Pearse sharpens HR's business edge

Human resource management, a relatively new area in the agency world, must look at giving its function a real business edge, said Dentsu Young & Rubicam HR vice-president Noel Pearse. Making the crossover to the agency sector with more than 20 years of client-side HR management experience, Pearse sees this as his key responsibility. "I don't think there is a soft side to HR. It's an investment in business so our best people can do their best work." Pearse, who has handled HR assignments for Rothmans in Europe and Asia-Pacific as well as Pizza Hut's regional operations, said he was surprised that the industry had left people management issues to chance for so long. "At the end of the day, people are our only resource which is why it surprises me that the industry worldwide has lagged behind enormously in tackling this issue compared with other businesses," he said. He is one of the latest key HR placements by an agency network in recent months. Grey Worldwide: Asia-Pacific and Saatchi & Saatchi both appointed regional HR chiefs in the last couple of months. Cost is believed to be one of the main reasons why agencies have been this slow in pushing the issue. "HR costs money and it's been a case of, 'do we want to invest in HR or put in another business development person or another creative?'," said Pearse. But there appears to be a rethink on the HR front, with the agency business climate turning tougher as clients grow increasingly demanding. Another driver has been the rising career expectations of candidates. "If you're looking to the market to get the best and brightest talent, then you're going to have to provide an environment that allows them to do challenging work and offers them opportunities for personal development and growth." He said his role will be to provide country heads with tools and resources, and challenging their thinking about people decisions and their consequences. Within the region, he said the perception of the network in the eyes of potential candidates "varied a lot by market", with its Thai and Singapore agencies being among its strong performers. "Our market perception in Hong Kong has not been particularly strong and we've started to do something about it. We have a new general manager (Luca Valdrighi) and his brief is to get the agency back to its rightful position," Pearse said. "In five years, if the impression of DY&R is that it's the hot place to work because of the challenging work, the opportunities and it has good people and leaders, I would have done part of my job."

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