Neil Roden 'offered to quit HR job with RBS'

The man in the top HR job at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) tendered his resignation following the replacement of Sir Fred Goodwin at the top of the company last year.

Neil Roden, head of HR, told People Management that he thought new chief executive Stephen Hester would want a clean sweep of senior executive figures from the organisation when he took over.

But, despite several others leaving their banking jobs with the firm, Mr Hester refused to let him leave RBS.

"I don't think he saw HR as being in the firing line - more as part of the solution," Mr Roden explained.

He added that he felt media criticism of banking reward structures had been unfair and maintained that the crash was "primarily a financial rather than a people issue".

Early this week, Personnel Today reported that RBS had hired two industry gurus to speak to its HR staff about how to deal with company restructuring.

RBS refused to reveal how much it was paying David Ulrich, co-founder of the RBL Group, and David McLeod, who recently carried out a report on employee engagement for the government, for their speeches.

Updated: 01 December 2009.
Categories: banking-and-financial-services, human-resources, market-and-industry-news.