ER Consultants worked with the Human Resources department of a Non Departmental Public Body (NDPB) to improve the effectiveness of delivery of their intramural research programme. We have supported them across a range of interventions, from assessing the client's human resource governance, assessing and developing the corporate and business partner HR capability, to supporting the move to a regionalised management structure, and developing their programme management capability.
Project Background
This particular NDPB is operating within a changing environment where its role, scope, and funding structure have been under review. Within this context, ER Consultants have support HR in delivering a range of interventions that are helping the organisation change direction, recognise the need to lead and develop its people, and become more transparent in its delivery of value for money.
Our Range of Interventions
HR Governance assessment - Following a significant period of change within the client organisation, they wanted to undertake a review of its governance practices. The Director for HR sought external advice to provide the diagnosis and assurance that the current and proposed governance structures and procedures met the six core principles in The Good Governance Standard for Public Services, the advice set out in the Barket report on NDPB governance, and other relevant contemporary corporate governance standards and benchmarks.
The output was a report that critiqued the HR governance issues for their current and proposed governance procedures, compared with the required standards, and also raised some generic issues that arose during the review.
To produce the report ER Consultants employed structured interviews and desk research, working with the client's HR to fully understand what actually happened in practice, as well as noting the espoused governance procedures.
Regionalisation - ER Consultants next supported the development of a regional business management structure for support services (HR, Finance, Facilities, etc) to provide value-added, cost effective improvements in the organisation and work-design of business and technical services for the regional units. To achieve this we facilitated and provided expert input across the organisation to enable them to start to accept and develop revised accountabilities, responsibilities and competencies.
Corporate & Business Partner Assessment & Development - ER Consultants defined the roles and competencies required for the Corporate HR roles (Centres of Expertise). This entailed benchmarking public and private sector organisations on the HR delivery models employed, the roles and competencies required, and what the benchmark organisations had learned about the operation of their HR functions. The resultant analysis and report led to the definition of the required profiles for effective Corporate HR roles. These in turn underpinned the design of a subsequent assessment process, which ER Consultants designed so that current incumbents of, and applicants for, Senior HR management roles could be assessed objectively and fairly.
Following this ER Consultants designed the assessment centres for the selection of the new Regional HR Business Partner role, and trained senior client staff as assessors, so that we jointly ran the Assessment Centres. This involved defining competencies, and translating them into a series of exercises, including a psychometric profiling, tackling case studies and undertaking a group discussion, and presentation topics. As a result the candidates, whatever the outcome for them, felt that they had been treated fairly.
Programme Manager Development - ER Consultants was then asked to work with a group of programme managers to help them identify how new requirements, demanded by organisational changes, affected their roles. In fact, this required them to shift in focus from analysing data to building relationships with a diverse range of key stakeholders. ER Consultants designed the competency framework that enabled the client to articulate the core skills and behaviours for success in the role. We worked with them to design and deliver a development centre to assess current capability against the framework, and identify strengths and development needs across the group.
Leadership Development - For various groups within the client organisation, we designed and delivered development and team building programmes. These were based on specific aspects of the outputs from the assessment and development centres. We designed and ran a 360 degree process for the Directors and gave each person feedback as part of their development process.
Client Consultants Relationship
ER Consultants worked closely with the HR Director and the Deputy HR director. Contact was maintained with regular informal meetings. This relationship continued after the initial project resulting in repeat work across multiple assignments within the client organisation.
Challenges / Success Factors
The key challenge revolved around the opportunistic / incremental approach adopted by the client. As a result, some opportunities were unable to be optimised as prior buy-in had not been secured, or the step was seen to be too much, too quickly. These difficulties were overcome as the relationship between ER Consultants and the client matured through open discussion that developed mutual understanding.
Success factors include an improved and more effective HR function, as well as improvements across regional business teams. The client was delighted to have progressed the roles and behaviours of the team to the point that its impact on the wider business became evident. Individuals and teams gained insight, focus, personal development, and enhanced skills.
For more information contact: Gary Ashton
