Peter Reilly

BA, MA

Principal Associate

peter.reilly@employment-studies.co.uk

+44(0)1273 763 400

Peter Reilly is a graduate of the universities of Cambridge and Kent in politics and government. He joined the Institute for Employment Studies in 1995 as a Senior Research Fellow and eight years later became Director HR Research and Consultancy. In May 2014 he resigned to become self employed whilst continuing his attachment to IES as a Principal Associate. Peter still leads consultancy and research work on the HR function at IES and contributes to projects on workforce planning, reward and performance management. Clients come from all sectors and his involvement ranges from facilitation, through expert advice to policy design and evaluation.

He has written various articles and books especially on the HR function. For example, he has co-authored three books on HR with Tony Williams of the Royal Bank of Scotland – ‘How to get best value from HR: the shared services option’, ‘Strategic HR: building the capability to deliver’ and ‘Global HR: challenges facing the function’. For the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development he has co-led projects that have produced three reports – ‘Managing and Developing HR Careers: Emerging Trends and Issues,’ ‘The changing HR function: the key questions’ and ‘The Changing HR Function: Transforming HR?’

He is also a frequent speaker at conferences, seminars and workshops on his areas of expertise. He has spoken at many public sector conferences in central and local government, education and health. He is a contributor to various HR networks including SAP and Success Factors; and he also presents to in-company events.

Prior to joining IES Peter had a 16 year career with Shell holding various posts in the UK and abroad. His last position was as Regional Personnel Adviser (Middle East, Indian Sub Continent, and Francophone Africa) for Shell International Petroleum Company where he was responsible for providing HR advice to operating companies on issues such as management remuneration, HR strategies in acquisitions and disposals, regional staff exchange schemes, benchmarking and assessing HR performance.

In 1994 he undertook three projects. He was appointed adviser to the Shell Companies of Turkey on industrial relations, specifically charged with developing a strategy for pay negotiations. Secondly, he investigated the international graduate recruitment market to see what opportunities there were for cross national recruitment. Thirdly, he was responsible for an investigation of the changing nature of the employer/ employee relationship and its impact on Shell in the UK, set in the context of likely internal business developments and external social and economic changes.

Previous experience with Shell covered both line HR responsibilities and work in specialist fields. The former included posts as Personnel and Administration Manager for a gas plant in the north of Scotland and Personnel Manager for Shell UK’s Information and Computing division where he was the project manager on a merger with its Dutch counterpart. As a specialist, he worked in such areas as compensation and benefits, recruitment and career development, and industrial relations. For example, he was an HR adviser for Shell Internationale Petroleum Maatschappij in the Hague, responsible for matching job needs in Netherlands and internationally with supply from the international pool.

Prior to joining Shell he was a Senior Research Officer with the British Institute of Management, where he wrote reports on profit sharing, employee participation practices and trends in British industry, and a Research Officer at Surrey University.