The "new normal"

The McKinsey global economic conditions survey, based on a survey of senior executives worldwide conducted in September 2009, paints a picture of a "new normal" (external website) emerging in the global economy once the recession is behind us.

According to McKinsey:

Overall, the responses [from indicate that a "new normal" is settling in--for many companies, an environment less comfortable than the one they knew in the pre-crisis world. Most are still cutting costs, and a third of all respondents say that their companies are in crisis.

In a recent blog post on the Harvard Business Publishing website, venture capitalist Scott Anthony delivers his own take on this theme, arguing that "constant transformation is the new normal" (external website).

Anthony writes:

There are still some executives who are waiting for things to return to "normal". It's not going to happen. Constant change is the new normal. [M]y belief is that the era of optimisation, the era of disciplined expansion is dead. Success now requires not just doing it better, but mastering the ability to do it differently. If you don't recognise the severity of the problem, it's easy to fool yourself into thinking you are making progress when you really aren't, or to convince yourself that all you have to do is wait for the economy to bounce back and your company will bounce back as well.

HR in the "new normal"

The UK recession may be drawing to a close (or it could be over already and we are just waiting for the official economic growth figures to catch up, depending on how optimistic your outlook is), but an increasing number of commentators are now arguing that there is little chance that things will return to how they were before. So what will this mean for HR?

A new economic and employment landscape of constant change will of course have significant implications for HR practitioners. Once their companies have weathered the storm of the recession, it seems likely that change management will become an ever larger part of the work of HR.

XpertHR offers extensive resources on change management, including benchmarking research and detailed guidance on managing change (subscription required for each).