HR professionals not afraid of redundancy

May 12 2003 by Brian Amble Print This Article

The majority of HR professionals appear to feel 'very confident' that they will not be made redundant in the next six months. But almost a quarter are not confident at all, claims a new survey.

Polling 375 visitors, the HR Gateway site survey revealed that 36 per cent of respondents said that they were 'very confident' about not being made redundant in the next six months with 29 per cent claiming they felt 'reasonably confident'.

However, over a third of visitors (35 per cent) did not share this optimism. Just over one in ten (11 per cent) said that they felt confident was 'too strong a term' while 24 per cent were 'not confident at all'.

Charles Cotton of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) says that the HR profession is experiencing a supply and demand problem as more people choose HR as a career, which is bound to affect professionals' ability to find work:

"As the base in the UK in manufacturing declined and services took over, the role of HR was always going to grow. Now it has had time to do this it is feeling the pressures of supply and demand," said Cotton.

This factor does not appear to be putting off the confidence of professionals, with a recent report from the CIPD revealing that 42 per cent of people were very secure in their position at work with 65 per cent in the HR Gateway poll also claiming to be confident.

Stewart Rowland, manager of the HR team at PSD recruiters, said that he thought the figures reflected his experience in the field at present but warned those not in specific programmes not to be too confident:

"I would say this is a fairly accurate reflection of what is happening in the marketplace at present. Anyone in shared services or anything outside of the vertical skill sets should be careful, however.

"It would be interesting to know how many of the 36 per cent had either been recently promoted or in organisational development or change programmes as this is where jobs are pretty secure at the moment," he said.

For more information about this survey please contact HR Gateway editor Barry Wade on 0115 846 0939, or at [email protected]

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