SHAME Award

We’ve done it again! Just when I thought my precious profession was beginning to understand the importance of being in a relationship with our business colleagues we go right on out there and publically shoot ourselves in the foot. What a skill - the ability to fire off a broadside and still manage to pick off our own tiny podiatry digits is an outstanding result. I suggest we make it a new CIPD annual award. “The Shoot Him And ME in the foot award) or SHAME for short and the winner for 2009 must surely be one of the UK’s biggest financial institutions.
Headline news today confirmed that thousands of jobs will be going from the organisation HR roles will not be part of the cull. And why? because they are protected in their private enclave and are not seen as part of the general support services delivered to the business including IT and Finance. Now tell me I am wrong but if you are a disciple of the business partner model is this not an anomaly. A spokesperson for the company told one of our leading HR publications that HR jobs would not be part of the cull as HR is not part of group manufacturing unlike IT or Finance.
And it just keeps getting better, not only are they not included in the 9,000 job losses but forgive my literal interpretation they believe that in spite of the organisation needing to remove 9,000 posts HR “is not affected by this announcement,"
If I worked in HR and hundreds if not thousands of my colleagues were about to lose their livelihood because my organisation had made some suspect decisions around the recruitment, retention, development and remuneration of influential posts I think I should be affected or maybe shamed?