September 18, 2008
Wales. Dontya just luv it? Guru certainly does, and he'll be brushing up on his Welsh language skills in case he happens to bump into the hordes of Welsh-speaking HR professionals that will be going out into the world of work in the near future.
That's right, HR in Welsh.
Ignoring the fact that HR is probably a name in Welsh (as is Ignoring, as in, I'm Ignoring Jones from Caaaaardeff), it seems that there is a big demand for Welsh HR and CIPD fellow Catherine Rees of Mabis HR has teamed up with the competence Centre for London to enable HR professionals to present for their CIPD in Welsh.
This is all well and good, but it got Yours Truly pondering.
if it is really necessary. After all, on previous visits to the land of the sheep, Guru found that everyone spoke perfect English. Including the sheep (although they only seemed to want to find their way to the nearest public house - "Bar?" they kept saying).
So, in the spirit of thumb-twiddling investigations, Yours Truly looked up the statistics.
- There are currently 59 HR vacancies in Wales, according to Personneltoday.com/jobs.
- There are currently 2.8 million people in Wales.
- 1.7 million people are of working age
- 1.26 million of those are actually working
- 25% of the population speaks Welsh
- therefore, 315,000 working people speak Welsh
That would be 5,333 employees per role and assuming there are already at least a few hundred HR practitioners in the land of the leek, it seems like a bit of overkill to employ even one more Welsh speaker.
Why even Guru's Welsh ancestors (on his mother's side) used to speak in English - and that was more than 100 years ago. But apparently times have changed and some people in Wales now only speak Welsh.
Anyone would think they wanted total independence.
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