People leaders in local government are navigating an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape, where global instability, workforce shortages, and shifting migration patterns directly impact local talent pipelines, community cohesion, and service delivery – demanding strategic foresight and cross-system agility like never before.
The sector is crying out for new skills, struggling with recruitment challenges, facing record levels of turnover, and undergoing wave after wave of organisational change – but there is a real absence of the people profession at the top table.
The strategic value of HR & OD
Human resources and organisational development (HR & OD) done well offers deep insight into culture, behaviour, organisational design and transformation. It holds the keys to unlocking inclusion, talent development, leadership pipelines and long-term capacity planning. In short, HR & OD can help run your organisation better – if you let it play a strategic role.
Yet after a century of existence of the profession, research shows only around 50% of local government HR & OD leaders have a formal seat on their organisation's top team. This picture is even worse in district councils as the function tends to sit at a ‘manager' level and I am yet to speak to a district HR & OD lead with a seat at the top table.
For those that do have a seat at the top table, only a portion feel genuinely empowered to shape decision-making. This is such a missed opportunity of enormous scale – and one the sector surely can't afford.
Look around your table
When you sit down with your senior team, who's there? Your ‘golden triangle' counterparts? Your executive directors? Maybe even your Transformation Lead? All essential and zero questioning. But where is your People and Workforce Lead?
HR & OD is the only function that touches every part of the organisation. It is the organisational nervous system – picking up early signs of dysfunction, disengagement, and disillusionment long before they show up in key performance indicators. Yet in many organisations, the people who best understand the health of the ecosystem are brought in far too late to ‘fix' rather than ‘prevent'. Our narrative in local government is all about prevention and early intervention – yet this seems to be absent when it comes to bringing HR & OD into the fold.
Let's not make the people profession an implementation, mitigation or operational function. Let's make it a strategic decision-making function and ensure your most senior HR & OD professional has a seat at the table, if they are don't already.
The voice of reason
Pam Parkes, president of the Public Services People Managers' Association, is calling for a fundamental rethink of statutory roles in local government. She argues that the long-standing ‘golden triangle' – typically made up of finance, legal and operations — is no longer fit for purpose in today's fast-changing environment.
Instead, she advocates for a new model that gives equal weight to leadership, organisational development, and culture (the functions of an HR & OD lead).
‘People professionals bring critical insight into team dynamics, performance, and culture,' she says. ‘But too often, HR is brought in after the fact – expected to fix problems they had no hand in shaping. That's a missed opportunity.'
Parkes suggests it's time to move from a three-legged stool to a four-legged chair – one that recognises the strategic value of HR & OD at the heart of corporate leadership, saying: ‘We need to embed the people profession into the statutory core of local government, and that must start by having a seat at the top table. It's the only way we'll build resilient organisations equipped to meet the challenges ahead.'
The risk of exclusion
When HR is left out of strategic discussions, the consequences are real, impactful and expensive. We know failure is not a desired outcome, but it does happen and great learning can come from it. In some cases though, failure is simply preventable. To avoid a workforce stretched to breaking point, high turnover, mounting agency costs, and worsening outcomes for residents, a small but deliberate decision – to bring HR to the heart of strategy – can change everything.
But it's not just about being invited in. It's also HR's job to get noticed, to step into the spotlight, to bring insight, influence and flair to the top table. The profession must show up as strategic, evidence-led and future-focused. It must earn its place through the value added and not wait passively to be asked.
I recently spoke with one upper-tier HR director who said they were at the top table because they made it happen, not because they were invited. We need to see more of this gumption from the HR & OD profession.
Set the table
We talk often about giving HR & OD a seat at the table. But this phrase misses the point. The people profession shouldn't just be invited to join in - it should be helping to set the table. To shape the conversation, define the culture, and align people with purpose.
The future of local government depends on our ability to attract, grow, and retain brilliant people. If we're not putting the workforce at the centre of our plans and bringing the people profession into the room where those plans are made, we're just not being serious about that future.
Let's take the first step toward a more people-powered future and have HR & OD help set the table. Are you with me?
Rachael Morris is a senior consultant and national HR & OD lead at Penna
