The evolution and implementation of an integrated model of human resource strategy.

This project report covers the evolution of a model for the development of an Integrated Human Resource Strategy for an organisation and then how this model has been applied and implemented in the Corporation of London. At the start of this project I introduced the ‘Roulette Wheel’ diagram to show the large number of issues that influence the development of an HR Strategy and which would eventually be affected by the implementation of that strategy. My major concern was that many disparate initiatives are underway to change the culture of the organisation, to improve people management and development and to raise efficiency and performance. These initiatives clearly impact on each other and need to be controlled and integrated to ensure maximum benefit and to minimise adverse effects. Many of the current initiatives fall under specific functional HR strategies and so part of the model that has evolved links all these functional strategies together to produce a coherent overall HR strategy and set of objectives for those having to implement the strategy. Action research was the methodology used for this project and involved extensive literature research on HR strategy. This led me to realise the importance of values in culture change and resulted in more reading around this topic. This literature study also convinced me that the focus of HR strategy needed to be on those factors which address the concerns of employees about the way they are treated and valued by the organisation, about how their careers are developed, the nature of the work they undertake, their working environment and their work-life balance. Get these and other factors right and there is a greater likelihood that the organisation will achieve its vision and strategic aims, whatever they are. In order to identify those factors which needed to be addressed in order to raise employee commitment, motivation and performance I undertook extensive employee research. The main vehicles for this which are described in this report are the Stress Risk Assessment exercise, identifying the work-related causes of stress in employees, and the Employee Opinion Survey. This survey covered management, culture and relationships between staff and the Corporation as employer, communications, equal opportunities, rules, regulations and fairness, workload, pay, career development and training,harassment, support, influence and control over one’s work, attitudes to sickness absence, flexible working and work-life balance. This employee research along with research into the impact of current and proposed employment legislation provides a crucial basis on which to develop a list of HR core values that are important to employees and employer alike. Having consulted on and agreed this set of HR core values and identified issues for change or improvement in the organisation I was able to consider the functional HR strategies to bring about the change. These ranged from resourcing, to reward, to communications, to training and development strategies. In this report I have identified thirteen separate functional HR strategies and discussed how they need to be integrated to produce the overall HR strategy and its strategic objectives. As I progressed through the project a model for the development of an HR strategy evolved and this is presented in chapter 8. It is an integrated model starting with employment research, moving on to statements of organisation values and HR core values, the development of HR strategic aims and policy priorities, informing the integrated set of HR functional strategies and then the overall HR strategy with its strategic objectives, targets and performance indicators. An HR strategy is a sterile document unless it is successfully implemented, its success monitored and continuous improvements made to the strategy. The successful implementation of the strategy depends to a large extent on HR service delivery and the working partnership between HR professionals and line management. For this reason a crucial element of any HR strategy should be a strategy for the transformation of HR service delivery. This became an important aspect of this project which was developed from the start and is still in progress. The work done and progress to date is covered in this report. This project report would not be complete without a résumé of the achievements to date in implementing the strategy. Some of the main outcomes by February 2004 of the HR strategy are discussed under the five main headings of Staff Communications, Transformation of HR service delivery, Learning, Training and Development, Performance Management and Reward. Finally recommendations are made for the future monitoring of the impact of the HR strategy and an evaluation of changes to the culture of the organisation and the extent to which the new HR Core Values have become embedded in the organisation. Plans will be developed to disseminate this work in the hope that the Integrated Model of HR Strategy Development can be tested in a private sector organisation as well as in the public sector Corporation of London