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In our personal lives, we tend to stick with tried and trusted solutions until we are personally convinced the grief involved in learning something new is worthwhile and the benefits we will gain justify all the effort we assume is required to make the switch.

It’s pretty common for people to overestimate the difficulty in switching and many service companies rely upon this reluctance to switch – retaining customers is always easier than winning new ones. This is why companies often prefer to grow their market-share through acquisition rather than organically.

People are right to consider changes carefully. It’s rare to make a switch that involves no “pain”.

Apprehension

Change can be uncomfortable and almost always requires significant effort to unlearn old routines and learn new ways of doing things. While on the “learning curve”, we slip back to being “consciously incompetent” – things are unfamiliar.  We recognise how much there is to learn in the new environment and can become concerned when proficiency seems so far out of reach.

These concerns are magnified when we consider new-fangled practices might be dangerous or risky – just watch anyone learning to swim or ride a bike to observe behaviour that seeks to avoid or delay being asked to leave safe ground.

Given the inertia most people show in their personal lives, why do people expect us to feel differently when our organisations are changing the way we work? After all, we aren’t even the ones choosing to enter into the unknown, “they” are doing this to us and we have no control over what is happening!

In that context, why is it individuals’ reticence or concerns are sometimes treated like difficult behaviour? Instead of “managing resistance”, change projects would benefit from encouraging people to voice and share their worries and concerns, listening carefully to the issues raised and supporting people through their individual learning journeys, tackling area of anxiety and helping them to re-establish their “conscious competence”as quickly as possible. Read the rest of this entry →

Working with public sector organisations, you will often hear (from corporate functions) that front-line managers cant operate self-sufficiently and need a lot of hands-on support from the corporate teams in finance, HR, procurement etc.

Does this reflect a clear and robust understanding of managers’ capacity and an organisational need for particular ways of working and higher levels of resource …. or simply excuses for maintaining out-moded models of operating?

Wouldn’t it be better for these teams to relinquish day-to-day control of the operational management of staffing an other issues, “letting go” while encouraging and supporting their managers to operate independently?

Public services may have a higher level of investment in professional education and training than private companies might expect and this might be a justification for higher resource levels in HR. Of course, many public services organisations have a high proportion of “professional practitioners”, creating a management layer naturally more interested in their professional responsibilities (i.e. patient care, social work, children’s education, catching criminals) than in managing staff and especially dealing with HR procedures.

It is that same professional context that can also create additional challenges when managing staffing problems that are more tricky to handle (see article Too Hard to Sack). In that context, we all recognise the temptation to procrastinate when there is something unpleasant to do and public sector managers can always justify focussing on public service outcomes first rather than having uncomfortable conversations. It’s possible this forms part of the context of a high-touch approach from HR teams.

Recently, we looked at the issue of HR ratios and explored whether it was possible to arrive at a magic “right number” using some kind of formula. Having decided this was almost certainly over-simplistic, we considered the kind of support and service models that HR might need to provide for managers. The Cranfield Study we referred to there showed organisational sector had a high correlation with the size of the HR function. Presumably this reflects the fact there will be many common features shared by organisations working in the same industry -

• similar workforce profiles with common working patterns etc.
• managers and staff with shared experiences and comparable skill sets,
• the same kinds of performance, conduct and other issues which require HR support.

It seems likely however these factors don’t reflect the whole picture. Read the rest of this entry →

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A number of systems thinkers suggest all projects seeking to improve services and costs through economies of scale the efficient management of business processes and doomed to failure and inherently wrong-headed. Their message is economies of scale are “a myth” – based on plausible theories which have little or no supporting empirical evidence.

Even amongst those engaged in providing such services, there is often acceptance that delivering “world-class” service can be extremely stretching and remains out of reach for many service providers and their clients.

While suggesting there is “no benefit” in scaling up services is an over-simplification, the systems thinkers’ criticisms are more fundamental.

In addition to the issues of service and organisational design which are explored below, the “command and control” management culture and inappropriate use of targets and measurement are also highlighted as major issues.

Taken as a whole, systems thinkers claim shared services solutions deliver no real benefit and will highlight a number of failed projects to support that view. There are so many cases where shared services or outsourcing projects are ill-conceived, poorly managed and badly delivered, the task of finding failures is all too easy.

However, there are areas where running bigger operations provides clear advantages but there are problems and challenges inherent in scale too. Taken as a whole the drivers of success and failure require far more careful attention than simply concentrating on scale. Too many projects seem to start with a poor appreciation of the challenges and an over-optimistic belief in suggestions benefits will be easily delivered and it is useful to understand both the benefits and drawbacks of scale before deciding whether shared services are worth pursuing.

Attractor has reviewed and summarised the positive benefits and the pitfalls below, attempting to draw attention to the issues that matter most.

Read the rest of this entry →

Photo: DeclanTM, Flickr

Attractor was recently asked to support an NHS Foundation Trust with ambitions to deploy both manager and supervisor self-service across the organisation.

Using the self-service toolkit available within Electronic Staff Record (ESR), the NHS integrated human resources and payroll solution, the plan forms part of the organisation’s corporate improvement programme.

Attractor will be providing project consultancy support for the Trust’s management team throughout the life of the project. With support arrangements agreed in principle and the project team beginning to form, work started quickly to develop a robust and detailed project plan.

Activities in the plan will ensure all systems and technical issues, business process review and the stakeholder, communication and other change issues arising are appropriately addressed. This will help the organisation to acheives it’s objectives and secures the maximum possible benefits from implementing new tools.

With preparations for implementation now getting underway, the next key stages of work will involve planning for both anticipated business process review and effective actions to secure benefits realisation.

Attractor has worked with an NHS payroll team during the Autmun of 2009 identifying actions to deliver more effective and efficient services.

Reviewing options with local managers, Attractor has identified and evaluated a number of concepts and ideas.

Taken together, the changes identified would generate savings of around 20% of the existing service costs, taking into account the need for some additional investments.

If all proposals were implemented, client organisations would benefit from reduced costs phased in over a period of around 2 years with no detriment to service quality . Read the rest of this entry →

It may be credible to suggest public sector organisations are carrying out unnecessary activities. We yearn for the past, when common-sense applied, government was smaller, law simpler and we spent less time suing each other.

When things go wrong however, people (corralled by politicians and the media) clamour for tighter controls. These demands create pressure for scapegoats and better standards. Heads roll, controls are introduced …. and new monitoring work commences.

We want to have our cake and eat it!

In an increasingly risk-averse society, this struggle between “common sense” and control impacts operations in the workplace too. Many corporate teams exist to facilitate business effectiveness and create effective frameworks for risk management. This applies to human resources and payroll, finance, health and safety, information governance and information technology functions. Read the rest of this entry →

Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society, well known as “LV=”, has recently brought its outsourced HR function back in-house, with estimated savings of some £3m in the first year.

Taking the view an internal HR function was critical to successful delivery of business growth and change, it was considerd essential to have the function delivered internally.

Creating a new service, starting with a blank piece of paper, was an opportunity for radical change and the HR service has been subject to significant process redesign. Read the rest of this entry →

Photo:Jurvetson, Flickr

The Department of Transport’s shared services centre, covering human resources, payroll and financial functions, was designed for seven agencies with over 20,000 staff.

Its implementation was heavily criticised during 2008, by both National Audit Office (NAO) and Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

By the end of 2008, only two of the seven agencies were using the new service and experiences were far from positive. Read the rest of this entry →