The latest addition to UK Recruiter's team of roving reports is Dan Atkinson and in late Januarty he is off to a conference on our behalf. Here is his pre conference pre amble! …
Lovers of mountain sports will agree there are very few things they'd postpone their annual trip to the snow for. With no children due to be born to me in 2011 and neither of my daughters due to perform on any stages in the near term, I believed that agreeing to a trip the week of the 24th of January would not be a problem.
And then Louise at UKRecruiter offered me the opportunity to review the 9th Annual HR Director's Business Summit to be held at the ICC in Birmingham on the 24th and 25th of January.
The event bills itself as "bringing together senior HR Directors to evaluate current and future trends and their impact on the HR function and corporate strategies".
The sheer numbers involved astounded me –
• 1,000 attendees
• 600+ HR Directors
• 100+ exhibitors
• 30 interactive workshops
• 60+ High Level speakers
• 20+ real –life HR case study presentations including Mc Donald’s, BBC, Tesco, Royal Mail
• 7 streams of focused HR content running throughout two days
• 10+ one – to – one meeting sessions
• Networking drinks reception, lunches and coffee breaks
• 15+ strategic HR media partners and associations
And this was before I even got to see who was speaking. My personal favourite - David Fairhurst, the Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer for McDonalds Ltd UK and Northern Europe. David's been voted 'Most Influential Practitioner' three years running by HR Magazine and is one of the few HR people I've ever been totally blown away by in conversation. And then there's Rob Barnett, the HR Chief Operating Officer of RBS. I sincerely hope he's going to be talking about how RBS is handling cultural change in light of market changes. Finally, there's Nicholas J Higgins – Dean of the International School of Human Capital Management – I can't wait to hear what he has to say about value based HR.
Of course, these are only three of an excellent list of speakers, information about which can be found here http://www.hrevent.com/speakers.asp.
I'll be tweeting from the event @accite and submitting a full review to UK recruiter straight after the event. If anyone wants me the week after I'll be in the Alps.
Dan Atkinson, our roving reporter, is Founder and Director of Accite ltd, a company focussed on providing indispensable research to senior HR professionals needing to know the answers to questions that help achieve strategic objectives.
