Last night we joint hosted the second Midlands HR Directors Dinner of 2017 with Eversheds Sutherland. On the evening of the General Election it promised to be lively event and we weren’t disappointed. We wanted to understand how our clients felt about key HR issues, the impact of the election and potential political changes to the future HR landscape.
We talked about workers’ rights, Labour’s plan to make employment agencies and end users jointly responsible for ensuring the rights of agency workers, and the impact on businesses using agency staff. We discussed the Conservative’s plan to ensure those in the Gig Economy are properly protected and what that protection might look like. We had an interesting debate on the issues around increasing the number of woman in board level appointments and in particular, do the Conservatives go far enough by “pushing for an increase” or are the Liberal Democrats right to push for 40% of FTSE 350 board members to be women?
Part of the evening was spent with a passionate debate around skills shortages and how “Artificial Intelligence” could have a greater influence over the HR and recruitment sector in the future. We also talked at length about Millennials and how the future work place will need to respond in order to attract the very best talent in the future. On the back of this discussion we are hosting the next Midlands HR Directors dinner in October, and plan to invite a panel of Millennials to join us so we can ask them directly what they want. Companies of all kinds are keen to understand them better – we think they want purpose, feedback, and personal life balance in their work but do we really know them?
As the current political horizon changes day by day we want to continue the lively debate about the work place so if you would like to join us for the next Midlands HR Directors Dinner in Birmingham and you are either a HR Director or a Millennial (or both) then please email sarahwestwood@oakleafparntership.com or call 0121 270 4639 to reserve your place.