gradually worked my way through the various roles in HR, including HR Operations Manager and then Compensation and Benefits Manager for EMEA. As part of my various roles, I travelled to the US, Taiwan, Singapore, I was also HR Lead for Southern Europe. Every time an opportunity was presented to me, I said “yes”, and this allowed me to grow and progress.

When HP acquired 3Com in 2009, I was invited across, so I embraced it and have loved the experience. I’ve gone from strength to strength, always having great managers to encourage and support me. This, combined with the breadth of knowledge all the bizarre experiences I’ve had really helped me progress. I never had a set path, but when an opportunity arose, I always said “yes, tell me more” and that’s something which has really helped me – and helped me to become the HR Director for Northwest Europe (NWE) at HP Inc.

There’s no particular ‘stand out’ achievement

I don’t like to look back at my career and say one particular achievement means more than another. My career success can be attributed to an amalgamation of all my successes over the years.

Her track record is clear and impressive, showing a number of successful initiatives to deliver business improvements while managing relationships with key stakeholders.

In her current role she leads on the company’s People Plan for the Operations division as well as driving initiatives such as health and wellbeing, diversity and inclusion.

“I’d say one of my achievements at Yodel is implementing our industry leading health and wellbeing strategy,” says Richardson. “This policy helps us to provide emotional support to all colleagues, provide a healthy workplace, contribute to local communities, and provide financial support.”

Engaging the workforce

From her view across the company, Richardson can see exactly how their 10,000 colleagues are engaged with the support provided by the function. An annual wellbeing pulse survey asks colleagues crucial questions about how they feel about the programmes on offer and what can be done better. “This year’s poll had almost 3000 responses, nearly five times more than last year,” says Richardson, “and showed that over 78% of Yodel colleagues know how to access support when they need it. To see that result and more engagement with the services we have put in place, is a testament to the hard work and excellent communication by the HR and senior operations teams.”

Richardson was always very passionate about people, and she knew she wanted to be in a career where she could really make an impact in a business through empowering its colleagues. “People are at the core of Yodel and play a huge role in our success,” she notes. “My team and I understand the important role HR plays in unlocking potential and ensuring our colleagues can be at their best.”

Right people, right support

Indeed, Richardson finds the most satisfying part of her job to be in hiring the right people and creating personalised development to allow them to thrive in their jobs. “For us to stay ahead of the competition for talent, we have to constantly update our strategies with a refreshed focus on pay, benefits and flexibility,” she says.

Communication is also a big consideration for Richardson and her team. With over 10,000 colleagues based around 50 sites in diverse roles and working different shifts, the challenge of delivering consistent and accessible messaging is clear. Not only that, but ensuring everyone has access to the support they need is also a constant consideration. “We share updates through a variety of internal digital platforms including Yammer, SharePoint, bespoke app-based solutions and our connected screens, which are located in each of our sites, keeping colleagues updated at all time,” she says. “There isn’t one platform that fits every employee group and demographic, so we have to be flexible and use a variety of methods to keep in touch with colleagues.”

With such a strong approach and commitment towards all employees, Richardson and her team are powering a recruitment and retention strategy which will ensure their employees are well looked after, especially in the context of the competitive nature of the industry and the challenges of the current economic background.

As people returned to the skies post-pandemic last summer, the aviation industry faced operational challenges in many areas and all over the world. The rapid increase in travel demand, combined with a significant gap of trained and accredited staff, resulted in an overstretched system. Around the world, there were news reports on flight cancellations, queuing, delayed baggage, staff shortages and even major airports curbing capacity by restricting the number of flight movements.

The experience reiterated how important skilled people are to providing excellent service across the industry. At Swissport, we recognise that our people are our most valuable asset. Ahead of the 2023 peak travel season, we have introduced a refined recruitment, retention and training strategy with a number of measures all aimed at increasing our readiness and operational resilience. These include a higher share of qualified staff retained over the winter months and an even earlier recruitment start to fill some 5,000 new positions globally. We are confident that these measures will see us master the operational stress tests of the summer and avoid disruptions like many airports saw last year.

