Day one: The lessons from BP
This year's HR Director's Business summit is seeing a strong delegate decision maker turnout as usual. The delegates I've been speaking to, from HR practicioners in financial services, to a food retailer to a Japanese fashion brand, seem to have mixed ideas about which speakers they rate, but they all have one thing in common - they are all hungry for knowledge. HR seems to have it's appitite back and those here have been open to all the ideas thrown at the by the speakers so far.
The opening panel debate warmed everyone up, the predicted snow held off for the time being and with hot drinks in abundance everyone got mingling on the exhibition floor, enaging with suppliers in one-to-one meetngs, themed lunches and at stands.
Meanwhile in the conference Christopher McLaverty talked about leadership and the changes BP have had to introduce to their structure as circumstances changed in the organisataion.
BP have suffered poor leadership, rouge trading and false starts, including a whole programme which was rolled out to great fanfare, only to discover through employee feedback that although all the leaders had the training, it just wasn't being applied.
Back to the drawing board, 360 degree feedback has proved a powerful tool for them and they have focused on changig leadership behaviours through a curiculum of tools including coaching, training in diversity and other facets, all under the banner of 'Managing essentials'.
They are now looking at unlocking the talent already in the organisation through leadership development programmes, which have proved incredibly popular with employees.
There may have been quite a false start but it's a lesson to all HR that even the best intentioned plans can go astray - and if you don't ask your employees how it's made a difference in the organisation - you won't find out. Imagine, BP might still be trying the original plan.
The difference is that they surveyed their staff - and acted on the results.
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