So what does the election of a new pope tell us about HR?

The smoke has billowed white and a new pope, Leo XIV, has been elected. An imaginative HR specialist here asks what the conclave process tells us about recruitment. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail tries to convince us of the ‘vital role of women’ in the selection. Personnel Today attempts to make sense of it all

Thanks to the film of Robert Harris’s book, Conclave, we are all now experts in the system for selecting a new il papa, and are perfectly familiar with how ne’er-do-wells are expunged from the process – basically a very stern-looking nun (Isabella Rossellini) appears clutching damning documents.

We are led to speculate that one of the reasons she is constantly looking stern is that women are excluded from the process because they are barred from the upper echelons of the church hierarchy. Or perhaps she’s seen that Donald Trump photo in which he cosplays as the Pope.

However, according to the Daily Mail in an article called – without apparent irony – The Vital Role Women Play in the Conclave Process, women in fact are central to the recruitment process.

The cardinals, it states, are supported throughout by Vatican City insiders, “including a dedicated team of nuns who help with everything from accommodation to food”.

The Mail continues: “The sisters at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, a 100-suite guesthouse in Vatican City that is currently housing the cardinals, will run the tightest of ships when it comes to cooking and cleaning”. Yes, cooking and cleaning.

Meanwhile, David Rice, HR expert at People Managing People, has shared his insights on the recruitment lessons HR can take from the process. He points out that by offering a daily smoky update on whether a decision has been made is a far higher level of transparency than most organisations would give for an executive recruitment process. “So in some ways it’s not that secretive.”

Rice says taking away phones to prevent bias or outside interference is “a great idea and the gravity and nature of this decision should demand their complete focus. What’s being said on the internet, by people outside the process and critics of the church will only add noise that clouds the conversation.”

We wondered at this point: Has anyone tried to take a mobile phone from an HR professional, ever?

There are also lessons around succession planning, Rice maintains. Selecting the right person, he says, need not involve technology or expensive exec search firms. “You should always have a lineup of leaders developing who can collectively steer the organisation in the right direction if there’s an unexpected leadership departure or emergency.”

This is all very well, but who’s going to do the cooking and cleaning? After all, in the real world, women are actually quite busy doing other things.

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