T

he last couple of years have been a roller coaster for anyone working in HR. The stop/start nature of the pandemic has meant an ever-changing environment for us to work in. We’ve helped companies pivot to remote working and ensured a safe return for those who have needed to work in an office – when possible. With Government rules responding to the ebb and flow of the pandemic, we have had to change, adapt and rethink – it has often felt as if we’re constantly taking two steps back.

As we look to 2022, these issues will most-likely remain with new challenges emerging. How will we support our people’s mental health and wellbeing as we enter the third year of the pandemic? How do we ensure a hybrid approach to working that delivers increased collaboration whilst maintaining connections to each other and the business’? How can we ensure our companies are best-placed to attract and retain skills and talent in a competitive market and an economy dealing with wage inflation?

We have devised a proactive programme for 2022  – with HR professionals and SME business leaders firmly in mind – to help tackle the big issues we collectively face. Helen Salt, chair EIC HR forum

I firmly believe that together we are stronger than alone, and by working collaboratively through organisations like EIC, we can be in the best-position possible to approach these significant challenges. This is why I was delighted to become chair of the HR forum and, working closely with the team at EIC, we have devised a proactive programme for 2022  – with HR professionals and SME business leaders firmly in mind – to help tackle the big issues we collectively face.

Through our regular meetings every other month, we will not only have a forum to discuss the burning HR issues of the day, but a place to share best-practice and member-experiences. Thanks to MS Teams we will also be able to build this community online, helping members with practical queries on a day-to-day basis.

Additionally, we will welcome external partners to our sessions, including employment law specialists Bird & Bird, attraction and retention specialists, Hireful, and personal development and wellbeing experts Accelerator. These are organisations that can help every member – large or small – as we hopefully start to emerge from the pandemic in 2022.

Our collective experiences will be distilled into new guides and templates aimed at our members, and we’ll also share articles on the EIC website.

It is our hope that this reinvigorated programme of proactive activity will help to nurture a like-minded community of HR professionals and SME business leaders helping each other and the wider membership base deal the uncertainty ahead. While we won’t claim to have all of the answers, we can ensure you and your company are in the best-possible position to deal with the uncertainty ahead.

The next HR forum takes place in-person on 15 March at 11.30am at HR legal experts, Bird & Bird in London.

Helen Salt is board director at ACE member Curtins, and chair of the HR forum.