Now, I would love to take credit for both of these questions, however, all credit in this scenario has to go to Trevor Gibson from People Risk Ltd.

At a recent networking event of ours he cunningly delegated all responsibility for doing any of the work and instead got everyone else to do it for him. BRILLIANT! (and I will definitely be stealing this idea the next time I’m asked to do a talk).

Both of these questions stirred up an interesting and lively debate. For me the biggest surprise was that there was no consistency…

Imagine that. A group of 20 senior HR professionals couldn’t cohesively answer the questions – what is HR for? What does HR do?

Interesting stuff and while this isn’t confined to this group, it is something that affects the discipline as a whole and causes a lot of discussion and debate.

Now I can’t confess to having all the answers on this subject but having spent over 12 years studying and working with HR professionals, I’m pretty well versed in what makes a commercial HR person.

I’d be interested to hear what people think on the subject and the answers to those all important 2 questions –  What is HR for? What does HR do? To discuss further, you can email me on James@refind.co.uk.

You can view more about James Cumming our change and business transformation specialist here.