Welcome to the latest issue of Human Resourcefulness, the Digby Morgan Newsletter.

I’m delighted to report that we’ve taken on board your feedback from previous editions and are bringing you more news and views from the market along with the recent developments within the HR sector. The good news is that in line with the economy, opportunities in HR are in abundance. We’re seeing new positions being created at all levels with talent management now even further up the business agenda for the vast majority of our major clients. If it ever went away, the war for talent is back with a vengeance and, at some levels, the supply of able, business-focused HR practitioners lags way behind demand. This is having a noticeable effect on salaries but is also prompting employers to take a more innovative approach to retaining and attracting talent.

On this note, I was pleased to attend the recent Executive Grapevine Talent Management conference at Vinopolis and it was interesting and gratifying to hear speakers and delegates alike promoting the whole talent concept. There’s no doubt that events such as this – coupled with the fact that there’s now a myriad of job titles that include the term ‘talent’ - go a long way to help promote the overall value of the HR function and the key strategic role it plays in delivering bottom line, commercial success.

Valued Relationships

From a resourcing perspective, we’re finding that high potential employees are being retained more effectively and, consequently, that search is becoming increasingly effective across a much broader range of roles as genuinely good people are not looking to move. This in turn means that despite the hype of online recruitment, recruitment process outsourcing and so on, the true value of a long term, positive and valued relationship between client, candidate and recruitment consultancy has never been so high.

For the second year running, I’m delighted to report that Digby Morgan is to sponsor HR Magazine’s prestigious HR Director of the Year award. As one of the judges for the category awards last year, I was very impressed with the standard of entry and the growing bottom line awareness of many of the HR functions that had submitted entries. In conjunction with this, I was also pleased to see a number of new faces in HR Magazine’s ‘100 most influential people in HR’ feature.

We’re also delighted to be sponsoring the City Personnel Group’s inaugural annual conference in May. There are some excellent speakers lined up for this event and we feel the conference will provide a unique opportunity to create a forum where all of London’s financial and professional services sector organisations can be represented.

As always, we welcome any feedback, ideas or opinions so please don’t hesitate to contact me directly. In the meantime, I trust you’ll enjoy this issue of Human Resourcefulness.

John Maxted
Managing Director