The key to business success is the structure of the company, according to one of the UK’s leading businessmen.
At a Personnel Today HR Directors Club breakfast briefing at Chelsea Football Club last week, Sir Richard Needham, a director of Dyson Appliances and vice-chairman of NEC (Europe), told delegates: “The structure of a company is enormously important if you want to get the best out of people. The correct design of an organisation is absolutely critical to its success.”
In a challenging presentation, Michael Heseltine’s former deputy at the DTI said public sector managers were not up to the task.
“The majority of the public sector is weak, flabby and inefficient at getting the best out of people,” he said. “However, the public sector is far better than 20 years ago.”
He said HR had to deal with too much regulation dreamed up by civil servants with no experience of business and, because of this, “HR spends an immense amount of time doing things with questionable value”.
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The HR Directors Club is supported by Arinso, DBM, Hammonds, Hays, Oracle and Vertex.
The next briefing, in September, will be presented by Tesco group HR director Clare Chapman.
www.hrdirectorsclub.com
