Louise Kelly – CIPD HRM L5 Membership number: 4856851X

Question 1.

The world of work is facing dramatic change driven by technology, demographic shifts and
the evolving expectations of talent. For organisations to not only survive but benefit both
financially and reputationally from these dramatic changes they must first acknowledge and
embrace the changes and revaluate their strategic agendas. Organisations, and their
employees are no longer measured solely on their financial performance and the quality of
their products or services; measurements now focus on how organisations treat and engage
with their employees and customers. It could be said that more organisations are gaining
greater insight to the term ‘People over Profit’ aided by HR professionals becoming more
skilful in providing tangible evidence that links the activities of HR departments to significant
organisational gains.
To quote the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of Human Resources is as follows:
“The department of a business or organisation that deals with the hiring, administration,
and training of staff.” That may be true of a business back in the 1970s, however the
functions of a HR department have undergone rapid evolution since then, and there is far
more evolution to come.
If we go back in time, say half a century ago, the functions carried out by, what was then
referred to as ‘Personnel Departments’ were largely administrative and centred around
processing information and dealing with low level day to day procedural activities such as
payroll administration, the keeping of attendance records and general business
administration. Subjects such as Learning and Development, Analytics, Wellbeing or
Work/Life Balance were not featured in discussions around the Boardroom table, let alone
given consideration for budgetary provisions:
“Employee engagement was not an expression much heard in smoke-filled 1970s personnel
departments, where most people thought HR was an exotic variant of brown sauce.”
(Management Today, 2016).
Today, almost 5 decades on, the picture couldn’t be more different; Employee Engagement
is an expression very much heard in organisations, along with Work/Life Balance and
Wellbeing and all these feature on both HR professional’s and agendas of those at the very
top of organisations.
During the noted evolution it seems there has been the realisation that investing both
financially and ‘emotionally’ in the human capital of an organisation can provide sustained
competitive advantage. HR has gone from being considered as an overhead that did not
directly generate revenue to a department that has evolved into a profit centre that
maximises the potential from its greatest assets and defines and achieves strategic goals
that have a positive impact on top and bottom line growth.
“As the world of work grows ever more complex, diverse and ambiguous, traditional models
of working are starting to give way to more flexible forms of organisation and employment.
Technology, globalisation, changing workforce demographics and skills shortages add to the

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Louise Kelly – CIPD HRM L5 Membership number: 4856851X

challenges facing organisations. In this context the role of HR must evolve and grow to play
a greater part in developing organisations for the future.” (Peter Cheese, 2015)

In today’s HR world, it is critical that everything we do, everything we set out to achieve
adds value to the organisation. The headline objectives that HR has responsibility for
delivering on will cover the whole employee lifecycle and will include:

 Recruitment & Selection

 Induction & Onboarding
 Performance Management
 Learning and Development
 Pay, Reward & Benefits
 Employee Engagement
 Wellbeing
 Equality & Diversity
 Employee Relations
 People Analytics

Whilst it could be said that many of the functions carried out in today’s HR are still
administrative, technological advances have succeeded in reducing the administrative
burden. For the HR function to be successful in making a positive impact on the
organisation every activity should be challenge by asking the questing ‘is what we are doing
creating value?’. Dr David Ulrich’s framework for value creation illustrates the importance
of constantly asking this question.

www.thehrspace.com, 2017

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Louise Kelly – CIPD HRM L5 Membership number: 4856851X

In addition to the traditional functions that are previously mentioned here, the HR
department have a responsibility to act accordingly to actively promote and protect the
reputation, brand and culture of an organisation. In today’s world of fast paced
technological advancements with instant accessibility to social media platforms, the risk of
public detriment is high. With review sites such as www.glassdoor.com and
www.indeed.co.uk offering a platform to rate employers on subjects such as pay & benefits,
line management, culture and career development, employers have never been so exposed.
Therefore, upholding the values ensuring consistent ‘best practice’ of HR activities and
promotion of culture is as important to HR as any other objectives. HR play an essential role
in not only upholding an organisation’s values, but consistently demonstrating them in every
day practices and interactions, even if that may mean compromising overall organisational
performance in the short term. The impact HR can have on the employer brand and
reputation is key to success. Employers should enable their HR representatives to
consistently make unchallenged decisions that are not only legal and fair, but to go one step
further and empower them to enhance the employee and in most cases the customer
experience, can make all the difference to potential employees and investors.

