A conference of HR managers and directors has been told of the challenges that lie ahead in the economy and the labour market, writes Gabrielle Monaghan
The role HR professionals can play in tackling the significant challenges facing the Irish labour market was debated in detail at the annual conference of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in in Kilkenny earlier this week.
Some 450 HR directors and managers gathered at the Lyrath Estate Hotel for the "New World of Work" conference. The institute, which celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, boasts almost 6,000 members in Ireland.
Bríd O'Brien, chairwoman of the institute's Irish branch and HR director of Meteor, opened the conference by outlining the challenges the economy will have to confront, such as continuing to develop its competitiveness globally and driving productivity.
Joe Macri, managing director of Microsoft Ireland, said the economy could not continue to depend on growth in the labour market and should instead focus on productivity.
While the labour market has grown an average 2.9 per cent a year over the past 20 years, Mr Macri noted that forecasts showed growth of an average 1.4 per cent in the next 15 years, even taking immigration into account.
Microsoft moved to develop a national productivity centre with the Irish Management Institute in Sandyford, Co Dublin, later this year, after a study by economist Paul Tansey found that technology could help accelerate Ireland's poor productivity levels.
The centre will showcase how new technologies, management practices and people can be combined to improve organisational productivity. The target audience will primarily be small to medium enterprises and Government organisations.
"Rising consumer borrowing coupled with growth in the property market has propped up the economy while productivity has been decreasing," Mr Macri said at the conference. "If we want to continue working here, we have to improve productivity."
Ann Heraty, chief executive of recruitment firm CPL Resources and chairwoman of the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, said the changing nature of the domestic economy meant HR directors needed to be included on company boards to contribute to organisational strategy.
"Between 60 and 70 per cent of a company's spending is related to people," Ms Heraty pointed out. "As Jack Welch [ of General Electric] said, HR needs to be put to a place of substantial power, equal to that of a chief executive."
Ms Heraty, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2006, contended that the only unique ability companies have in the modern-day economy was the knowledge and skills of their people. However, research published by the expert group had shown that despite the advent of the knowledge economy the proportion of the Irish workforce with low skills is too high.
"There is poor participation in continuing education and training," Ms Heraty said. "Early school leaving is still an issue. Eighteen per cent of Irish people aged 18 to 34 have not finished the Leaving Cert."
About 500,000 people needed to be "upskilled" through education and training, she said. Immigrants especially needed to be integrated into the education system and receive support in developing their English language skills.
If the Government intervenes, the proportion of the labour force with qualifications of a degree or upwards could rise to 48 per cent by 2020 from a current 32 per cent. The number of workers with upper secondary or further education should climb to 45 per cent from 40 per cent now, while the proportion of workers with just lower second-level education should fall to 7 per cent from 28 per cent.
"HR professionals need to work with schools and universities to ensure graduates have the capabilities needed in the global economy," Ms Heraty said.
Karen Moloney, a chartered psychologist and futurist, said she expected the labour force in the knowledge economy to divide into "know-how work" and "hyperhuman jobs".
She predicted that know-how jobs, such as travel agents, would disappear in five to 10 years because consumers would have the technology to do these jobs themselves.
"What remains is hyperhuman jobs that computers can't do that require creativity, wisdom and originality," she said.
One of the biggest challenges that HR professionals faced in mature labour markets is young workers' decline in ambition, Ms Moloney said. Twice as many "generation Y" workers would rather run their own business than become chief executive of a Fortune 500 company, she said, citing previous studies.
"Generation Y has seen mass epidemics around the world, global terrorism, the fall of major corporations and are already faded. They don't have the same hunger my generation had. The pursuit of the American dream has disillusioned a lot of these people. It's not like that in the east."
She added: "So what do we do with these people? Youngsters need to be engaged, do meaningful work and feel that they made a contribution. They don't want to work every hour God gave them and miss their children growing up like our generation.
"Many generation Y workers grew up with both parents going to work but the quality of parenting was very high and they are used to getting attention. If they join a company and managers don't have time for them or they have remote managers, they can't understand it.
"People join organisations because of the company but leave because of their manager. Train people to treat others as individuals. If you were in the music business and managing a superstar who was acting like a diva, you would have to manage them, not fire them because they're not a 'team player'."
