The decline of the property market over the past year has hindered firms in recruiting top talent, according to one HR director who currently lives in a hotel.
Paul Moran, who joined Slough-based LG Electronics in November, has yet to establish a permanent base in the area because of the slow property market, and believes that the issue is affecting many employers at the moment.
“We’re building our employer brand because we want the top people in the industry to come to LG, but all the best talent isn’t always within a 30-mile driving radius of the office in Slough,” Moran said. “People aren’t willing to relocate because they’re unable to sell their houses to come and live here. So, the impact of the recession still happens but in unexpected ways. It’s much more difficult to get people to relocate, more difficult to convince them to live in hotels for the short period until they can relocate.”
Aside from these difficulties, Moran is enjoying the challenge at the electronics firm so far, which he says is still growing despite the recession – sales are up by 28 per cent in 2009 as people continue to buy phones and high-specification televisions. Since joining the company Moran has been repositioning HR to exploit this.
“What we had before was HR that grew with the company over time. But it had not moved forward fast enough. And we really need a much bigger, faster LG. To match our growth rate we’ve got to match it with better HR processes,” he said.
Moran’s vision is to create an award-winning HR team that supports business growth through its people.
“To misquote Gandhi, you’ve got to be the change that you want the change to be. So we have to really be business partners if we want to be accepted as business partners,” he said.
Results from a 360-degree satisfaction survey “gave us some stuff to work on and brought us closer to staff needs”, he said. Moran then started a new HR strategy to bring a cultural shift towards a more talent-led business. Through this he implemented a talent pipeline, encouraged internal and external networking and increased investment in training.
“It’s about hire through to retire; everything you do is getting the people in until they leave when they retire,” said Moran.