Question 2.
Many organisations are choosing to outsource the human resource function of their
businesses. As HR is not a profit centre, organisations are seeing benefits of sub-contracting
some, if not all the HR functions to a third party. This outsourcing will enable processes
such as payroll administration, recruitment and other transactional elements to be managed
by an external supplier. This can work very successfully for many organisations, especially
where an organisation is small and having an HR department is not cost effective. Service
level agreements should be in place which will define the standards of performance. Whilst
outsourcing comes with many benefits, such as being impartial and cost effective, it does
come with risks such as loss of control and flexibility along with impersonal relationship
between employer and employee.

An alternative delivery method is the implementation of a centralised HR ‘shared services’

function. This works well with providing a service to multiple areas of an organisation.
There are two main types of this model with the first provided by an HR generalist team
who can provide cross functional HR support to the wider business. The second model is
the traditional model of ‘generalist’ HR staff revolves around a central team that will provide
key services and handle the needs of line managers, employees and senior staff, although
there may be internal divides based employee grades. This is the most common type of
service delivery model.

The second model is David Ulrich’s three-legged model of HR service delivery, as shown in
the diagram that follows:

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Louise Kelly – CIPD HRM L5 Membership number: 4856851X

This model works effectively with large organisations, however smaller businesses would
struggle to afford the additional headcount needed to get the best from it. For this model
to be successfully executed, careful consideration needs to be given to clearly defining roles
and accountabilities and ensuring active communication for all those engaged in HR
activities.

One constant goal for HR throughout any organisation regardless of size or sector is the
desire to ensure the business is delivering the best possible service to its customers, both
internal and external. HR is all about adding value from every activity it engages in.
Although all HR departments share the same goals of effective problem solving and plan
development, they differ in the paths they take to reach these goals. Size, responsibilities,
resources, and recruiting methods are the main differences between HR in small businesses
versus large companies.

In a small organisation roles and responsibilities will often overlap and we are unlikely to
find the afore mentioned David Ulrich model being demonstrated. In small businesses HR
roles, if even defined as HR, are more generalist. An example of this is my own employer,
Williams & Co. 12 years ago, with a headcount of less than 100 employees, the HR function
was carried out by the ‘HR and Operations Support’ department and with only 1 full-time
and 1 part-time employee was far more transactional and reactive than it is now with nearly
300 employees and HR as a stand-alone department with 6 full-time employees.

Larger organisations will have far more structure within the HR department and many will
have specialist teams within it. There may be several ‘tiers’ of support available to the
organisations employees that may look like the diagram shown below which shows the HR
service delivery from Campbells, the US canned soup manufacturer with over 18,000
employees worldwide:

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Louise Kelly – CIPD HRM L5 Membership number: 4856851X

It is not uncommon to see the following represented in sub HR teams:

 Learning and Development

 Employee Engagement
 Reward and Benefits
 Recruitment
 Employee Wellbeing
 Employment Law
 Policy

Question 3.

It is often said there is nothing more constant than change itself. That said, it is human
nature to resist change. Change is the major driving force for a company to be innovative
and experiment with new management styles and tools and failing to change can be the
driving force into decreasing profit margins and dissatisfied employees. Before any planned
change should happen, organisations should ask themselves the following questions:

 What impact will this have on our employees?

 Can this change actually be achieved?
 What will be the impact of not making this change?

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Louise Kelly – CIPD HRM L5 Membership number: 4856851X

There are many different theories and models about change management and how to
manage changes effectively. Kurt Lewin’s Force Field Analysis and Cotter’s 8 step model are
just two such models.

