A survey of 300 HR directors and heads of HR at companies across the UK has found less than 20 per cent completely confident in their ability to meet significant HR challenges.

In the poll of 324 senior HR professionals, conducted on behalf of talent management consultancy, Ochre House, 86 per cent of respondents identified change management as a significant challenge, 83 per cent leadership succession planning and 72 per cent leadership development. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the current state of the industry, 100 per cent of senior HR professionals in the banking and financial services sector saw change management as a challenge, although in the more stable IT arena this dropped to just 66 per cent.

“The rapid progress of the downturn has left many senior HR specialists facing problems that they simply didn’t expect to be dealing with,” says Ochre House’s managing director, Sue Brooks. “When PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted its major global survey in 2005 less than 50 per cent of HR heads saw change management as a challenge and 82 per cent of them expected it to have ceased to be a significant challenge by 2008. Yet now it is right back at the top of the agenda.”

“What is clearly worrying is that our survey also found that less than 20 per cent of respondents were completely confident of their organisation’s ability to deal with the identified challenges, highlighting a major capability gap,” Brooks added.