Norwegian people managers empathise as UK counterparts struggle with office politics - CIPD survey

HR managers in the UK are most troubled by office politics and the struggle for influence, while their counterparts in Norway feel that empathy and listening skills are far more important.

This is just one of the findings from a detailed comparison of the state of the HR profession carried out by the CIPD in association with HR Norge. A similar comparative study was also carried out in Poland.

When asked what the most important competencies were for HR professionals:

Influencing / political skills were chosen by 61% of UK HR professionals, compared to just 25% in Norway.

Norwegian HR professionals felt the need for empathy, communication and listening skills far more keenly than their UK counterparts (42% in Norway, compared to 24% in the UK).

The importance of HR as a strategic player across all countries was clear. Over half of all respondents in the three countries rank time they spend on business strategy as ’most important’ in terms of their contribution to the organisation - and the most popular desired role in all countries was ’strategic business partner’.

When it came to describing their current role, some differences were evident. Where in the UK HR business professionals are most likely to see their role as ’strategic business partners’ (33%), in Norway and Poland they are more likely to see themselves ’administrative expert’ (37%).

There was broad agreement on the key priorities for the HR functions across the three countries. Notably more emphasis is placed on securing compliance with employment regulations in the UK (31% rating this as among their top five priorities compared to 18% in Poland and Norway).

The UK was also more likely to view creating a more diverse workforce as an issue - with 29% of respondents highlighting this compared to 13% in Norway and 9% in Poland.

The survey also found Norwegian HR professionals led the way in terms of their confidence in managers in their organisation. Significantly more HR professionals in Norway agreed that line managers have accepted full responsibility for making decisions and taking actions with regard to their subordinates.


Rebecca Clake, CIPD Adviser, Organisation and Resourcing, says: People are the true differentiators between business success and business failure in today’s globalised world. In this new global economy, people management professionals can learn much from each other. This survey shows that we have much in common, but also that there are differences in the contexts in which we work. CIPD is committed to working with partners around the world to research common issues and to promote the crucial role people management has to play in delivering economic growth and improved performance.

Even Bolstad, HR Norge says:

Norwegian HR professionals have always benchmarked themselves against colleagues in other companies. As the companies we work for become globally oriented, benchmarking against HR professionals in other countries is a natural consequence. Today we know more about how our colleagues in Europe look upon HR and how they organize their work and this is very useful for us.