Lewin’s model looks at the forces driving change against the forces resistant to the change
and was designed to weigh the driving and restraining forces that affect change in an
organisation. The force field can be described as two opposite forces working for and
against change as shown in the image below:

According to Lewin driving forces facilitate change because they push employees in the
desired direction. Restraining forces hinder change because they push employees in the
opposite direction. Therefore, these forces must be analysed, and Lewin's model can help
shift the balance in the direction of the planned change. Changes are very crucial since
changes makes new and improved ideas to implement into action possible. (Kanter, R. 1992)

A more up to date model is John Kotter’s eight stage model created in 1995. According to
Kotter, successful implementation of change depends on the eight steps as proposed by
him. Kotter’s theory defines the process into 8 stages which gives a clear and simple
strategies for gaining success in change.

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Louise Kelly – CIPD HRM L5 Membership number: 4856851X

www.kotterinc.com

To enable successful change, the 8 steps can be elaborated as per the bullet points below:

 Urgency: Help others see the need for change through a bold, aspirational
opportunity statement that communicates the importance of acting immediately.
This step may include analysing the market and competitors and communicating the
risk of not making such change.
 Build: This step is to create a group which is capable to handle the changes and has
enough power to lead the effort. The group should be encouraged to work as a team
 Form: Clarify and develop a vision to demonstrate how the future will be different
from the past and how you can make that future a reality through initiatives linked
directly to the vision. This should be clearly communicated
 Enlist: Large-scale change can only occur when massive numbers of people rally
around a common opportunity. There must be buy-in and all should want to move in
the same direction.
 Enable: Removing barriers such as inefficient processes and hierarchies provides the
freedom necessary to work across silos and generate real impact.
 Generate: Wins are the molecules of results. They must be recognised, collected and
communicated, early and often, to track progress and energise volunteers to persist.
 Sustain: Press harder after the first successes. Your increasing credibility can
improve systems, structures and policies. Be relentless with initiating change after
change until the vision is a reality.
 Institute: Articulate the connections between the new behaviours and organizational
success.

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Louise Kelly – CIPD HRM L5 Membership number: 4856851X

If we take Williams and Co’s 2017 implementation of K8 as their replacement ERP system as
an example, we can see how reviewing the organisational needs balanced with the ambition
for expansion required updating the archaic 1980’s computer system with a solution that
would not restrict growth plans.

Whilst the project was a success, (notwithstanding the few minor teething problems) it was
noted throughout the project by HR that there was a considerable amount of resistance to
the change itself along with the pace of change, regardless whether individuals understood
the need for the change. Being aware of an individual’s obstacles can enable project
planners to recognise and alleviate (where possible) barriers to change

The image below shows the analysis tool used in a working example:

Question 4.
With today’s increasing demands on organisations, HR, as other departments are under
pressure to justify their existence and demonstrate their contribution to the overall
business. To be able to justify, HR must measure what it does to be able to demonstrate it
adds value to an organisation. Measuring HR value is not as straight forward as it may be in
other departments of an organisation. If we take a retail store, the top 3 key performance
indicators (KPIs) would be sales turnover, cost of sales and margin, and likewise in a finance
department it may be value of outstanding debtors, value of outstanding creditors and

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Louise Kelly – CIPD HRM L5 Membership number: 4856851X

value of bad debt. In my view, the KPIs for an HR department are a little harder to define
due to the relationship it has with other partners within the organisation. The activities HR
carry out do impact positively and add value, however, in my experience HR still struggle to
get the credit for the gains such activities may create at Board level, as perhaps a sales or
finance department.
The following table lists some key HR activities in the column on the left and the right-hand
column describes how these may be measured:
HR Activity Methods of measurement

