HR professionals need to get their own houses in order before they try to raise their personal profiles, according to a panel of former nominees for the Personnel Today HR Director of the Year Award.
Speaking at the HR Directors Club last week at Watermen’s Hall in London, Sally Jacobson, HR director at London & Quadrant Housing, said that only by paying people on time and rewarding them for what they do, could HR hope to be valued by the whole organisation.
And while every member of the panel had enjoyed the external recognition of being nominated or winning our HR Director of the Year Award, all agreed that internal PR was far more important in getting staff to recognise what HR does.
Mary Canavan, HR director at the British Library, said: “I had been on the front cover of a trade magazine, but there were still people who didn’t buy into what we did for the organisation.”
Beverley Shears, founder of Beverley Shears Associates, said HR’s reputation hung not just on award-winning strategies, but on doing day-to-day things properly.
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Crown Prosecution Service HR director, Angela O’Connor, said raising HR’s profile was as much about imbuing the whole team with confidence as gaining individual, external recognition. “You can tell your department they’re good, but they won’t believe it until they’re recognised by their peers,” she said.
For more information, go to www.hrdirectorsclub.com
