High price to pay for strong leadership at CIPD but well worth it

I would urge your readers who railed at the package on offer to the new director-general of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) to wake-up and join the real world (Personnel Today, 1 May).

In the same edition, I read that the Personnel Today HR Directors Club will debate HR’s role as an ‘essential leadership capability’ on 5 June, and will explore on 17 July how HR ‘can move to a position of influence and respect’.

Am I the only one to see the contradiction here? You don’t get to sit at the top table and influence multi-billion pound businesses without being an HR director of the highest calibre and professionalism.

I would guess that there are at least a few dozen such HR directors in the FTSE 100 who have packages equivalent to that being considered by the CIPD.

These are the leading practitioners of our profession, and if the CIPD is to lead the leaders, then it needs to attract candidates who can command the respect to do so.

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So let’s not short-change this role, and let’s get the right person into the CIPD.

Mike Cutt, HR director