Public sector HR must brace itself

Now the political wrangling has subsided and the new coalition government is in place, HR professionals working in the public sector might be advised to adopt the brace position.

Billions of pounds in spending cuts, the details of which will emerge fully in the coming weeks, are set to provide the toughest challenge for public sector HR teams in decades.

Pay freezes, job cuts, deteriorating industrial relations, falling employee engagement, further outsourcing and organisational redesign are just some of the big issues on the agenda in the years ahead.

Put simply, HR, in the words of John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, is “in for a bit of a shock”. A fair proportion of the 500,000 job cuts Philpott has predicted over the next five years will come from HR.

The onus is now on HR leaders, through organisations like the PublicSector People Managers’ Association, to tackle these challenges headon. They must ensure HR is right at the centre of the service deliverytransformation required, leading from the front and demonstrating realinnovation. Even if that does mean they are, to some extent, becomingmasters of their own downfall.

Undoubtedly the skills exist in the sector to achieve this, there aresome really talented senior HR people working in local government, theNHS, Civil Service and wider organisations. But a new reality is aboutto dawn and those skills are going to be stretched to the absolutelimit.