Looking back on 2022 and expectations for 2023

Summer months are always busy and can be testing a system even in normal times. The post-pandemic return in travel demand was positive, but almost violent in speed and volume. Aviation as a whole was overwhelmed. Labor shortages exacerbated the situation across an aviation industry which was just getting back on its feet. Even best prepared companies, including the world’s largest airlines, airports and aviation service companies, could not keep up with the volume and maintain the usual operational stability at all locations. The situation was compounded by instability in flight schedules. Despite all these challenges, our people came together to deliver the smooth and hassle-free travel airlines and travellers expect and are used to, but we appreciate some customers did not get the seamless experience they rightly expect. By the end of 2022 Swissport ground services had handled 3.3 million flights and served 186 million passengers, nearly double the number of travellers in 2021. We also handled 4.8 million tons of cargo in 2022, near the record 5.1 million tons of 2021.

Developing a game-changing recruitment and retention strategy

The number of travellers will continue to rise this year and that’s great news. 2023 has the potential to see international travel come close to pre-COVID levels, but likely with more extreme peaks. To be able to meet this demand we are reinvigorating our workforce with a refined recruitment, retention and upskilling strategy that includes the following three pillars:

• Ensure we have enough trained and badged staff

One of the challenges that aviation companies and in fact the entire global service industry has encountered last year – and which they continue to battle with – were staffing issues. We lost a lot of our experienced frontline workers during the pandemic. The fact that people who left the aviation industry during the Covid years did not return post-pandemic made recruitment that much harder and was a major cause of operational disruptions amid rising demand from travellers. Nobody expected this, but we have all learned that lesson. Slow process times to get people vetted and badged continues to be an issue, but we are working with authorities and governments in hot spot markets to get this under control.

We have launched a large-scale recruitment initiative with the creation of 5,000 new positions globally, including 1,200 in the UK and Ireland. This will help stabilize operations and increase our flexibility, especially during the peak travel periods of the summer.

• Investment in retention and training programs

Our Training Academy helps us boost and refresh peoples’ skills to ensure the workforce is trained and ready to provide high-quality services to our airline customers. We started this process by retaining and recruiting more people during the quieter months to allow for timely training and to ensure our workforce is ready with some reserves for the spring and summer. In the UK, for example we have already hired 92 per cent of the people we need for the summer months, compared with only 60 per cent at the same point last year.

• People development that focuses on the long term

As we are going to retain a bigger percentage of employees over winter than in past years, we are also using our talent management and people development process to match people with longer term roles.

Debi began her professional career with the supermarket chain Morrisons, where she worked for 11 years in various roles. She first became interested in working in HR after securing a role as a payroll clerk within the personnel department, and quickly progressed to the position of personnel manager, which she held across two stores over a four-year period.

During this time, Debi also began a self-funded MSc course in human resources, which she attended during her days off. Once she started her degree, Debi recognised the need for more exposure to other industries, prompting her to leave Morrisons in 2006 to take on a smaller role as an HR administrator for a manufacturing company. She rose through a number of positions of increasing responsibility – including serving as an HR generalist for Fire, Flood and Restoration for three years, and creating the role of group HR manager at Costcutter Supermarkets from scratch – before eventually joining Lanes Group in October 2013.

The fixer

For Debi, the appeal of HR as a discipline was always clear: “I am a little bit inquisitive! I like to know things, and I like to be able to help or fix things if possible. From the moment I started at Morrisons, I knew this was the path for me.

“Working in HR, you never know what is going to happen on a day-to-day basis. It is challenging, especially where I currently work, but I love the challenge and the diversity of the role. Everyone working in this sector knows it can be stressful, but sometimes this actually helps me to get things done – no two days are the same, which I like.”

During her career in HR, Debi has taken pride in a number of key accomplishments. At Costcutter Supermarkets, she was able to make HR an integral part of how the company works, by continually putting new procedures and processes in place; at Morrisons, she was entrusted with overseeing the opening of a new store, a process that involved working long hours, coordinating training, recruiting new employees – and even having to make a speech in front of then-company president Sir Ken Morrison himself.

In her position at Lanes Group, she plays a crucial role in helping the organisation maintain efficiency and legal compliance in its policies and procedures, and ensuring that the interests of the Lanes workforce are represented at the highest level. Debi’s key achievements include overseeing a successful and timely TUPE transfer process for more than 300 employees joining the business, allowing all employees to be smoothly inducted and trained in their respective areas, despite acting as the only HR person for Lanes Group for this particular area of the business at the time.

Board level achievement

More broadly, she has been instrumental in changing the perception of HR within Lanes Group, solidifying it as an integral part of the business. Debi now has a seat at the company’s operational board meetings, and has successfully advocated for its offering of employee benefits to be gradually improved over time, with ongoing work to enhance them further.

