Jackie Orme speech to the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition Manchester, 17 November 2009

Last year, after 60 years, we bid a fond farewell to Harrogate. Today we welcome you all to Manchester, and to a new chapter for the CIPD.

But first I want to reflect on a turbulent year in the global economy. Last year I stood before the conference just one day after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. We were staring an unknown world in the face. We knew then, as Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said, that ‘The Nice Decade’ was over. Today we find ourselves still in a state of flux, with some saying the recession is over – but few feeling that to be true in any meaningful sense. Indeed, when we asked visitors to our website last week, 89% said they still felt we were in recession.

But I believe that predicting the end isn’t what matters most. What matters most is our fitness to deal with the present, while at the same time facing firmly into the uncertainties of the future. Shortly I will be introducing Jim Collins. In his most recent book he hit the nail squarely on the head. He said: ‘whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do yourself than on what the world does to you’.

I believe the last two years have served to strengthen the role of and need for high calibre HR professionals. Not just because we need to drive the lean agenda: restructuring, redundancies, pay freezes – critical though this is. But because it’s clearer now than it’s ever been that the nature of the organisations we build either creates or undermines the conditions for lasting success.

I spoke recently to the HR Director in a major financial institution. One that has suffered less as a result of the financial crisis than most of its competitors. He told me they’d looked carefully at why others had suffered so much more. And what they needed to keep doing to protect themselves in the future. The conclusion they reached was simple – the difference was culture and leadership.

Similarly, the HRD of an organisation that has suffered badly through the crisis, when looking at what they’d learned, echoed Jim Collins’ words: “when an organisation grows beyond its ability to fill its key seats with the right people it has set itself up for a fall.” Those simple conclusions contain a powerful message for HR. A message about the impact we can have in building the cultures and developing the leaders necessary to deliver sustainable performance.

That link between culture, leadership and sustainable performance is exactly the focus of our Next Generation HR research. We’ll be setting out more of the findings from that research this afternoon. Looking at how leading HR functions are adapting, not just to the current recession but to the changed nature of business today. In particular, the need to deliver both short- and long-term results in a way that protects the future. We’ve got an impressive and varied array of organisations taking part in the research. Some are on the stage this afternoon. But they’re all helping us to identify the beginnings of the big shifts that will help define the HR profession of the future.

Our ambition at the CIPD is to help shape a generation of HR professionals, from those just starting their careers to those operating at the very highest level. To build a stronger, more confident profession. One truly fit for the future. It’s an audacious goal. But I’m determined that the CIPD will be ambitious on behalf of this profession. If the CIPD doesn’t demonstrate this ambition for HR, who will?

Central to our efforts to build that strong, confident profession lie two important principles.

The first is the recognition that HR is a broad church. One that relies on both specialists and generalists to be an effective profession. And diverse of background – made up of people who’ve been in the profession all their working lives, and people who’ve entered at other stages in their careers, from different disciplines and with different experience to bring to the profession.

The second principle is our unshakeable belief that HR is an applied business discipline, and that business, in turn, is an applied HR discipline.

What do I mean by that? I mean a profession made of people who see themselves as business people. Made up of HR people who understand the way that the interplay between people and organisational factors impacts on business success, and can influence their organisations accordingly. And made up of people who know that it is the application of HR – its effective execution; how you do it, not just what you do – that really counts at the end of the day.

In everything we’ve done, we’ve sought to bring those principles to life. In April we started that process when we unveiled the CIPD HR Profession Map. It sets new standards for the profession and is a radical departure from our previous professional standards. At its heart lies an expectation that a deep understanding of the organisation’s context is essential to developing HR plans that deliver, and that can be effectively executed. And that to perform as HR professionals we need more than just knowledge. We also need to deliver activity that demonstrates the application of that knowledge in the workplace, and exhibit behaviours that show we are truly effective performers. Put simply, it is not just what you know, but what you do and how you do it that matters.

Using the map we’ve been on a breathtaking journey for both qualifications and membership. Working closely with the academics and centres of learning that play such an important role in supporting and equipping the profession, we’ve developed a new suite of qualifications that we’re launching in January. They’re built on the same principles as the Map. Rooted in a deep understanding of the business, and focused on the application of skills and experience in a way that delivers real impact in the workplace. They recognise that the workplace is often an international or global organisation. They’re designed to meet the needs of specialists as well as HR generalists.

But the most important thing the Map enables us to do is to revolutionise how we define and assess HR competence in determining routes to CIPD membership. Once again, moving firmly beyond a primary focus on knowledge acquisition to a much more three dimensional focus on the knowledge, activities and behaviours, applied in the workplace, that will deliver sustainable organisational performance. Here, this week at Manchester, we are unveiling our plans for membership. Our membership manager, Christine Williams has been with the Institute for the best part of two decades. She’s seen and delivered a lot of change in that time. But she’s clear that this work marks the biggest change in our approach to membership in 20 years.

The most immediately visible change is the introduction of a new level of professional membership. The new associate member level will sit below the existing chartered member and chartered fellow levels.

But it is the shift in how we assess competence that is the biggest change. It marks a raising of the bar in terms of membership standards. It will also increase flexibility and inclusivity, as the clear and robust new criteria we’ve built will make it possible for us to offer new routes into membership. Routes which are relevant to the thousands of practitioners out there following increasingly complex and often specialist career paths. And entering the profession at different levels and from diverse backgrounds. By making these changes we are setting a new gold standard for the profession, a badge of competence powerfully relevant to employers and HR professionals.

But I have a greater ambition than that. I want us to turn our attention to creating a great pipeline of talent for HR. To attracting the brightest and the best into the profession. We’ll need to engage others with us in the delivery of this ambition.

I say this with passion as someone who didn’t begin my career with HR as my destination. Like so many others I fell into the profession. But my experience tells me that for those who have a passion to see business and people grow together there is no better place to be. I want us to continue to serve those who stumble into HR. But to do more to make HR a career destination of choice.

This is more than just a personal commitment. I know all we have achieved this year, and all we aspire to achieve in the future relies on the commitment of the CIPD staff and the army of over 900 volunteers who support the CIPD. At times it has been a difficult year, but we’ve come through it together. Thank you to each and every one of those members of the CIPD team who are so dedicated to serving and enriching the HR profession.

We’ve got a fantastic conference lined up for you over the next three days. I hope you’ll find real richness in the programme.

But now let me hand you over to the man himself. Jim Collins is here today to share with us more of his wisdom. As someone with deep insight into the secret of enduring superior performance, he is the perfect opener for this conference. His decade of research into this subject has provided the material for three books that are required reading for any of us with an interest in building organisations that last. They’ve been translated into 35 languages, including Latvian and Vietnamese – but I’m afraid he’ll be addressing us in plain old English! He’s acted as a teacher to senior executives and CEOs at over a hundred corporations, and in the US public and third sectors. And we’re delighted he’s here today to share what he knows with us. Ladies and Gentleman ... Jim Collins.