1-HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Recently you were a speaker at the Performance Improvement & KPIs Conference in Dubai. What was the most important piece of knowledge that you gained from this experience?
Kim Warren: Although KPI and Balanced Scorecard systems are now very well developed by organisations like the KPI Institute, management need better methods to work out what exactly to do to respond to what KPIs are telling them and improve performance – they need working, quantified models of the enterprise.
2- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Do you think that the KPIs of the same job can change across time, from one year to the other?
Kim Warren: The full required set of KPIs should only change if the nature of the job changes – the tasks and processes involved. Otherwise, the only change should be the rising or falling importance of individual indicators as conditions change.
3- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: From your point of view what are the qualities of a clever public speaker?
Kim Warren: Understand the audience and respond to their needs + engage them actively if possible.
4- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: From your point of view, what is the major contemporary HR threat in the UAE?
Kim Warren: Balancing the use of migrant labour with the employment needs of their own nationals.
5- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: The relationship between HR and the Employee is clear. Describe the relationship between HR and the Customer?
Kim Warren: Normally, HR would not interface directly with customers. However, in supporting other functional staff who do connect with customers, HR needs to understand what impact customer-needs have on the skills and behaviours of those staff.
6- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Due to the increase of business conferences, do you think public speaking became as essential quality that should be considered before hiring any manager?
Kim Warren: Any manager will likely need to communicate confidently and persuasively with others – usually colleagues or customers – so public speaking is an important skill. And this will be valuable if the need to speak externally arises.
8- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: How did you start Strategy Dynamics Ltd? What were your challenges
Kim Warren: … Persuading people and organisations to consider the major re-think required to adopt and benefit from the services and methods we offer.
9- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Being a lecturer at the university, how do you think HR in universities can develop to support lecturers and the business?
Kim Warren: [I assume you mean the business of the University] Some skills required of lecturers are somewhat unique – carrying out research, for example – but others are quite standard – time-management, dealing well with other people, and so on. So standard processes of annual appraisal and personal development are relevant. For the organisation, it is vital to manage well the processes of hiring, developing and retaining top-talent faculty – very similar to the challenges faced by any professional-service organization. And let’s not forget that a University is also reliant on strong and capable staff in other functions – marketing, operations, customer support – where standard HR support is required.
10- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Many fresh graduates, middle age employees and professionals consider career shifting? What do you think about this move? And from your personal opinion why do you think the reason behind the increase in career shifting?
Kim Warren: Motivations vary widely. Some have no choice, when their current career is cut short. (This seems to be accelerating as organization leaders seem increasingly to think that their job is to keep changing things – regardless of the lost skills and capabilities that this causes!) Others realise that they started out on a career they later regret choosing. Others genuinely want to experience the challenge and new learning opportunities arising from a change in path.
11- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What advices do you have to students who want to work in the HR field?
Kim Warren: Do not imagine, because you are dealing with people, that numeracy is unimportant. Great progress has been made in a wide range of analytic approaches to HR strategy and management that have great power to transform the quality of organization’s human talent. So get familiar with ‘HR Analytics’ and skilled in the use of these tools.
12- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What is your opinion regarding unemployment in the UK? And what are your suggested strategies to deal with the issue?
Kim Warren: UK unemployment is very low, and likely to stay low as Brexit restricts the numbers of low-skilled migrants working here. However, we have too-low educational levels and technical skills to support the need and opportunity to growth high added-value businesses. We need switch our obsession from “everyone must go to University” to “everyone must have strong basic skills and high-value job-skills”.
13- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: If you are to create your own HR Summit, which country will it take place in, and what will be the theme you would like to choose? Why?
Kim Warren: China – because the employment landscape in that country has transformed so fast, causing stresses that may ultimately harm its society and businesses.
