The Ochre House Symposium

This grand-sounding annual event will take place on Wednesday 14th September at Wentworth Golf Club. The day conference has an intriguing title: Re-defining Business Value Through a Talent Centric Approach. The agenda includes the following: “Business value is changing. The rapidly accelerating pace of change and increasing competitive intensity means that the time is here when companies will justify their value beyond financial ratios and straight economics.”

The day is aimed at business leaders and senior HR professionals, who are promised insights into what by now must be a familiar theme: the shifts required in strategic thinking and HR’s orientation to achieve alignment between an organisation’s people agenda and its commercial objectives. One of the speakers at the Symposium, talent strategy coach Gyan Nagpal (formerly head of talent in APAC for Deutsche Bank) puts it thus: “My research suggests that many companies don’t actually have a real people strategy. What they have instead is a list of initiatives, which react to a specific issue or try and solve a problem, often when it’s too late anyway. We find that in large organisations operating globally, major commercial decisions are made impacting distant global theatres with little thought about how the talent can be found to implement them.” Nagpal cites the rush into the burgeoning markets of China as a classic example of this. “Everyone wants a piece of the Chinese success story, but few have worked out where the managerial talent is going to come from to deliver it. There are simply not enough indigenous professionals with the expected skills and experience to go round. Corporate boards are increasingly waking up to the need to discuss this early in the planning process and are looking to HR, both for greater involvement and depth of insight,” he says.

Other speakers include Simon Wright (former CEO and president, Virgin), and David Stephenson (head of learning and development, Telefónica O2). More information is available at the event's website.

Source: Ri5

Posted by Ri5