More than 30 senior HR professionals from across the region attended the spring meeting of specialist HR recruitment firm Waddington Brown’s HR Leaders of East Anglia forum.

The free networking event focused on the relative importance of people and process in driving change.

The session was led by Rachel Jackson of Changing Dialogues who was joined by the HR heads from Hutchison Ports, Robert Page, and Jagex Games Studio, Laura Hare.

The event, which took place at the Ickworth Hotel near Bury St Edmunds, was a opportunity for HR professionals to network with peers from across the eastern region and to discuss topical issues from within the HR industry.

Emma Gunton, co-founder and director of Waddington Brown said: “The aim of the HR Leaders of East Anglia meeting is to bring together like-minded professionals from the Human Resources field to share best practice, discuss current issues and also network in informal surroundings. With many organisations planning for growth or going through various levels of transformational changes over the coming year, the ‘change management’ focus was particularly well received by our guests.”

Rachel Jackson added: “For any organisation, if change is to be successful and sustained, there needs to be recognition of the basic fact that an organisation is a ‘community of people’, above and beyond being a collection of processes and systems.

“If you want people to do something different, you need to do more than simply provide them with a new process or systems and instructions on how to use it.

“They need to think or feel something different; in short they need to experience a cultural shift. The HR forum explored how to create the right conditions for change and it was really interesting to receive everyone’s input on this topic.”