Three-quarters of UK businesses are not using human resources expertise to help improve company strategy, according to new research.

In what could lead to the use of interim managers or contractors, Redshift Research found – on behalf of outsourcing firm plusHR – that 57 per cent of HR professionals find they are being used to communicate objectives instead of setting them.

Furthermore, the findings revealed that only a quarter of business owners, directors, line managers and people in human resources said that HR departments being consulted over business objectives.

Marc Bishop, director of HR Consulting at PlusHR, said that improvements need to be made within businesses so that human resources is involved.

“The research highlights the endemic problems within modern corporate HR functions, which despite their best endeavours over the last decade or so, aren’t actually aligned with business when creating corporate strategy,” he noted.

Meanwhile, research from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) revealed that the services sector had a disappointing second quarter.

The full research results are available to download free of charge within plusHR’s white paper, HR leaders getting closer to the business, via this link