Is it getting harder to succeed in HR?

Hello and welcome to Working It.

A shorter newsletter today because I have been travelling with the FT video team, making a series focusing on leaders’ innovative ideas to make work better. I’ve really enjoyed nosing about other people’s workplaces: this week, we were hosted on Novartis’s giant Basel campus by its talent team. The pharmaceuticals company is boosting the number of internal moves with an AI-powered system that matches available opportunities to an individual’s skills and career goals. (Finally! A use for workplace AI that I could really relate to 🙌🏻.)

As September dawns, it feels like the right time to be talking about fresh starts: making a change at work, or a course to learn new skills. Do get in touch with your ideas, thoughts and tips for the “new term”: [email protected].

Read on for insights from a new index following the HR sector’s turnover and retention. And yes, it’s still an outlier among the top jobs in terms of having decent numbers of women in post 🙄.

HR: Where women get to the top 🥇- but is it getting harder?

Whenever I speak or moderate at HR conferences and events, it’s gratifying to see so many women leaders in the room. This visual evidence is backed up by the stats: research from Russell Reynolds, a management consultancy, shows that 68 per cent of the FTSE 100 chief HR officer roles (54 out of 80) that have been filled since 2018 have gone to women. However, as the report also notes, “only 5 per cent of these women were appointed alongside a woman chief executive and 20 per cent alongside a woman chief financial officer”.

Globally, that figure for female CHRO appointees is 61 per cent, although just 9 per cent of global CEOs appointed since 2019 have been women. So women get to the top in HR but . . . not so much in other senior roles.

These numbers come under what I call the “depressingly hard to shift” category of workplace realities. So I asked Anna Penfold, Russell Reynolds’ lead on HR capability, what was the most surprising thing that came out of this first Global CHRO Turnover Index. She cited the low turnover in CHRO roles:

It is fascinating to see CEOs looking for stability in their CHRO counterparts at a time like this. In a first half of the year shaped by global political and cultural upheaval, we’ve seen the lowest number of new CHRO appointments for five years. This mirrors what we’ve observed among CEOs, with our latest Global CEO Turnover Index showing uncharacteristically low CEO turnover.

I think we are seeing just how important the CHRO/CEO relationship is today, particularly in moments of political change and uncertainty. We are also seeing a lower percentage of first-timer CHROs: 40 per cent in Q2 2024, compared to 52 per cent in the same period the previous year. This underpins the point that we are seeing experience and breadth of skillset being highly prized.

The good news: if you are an experienced CHRO, the job market is hot 🌶. Anna said: “Competition for these candidates is intense, with private equity tempting some of the best talent out of listed firms in an effort to build organisations with long-term sustainability.”

Where does this trend to appoint experienced practitioners leave one-rung-below people wanting to move upwards? I asked Meena Anand, CEO of the City HR Association, a membership group for HR professionals in London’s financial district. She emphasised the ever-increasing breadth of the role — and that can make it harder for people to progress in HR without experience elsewhere.

Experience in a commercial or digital seat, whether that’s sales, strategy, chief of staff or operations, is valued highly. While this shift is fabulous news long term, it does pose a significant challenge for HR succession in the short term, particularly when internal candidates — who may have remained in the HR vertical — are compared to experienced CHROs in the external market. It’s not surprising therefore to see that the tenure of existing CHROs has increased and that internal candidates may be missing out on that top job. This will level out over time, I’m sure.

What’s the short-term answer? I’m keen to hear from people more expert than me: what is the future for CHROs? Can you progress if you only work in that department (or vertical, if you all insist)?

I know the bigger question is: why aren’t there more women at the actual top 😡? But that’s so huge and exhausting. Let’s leave it for another time.

Anything, everything: [email protected]. I’ll print the best thoughts and ideas. You can be anonymous.

This week on the Working It podcast

What do managers need to know about Generation Z workers — and also about Generation Alpha, the oldest of whom are now 16? These younger staff will upend the workplace — and we’d better be ready to learn from them, rather than telling them what to do. To find out more, in this week’s episode I talk to futurist and Gen Z expert Chloe Combi, and to my FT colleague Pilita Clark, author of a provocatively titled recent column on ‘The most annoying thing about young people at work”. We talk through some of the FT reader reactions to that column. (Scroll to the end of this newsletter for more on this topic 📜.)

Five top stories from the world of work

1. The science of saying no at work: Pilita Clark offers some great tips from an academic study of saying no — first, that tracking our work makes it easier to say no as we have a better idea of what we are doing, and second, that the firm no right away is far better than a “soft no” or postponing the commitment.

2. How to stay curious while avoiding distraction: A great reminder from Tim Harford of how important curiosity is — but it can also get us off track. Often the most valuable things for us to pursue lie in zones next to what you already know — “good curiosity” is often knowledge adjacent, rather than about outliers.

3. Your boss is not your parent: Anjli Raval on the similarities (and differences) between the “gentle parenting” movement and the in-vogue management approach of thinking about employees’ personal needs and being a compassionate leader. It’s harder than ever to play one or both of these roles, she concludes.

4. Just don’t mention Thelma: Not a work story but I loved this travel article — an account of two old friends taking a road trip across the US, by Samantha Weinberg. If you are back at work after the summer and feeling low, then this is wonderful escapism and inspiration. Interesting reader comments, too.

5. ‘It was true mania’: Heston Blumenthal reflects on his mental health crisis: Many people are opening up about mental illness, but few have gone public with a bipolar diagnosis. Emma Jacobs talks to the chef about his experiences — he also has ADHD — and about how he is rebuilding his life with a new awareness of his past.

One more thing . . . 

Barbara Waxman has often caught my eye on LinkedIn with her wise insights into good ageing. This week she’s talking about a phase of life I’d never heard described before: “endbeginnings”: meaning the time of becoming an empty nester when kids leave home for travel or college. (Barbara also teaches on the Modern Elder Academy’s famous “mid-life wisdom” courses in gorgeous locations 🗺 — pure retreat-nip.)

A word from the Working It community

The lively debate about how to get the most from an intergenerational workforce is still going strong, in response to the newsletter on “How Gen X mentors help Gen Z to thrive”. (We even recorded a podcast about it this week ⬆️.) I am clearly not the only one who thinks this is one of the key issues in workplaces.

And there’s no need for older staff to keep saying everything is “very demure, very mindful” in order to stay relevant. Here’s a more constructive approach from Jonathan Baker, a Boomer — and an experienced leader in management consulting firms:

My personal experience of working with people in their 20s and 30s and, on occasion, mentoring/coaching them has only ever been good. The distance, in years and experience, seems to enrich the discussion. Also, it helps enormously if both parties start from a position of respect and wanting to get the most out of the dialogue.

The other interesting point you made was about structure and training. Having worked in several leading people-based services businesses, there are enormous benefits to be gained from really doing what you say in your recruitment process about professional development: how you train people — the learning cycle, knowledge management, organised performance and career progression, and individual mentoring.

To put it more emotively, I wonder whether the idea of being given exciting although demanding work, comprehensive training and support, and progressing as fast as you are comfortable, combined with a strong, positive and encouraging workplace culture and good core benefits (pay, pension, medical insurance) isn’t a much better employee proposition for a surprising proportion of staff than any amount of soft/edible/drinkable workplace benefits.

Jonathan, I agree. (But also, free coffee really does go a long way☕️.)