Workplace expert Richard Donkin earlier this week likened the HR profession to supporters of Milwall football club.
According to Donkin, HR is disliked by the other functions. He compared HR with Milwall fans on account of the latter's infamous chant "Nobody likes us, and we don't care". Donkin also blamed the function for "lots of dreary management speak". Perhaps most scathing of all was his insistence that HR has an issue with its status, and an obsession with being on the board. He also claimed he hadn't seen much evidence of charisma in the profession over the past decade.
But not all of the panellists at the debate, organised by London HR Connection and the London School of Economics, were as negative about the profession. Ruth Spellman, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute, inisisted that HR has come of age, and that it shouldn't be allowed to slip back to the day of apologising for people management. But Spellman also said HR needed to be a lot less constipated. She said: "There's lots going on within the profession, but very little of that sees daylight."
