These are exciting times at the CIPD and for our profession. I’ve been here a year now. We have a renewed sense of purpose and a clear strategic agenda for change – working with real energy to increase our impact and voice and the support we offer to you as members.

We’re building on strong foundations – we celebrated our centenary in June, and we’ve achieved a lot as a profession in those 100 years.  But as your professional body we also know we can do more, and do it better, and we have to step up if we’re to stay relevant to all of the individuals and communities we serve.

We’ve set ourselves a broader and more compelling purpose – to champion better work and working lives. To find out how this is driving us to build a CIPD that delivers more for you, and has the credibility, impact and voice to raise the status of the profession, please take a moment to watch this short film. It tells the story of our journey – where we’ve come from, where we need to do more, and where we’re headed. We’re also asking you to share your own stories – about what the CIPD means for you.
 
We’ve got a lot underway – investing for the future so we can serve you better. So I want to use this message to share some of the things we’ve been doing. And, I’ll keep talking to you regularly to update you on our progress, which I hope will be helpful to you.

Increasing our impact and voice

• Anticipating the future of work, probing the changing nature of the workforce and the workplace is our professional context and will shape our shared agenda for the future. We’re basing our research and policy work around these themes, together with some key partners such as Tomorrow’s Company on good governance, Bath University on our trust research, as well as UKCES, Business in the Community, the National Apprenticeship Service and others on skills agendas.
• Our Megatrends report, published today, highlights the sheer pace of change our profession needs to be equipping organisations to handle. We’ve analysed the trends shaping work today, and some of the surprising ones we think will shape the future. Take a look and tell us how these trends are affecting your world, and which other trends are on your radar.
• We’ve just announced that we’re teaming up with CIMA, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, to find ways that HR and finance can work together better. One of our strategic areas of focus will be on establishing more common practice and frameworks on human capital metrics and measures.
• We’re collaborating with Gary Hamel, one of the world’s leading business thinkers, to run a hackathon. It’s a mass online engagement project, which many of you have already got involved in. We’re identifying the obstacles to change and adaptability, and reinventing the way we change. It’s all part of understanding and shaping the future role of HR. We’ve reached an exciting stage, so if you haven’t already, register for free and share your ideas and solutions to the lack of agility in too many organisations today.
• We’re also collaborating with Dan Pink, taking his work on engagement and reward, and his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, and delivering learning events that share the insights. This is all part of our committed support for the employee engagement agenda, particularly through the industry-led Engage For Success programme.
• And we’re engaging with members on our high profile youth employment campaign, Learning to Work, including our successful Steps Ahead Mentoring programme, as well as our new collaboration with the Education and Employers Taskforce on Inspiring the Future. We’re encouraging members to participate by volunteering in schools to help young people become more work-ready – please do sign up if you can!

Increasing support and adding value for members

I’ve met a lot of you over the last year. We’re making a concerted effort to get out there more – engaging better with members, with the branches, with the tutors and other professionals who deliver our qualifications. From those conversations, we know there’s much you value from us, but I also hear that there are many ways in which we can improve.

And we're responding.

We’re developing better content, drawing on the purpose and research themes I talked about above. Take, for example, the incredibly well-received HR in SMEs conference we delivered for the first time recently, serving a critically important part of our economy in a way we haven’t before.

We’re developing better tools to help you do your jobs. For example, our improved HR-Inform service will be unveiled in the coming weeks and we're also working on new practical resources to help you with your career development and CPD.

We’re working to ensure the CIPD does all it can to make you better connected. We’re delivering stronger support to our branches, so they can deliver even more at a local level – with new regional support already in place in Scotland and London. And we’re working to better engage through social media and with online communities, and to use this to ensure we’re better placed to build and support special interest communities within our membership.

We’re working hard to shape clearer propositions for different categories and groups of members, from students just starting out, to those at the top of the profession – so we’re more in tune with your needs, and better able to meet them. And I’m prioritising shaping a clearer agenda for the L&D community. There’ll be more from us in the coming weeks.

I hope this message has given you a strong sense of what we’ve done and what we’re working on. We’ve made some significant organisational changes here at the CIPD. The results are starting to come through. But we’re also now geared up to really pick up the pace. I’m always keen to hear from you about what we’re doing well and what you’d like to see change. Do email me on chiefexecutive@cipd.co.uk with your comments. And I’ll be in touch again soon with more on our progress. In the meantime, feel free to visit our What’s new page for regular updates.