The Institute for Employment Studies has launched its annual Perspectives on HR report, a collection of articles addressing the challenges for the HR function in today’s turbulent times.

To help HR professionals rise to those challenges, several of the articles consider how the function steers itself through change, or how it helps others do so. IES urges employers to consider how more established ways of managing change can be replaced by evolving fluid approaches.

The report suggests new ways of leveraging HR tools such as coaching and innovation, alongside new approaches to change itself.

Penny Tamkin, IES Associate Director, said:

“In a world of change, people management practice is often chasing events, thrown onto the back foot of change and trying to respond to its impact and to diminish its negative effects.

“These articles fully acknowledge the difficulty of trying to second guess what change is needed, how it might be responded to or how HR can help and assist organisations in adapting to change.

“What we do know, and highlight, is that change is even more complex than we might traditionally acknowledge and we need new skills to help us cope with it.”

The writers also consider the current issues for HR staples such as talent management and business partners, as well as new angles on topics such as capabilities and ethics.

The topics covered in IES Perspectives on HR 2015 are:

  • Organisational change: finding your way as you journey into the unknown
  • Organisation design in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) world
  • Leveraging coaching for organisational change
  • Innovation: turning good ideas into reality
  • The role of the line in talent management
  • Beyond competence: shifting perspectives of capability
  • HR business partners: yes please or no thanks?
  • Ethical dilemmas in HR practice

 

 

 

 

Steff joined the HRreview editorial team in November 2014. A former event coordinator and manager, Steff has spent several years working in online journalism. She is a graduate of Middlessex University with a BA in Television Production and will complete a Master's degree in Journalism from the University of Westminster in the summer of 2015.