According to Debi, bringing about this kind of lasting cultural change is what really defines the purpose of HR work.

But I’ve been working in this area since the 1980s and experience has taught me that just as the economy works to familiar cycles, so, too, does HR.

In this world though it’s not about boom and bust, rather the narrative that can play out during times of economic crisis is ‘hire, hire, hire’ followed by ‘fire, fire, fire’.

And it’s time to rewrite it. We must abandon so much of our traditional thinking and find new ways to successfully negotiate the increasingly complex – and combustible – world we live in.

Let’s start with the very first building block: don’t believe everything you’re told.

Over the past couple of years, the HR industry has galvanised around a familiar theme: the war on talent. And it’s true of course that the market has experienced some extraordinary pressures.

Combine Brexit with the effects of the pandemic – everything from empty posts created by laying off workers to people taking early retirement – and it created a vacuum that needed to be filled.

But at times, as I’ve looked at the headline vacancies being quoted in the press, creating anxiety in HR departments up and down the land, and wondered if I was living in a parallel universe.

Where exactly did these figures come from? How many of these vacancies were actually real? And how many have disappeared now we’re experiencing a downturn?

If the Queen’s funeral is anything to go by, then we must question the statistics.

Within days of the event, it was being quoted that four billion had watched her funeral worldwide. The number was repeated across so many news outlets it became fact.

Then it emerged that this figure was quoted by one analyst at one website who used it for the expected number of viewers – not even those who did actually watch – and didn’t extrapolate how they’d come up with it. Their prediction was taken as read.

All of us working in the field of HR must take care not to buy into the headlines, be accountable for our part in behavioural cycles. HR – like so many industries – is subject to the whims of the headlines. And as we rush to respond to them, we risk creating a ripple effect that morphs a micro trend to a concrete macro movement.

Businesses are clearly all competing for the best young talent. But let’s not characterise it as a war. Because war creates a sense of increased pressure that can lead to bad decision-making – and an often-panicked hiring strategy.

And then what happens when times get more difficult as they are now?

That’s when we usually flip from the hire, hire, hire side of the coin to the fire, fire, fire one. And young talent is usually at the sharpest end of this.

Two experiences in my early career taught me vital lessons about how to negotiate difficult times.

The first was doing recruitment for the Central Electricity Generating Board in the 1980s. When it was broken up, many of its specialists were made redundant and moved into other industries. When demand returned again, there was a void of talent.

The second was when I was asked to hire people into the IT functions at the forklift truck manufacturer Lansing Bagnall, which had just been acquired by the German company Linde AG in 1989.

It wasn’t a good time economically. UK manufacturing was depleted, and Lansing Bagnall’s order book was worryingly empty. But the new management didn’t follow accepted British wisdom and cut to save costs.

In fact, they brought me – as well as redeploying much of the existing workforce to modernise and streamline their manufacturing processes.

When better times returned – as they always do – Lansing Linde was in a far more competitive position, able to quickly response to increased demand with a better product offering. Instead of contracting during the difficult times, they pivoted, strengthened and future proofed their business.

It taught me that so much of what we think of as ‘fact’ is actually culturally determined. The Germans had an entirely different view on how to respond to downturns. And yet even all these years later, many British industries are sticking to the bad old ways.

The airline industry has suffered huge reputational damage after firing during the pandemic – and being left completely unable to properly redeliver when demand increased.

I’d argue that Warren Buffet – who once famously said, “Only when the tide goes out, do you see who’s been swimming naked” – should have included the tide is coming in as well. Fail to prepare for the eventual upturn at your peril.

So how do we create this kind of culture shift? Because make no mistake – that’s what it is. What I’m talking about is a move away from businesses being led by a short-term, one-dimensional, sense of the bottom line to a longer, more expansive, view of their profits and processes.

We are increasingly understanding of the critical importance of the human element to a business. It’s no longer simply about hitting targets. We have a far more nuanced understanding these days of the impact our people have. We are more accepting too of our environmental considerations.

But we must start to interweave our financial strategies for economic downturns with a vital people element too. We must recognise the critical need to protect and develop a workforce even in the leanest times.

Who best to argue this? HR leaders. 

Currently, however, HR has very limited representation at the top of corporate life with limited opportunity to input strategically at board level. All too often, HR is used as a reactive tool to grow or shrink a workforce depending on the economic climate.