Public sector HR professionals have more immediate responsibilities

HR professionals contemplating their futures may wonder which employers offer the broadest experience and best career development. Research released today (17 January 2005) by IRS Employment Review, published by LexisNexis Butterworths, could provide the answer.

The public sector is more likely to offer HR professionals a strategic role, including their own budgets and documented strategy, and most public sector boardrooms (63%) offer a seat on the board to their most senior HR manager. But public sector HR departments also spend more of their time on administration than their private sector counterparts.

The findings emerge from IRS Employment Reviews annual HR Benchmarks survey, which enables practitioners to compare their departments organisation and practices with those of others across the economy.

The findings show that the typical HR department has one HR practitioner for every 109 employees, but this varies by organisation size and sector. This headline figure also disguises the fact that the larger an organisation becomes, the lower its HR:employees ratio. Public sector organisations also tend to have relatively large HR departments for the number of staff they oversee.

The survey, conducted at the end of 2004, is in the new edition (815) of IRS Employment Review (www.irsemploymentreview.com).

Key points:

* More than seven in 10 (73%) survey respondents believe that HR has become more influential in their organisation over the past five years, while less than one in 10 (7%) believe that their influence has declined.

* More than half (57%) reveal that their HR budget had increased during the past five years but for just under a quarter (24%), it had decreased Almost a fifth of respondents (19%) reported that their budget had not changed.

* Just under half (46%) expect the value of their HR budget to increase over the next five years, while 40% expect it to remain static. Just 13% of respondents expect it to fall.

* Over two-thirds (70%) of respondents said they would expect HR managers to hold a formal qualification, while a further 24% prefer this to be the case.

* HR has a voice at the boardroom table either through a director with sole responsibility for HR (28%), or through a director with responsibility for HR and other matters (17%).

Less than a third (27%) of the panel have devolved some aspects of
HR work to line managers and business units over the past two years.

* Less than two in 10 respondents (13%) had outsourced any work in the past two years, despite constant predictions that HR outsourcing is about to take off.

* Four in 10 respondents (40%) measured the effectiveness of HR and its contribution to business success, while half (50%) did not, and 10% did not know if their organisation measured effectiveness.

* Most manufacturers (53%) and nearly half of all private services sector companies (44%) have no documented HR strategy.

IRS Employment Review managing editor, Mark Crail said:

Benchmarks are not targets. The data provided here should prompt questions rather than provide answers about such issues as the åright number of HR staff, the level of seniority of a departments leaders or the size of its budget. And, of course, HR departments differ from each other for reasons of history, economics and office politics, and HR professionals will have different priorities of their own.

Our respondents report that HR has become increasingly influential in recent years, often because new leadership has enabled it to be taken more seriously, and because the regulatory environment has become more demanding. But if power and influence are important, the public sector may provide greater career opportunities.