Is your HR department ready for the economic upturn?

According to the Institute of Chartered Accountants, which recently surveyed 1,000 chartered accountants across the UK, business confidence rose to +4.8 at the end of June, from -28.2 in March, the biggest rise for two years. The results were so promising it prompted the institute’s chief executive Michael Izza to say: "This quarter's Business Confidence Monitor suggests that the UK recession is at an end." The time to prepare for a recovery is just before the recession starts to bottom out. If the last recession was anything to go by, the official 'all clear' came eight to 21 months after the recession actually ended. Now is the time to act, but what are the implications for HR professionals who, for the last few years, have been more caught up in redundancies than recruitment?