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52 The HR Agenda for 2010Cross organisational sharingIt has taken a while but public sector organisations are now really focussing on howto get economies of scale, not just within their organisations, but by combining withothers within their sectoral community or across sectoral boundaries. To give a fewexamples:■ The research councils now have a common back office HR function. Under thebanner of Research Councils UK Shared Services Centre Ltd, the seven ResearchCouncils have combined to deliver services in the areas of human resources,finance, procurement, IT/IS and grants.■ The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham now delivers an HR service toNHS Hammersmith and Fulham with staff seconded from the PCT to the Council.The latter also runs the PCT’s payroll. Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Counciland Knowsley Primary Care Trust have developed a series of 20 joint teams,including the Executive Leadership Team and HR.■ Many of the smaller civil service departments are transferring their HRadministrative work to one of the six big HR shared service centres run by centralgovernment departments. The latest government report ‘Putting the FrontlineFirst’ envisages the creation of a public sector service provider to supportorganisations across the public sector.■ Some county councils have developed close working arrangements with districts.Indeed, in the case of the Essex Strategic HR Partnership, the heads of HR from all15 local authorities in Essex are working together on issues such as leadershipbuilding and recruitment■ Cambridgeshire County Council has combined with Northampton CountyCouncil and Slough Borough Council to create a joint venture company withFujitsu to develop a new ERP shared service HRIS and to share the delivery ofback office processes and transactional services across a range of key functions,including finance, HR, on‐line procurement and payment facilities.As these examples show, there have been several very innovative attempts to findways of reducing costs, boosting quality and sharing benefits. Previous attempts atgetting cross organisational sharing have foundered where it has required more thanan ad hoc or short term commitment because of resistance from political leaders orfrom executive management. Those that have been established have struggled to getthe governance arrangements right since this requires a kind of pooled sovereigntywhere you do not always get your own way because you have to acknowledge thecommon good. The economic circumstances in which sharing is now beingconsidered are such that organisations may have to put aside their reservationsbecause they cannot afford to lose the economy of scale benefits to be obtained fromjoint operations.
Transforming HR for the future 53DevolutionThough not specifically seen as a cost saving measure because it is also driven by aphilosophy of creating a self‐sufficient culture, transferring work from HR to the linedoes allow a saving in HR heads. Here though we should distinguish betweendevolving personnel administration tasks, which may be legitimate, fromtransferring people management responsibility which is never acceptable because itis a core management task. The fuzzy bit in the middle is operational support. Theargument for getting managers to do more of their own administration is that itmeans the task is only done once and then by the originator. However, for this towork the underpinning self‐service technology has to be effective: too often this isnot the case and leaves managers with time consuming and irritating activities. Thisthey resent because they see it as HR saving resource at the cost of their workload,especially at a time when they themselves are being pressurised to do more with less.HR’s operational support to managers (eg casework, recruitment or training) hasbeen another area where the function has sought to exit for the same pragmatic costreasons and philosophic belief that managers ought to be able to do this forthemselves. The jury is still out on whether this ambition is being realised. On theone hand, there are organisations where managers are confident in their peoplemanagement role and do not object to taking charge of recruitment selection ordisciplinary interviews; on the other hand, there are those managers that argue thatHR is employed precisely to do these activities in a cheaper and more professionalmanner. The organisations that seem to have got this right are those that apply amixed model – letting managers get on with these ‘HR’ tasks where it seems to beaccepted, whilst being prepared to give more support where the economics or peoplemanagement skill require it.Building for the futureThe other articles in this document describe the many excellent areas of HR policydevelopment or initiatives, what we are concerned with here is HR building its owncapability to deliver these great ideas. In the past, the knowledge, skills andexperience of HR has taken a back seat compared with structural, systems andprocess change. Whilst the latter has had the time and money, there has not been anequivalent investment in people. The HR leadership has given insufficient attentionto development needs and career paths. The exception to this is the business partnerrole, largely because it has too frequently been introduced without consideration ofwhat it will deliver and whether it meets customer needs. So there are many trainingevents or stakeholder engagement meetings, including those run by IES, to define therole in agreement with manager customers.
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ContentsIntroduction 1Issue 1: Work
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Page 8 and 9: 4 The HR Agenda for 2010Workforce p
Page 10 and 11: 6 The HR Agenda for 2010Eight steps
Page 12 and 13: 8 The HR Agenda for 2010Many source
Page 14 and 15: 10 The HR Agenda for 2010These are
Page 16 and 17: 12 The HR Agenda for 2010Staff coul
Page 18 and 19: 14 The HR Agenda for 2010Direction
Page 20: 16 The HR Agenda for 2010acquire. S
Page 23 and 24: Leadership: engaging the 'teenies'
Page 25 and 26: Leadership: engaging the 'teenies'
Page 27 and 28: Refocusing coaching for the upturn
Page 33 and 34: Managing talent in tough times 29So
Page 35 and 36: Performance and reward management b
Page 41 and 42: Managing older employees: act your
Page 49 and 50: The role of organisational developm
Page 55: Transforming HR for the future 51Th
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