Performance Management Number of active Personal Development

Plans (PDPs)
Employee Relations Number disciplinary cases
Number of grievances
Number of Tribunal cases
Employee Engagement Internal or external surveys
Absenteeism levels
Exit interviews
Attrition
Recruitment Calculating average cost to fill vacancies
Quality of hires – manager feedback and
number of employees passing probation
Turnover rates of new hires
Length of time to fill vacancies (too long
could indicate poor quality of recruitment
advert)
Learning & Development Feedback forms
Cost per employee v return on investment
(can be seen from improvements in
performance and even top line growth)
Pay & Reward Benchmarking
Satisfaction surveys
Competitor analysis

In addition to the above, another method commonly used in many organisations to measure
overall organisational performance is by using the Balanced Scorecard tool. This method of
measuring business performance was first introduced by Robert Kaplan and David Norton in
the early 1990s. The idea is that this strategic tool will separate an organisations goals into
quantifiable metrics and this can be applied to the human resource function also. The 4
quadrants of the tool represent a different area of the business: Financial perspective,
customer perspective, the process perspective and the learning and growth perspective, all
of which are very applicable to the functions carried out by the human resource department
as the following narrative will demonstrate.

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Louise Kelly – CIPD HRM L5 Membership number: 4856851X

 Financial
In order for any organisation to survive, it must demonstrate good financial
performance. HR activities should be designed so that they contribute to financial
success. Without well trained and motivated employees, achieving such success would
be difficult. Whilst such financial information often relates to the past, HR professionals
can review previous activities and the impact they have had on the financial
performance.

 Customer
Satisfied customers it what brings many companies great success, therefore by every
activity that HR carries out that can impact the customer experience will have a huge
impact to any organisation.

 Process
This element will consider the internal processes of the organisation. The effectiveness
of an organisation can be greatly improved by HR in reviewing processes and policies to
ensure they not only fit the purpose and align with what the business is trying to
achieve, but also add value to the customer experience.

 Learning & Growth

In my view, this is where HR can have the biggest impact. This area will look very much
into the future and HR should consider what can be done to develop the employees to
grow the business.

Question 5.
Article: “Challenge HR – How the CIPD is helping HR and L&D professionals shape the world
of work”
(People Management issues February 2016)
This article discusses how HR professionals can become invaluable to their organisations
and describes how there is such continued uncertainty in the global economy today and
how businesses everywhere need to constantly review and adapt to stay ahead of the game.
It refers to how HR has made positive inroads to raising the awareness over the recent years
to its effectiveness and value to organisations but recognises how HR and L&D (Learning and
Development) professional now need to become more consistently recognised with both an
operational and strategic stake in organisations in terms of ethical, effectiveness and
inclusive terms. Peter Cheese (CIPD CEO) points out ‘the economic recovery is uneven and
could stall altogether’. The article suggests that HR professionals should be challenging
themselves to widen their thinking to how opportunities can be created for new generations
whilst meeting the needs of an ageing population; and how we should respond to the
advent of complex new technologies, from new forms of social collaboration to widespread
automation. The article notes that whilst de-layering management structures has become
common over the last decade, it has created a void in terms of employees ready to step up
and fill high skill roles.
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Louise Kelly – CIPD HRM L5 Membership number: 4856851X

It is evident in my view that from this article that HR has got to work harder than ever to fill
these skill gaps, with the least amount of resource in today’s unstable climate. There is a
reason that so many organisations are de-layering and with a prolific number of ‘re-
structures’ that are simply put ‘cost-cutting’ exercises the reason becomes clear;
organisations are looking for more capability for less cost.
To future proof any organisation, HR professionals need to ensure that the workforce is
prepared for the workplace of tomorrow and the longer term and ensure that cost cutting
exercises do not have a negative impact on the sustainability of those that are employed
there. By creating high performing employees can impact on this sustainability whilst
ensuring the customer experience is not devalued in any way. Whilst I agree with the
instability of today’s economy, this should not impact on the investment in organisations
employees as this could have a negative impact on the organisations future. An example
could be if organisations strip back employee headcount to save money, when the economy
stabilises and business booms, the workforce is not there to service the incoming business.

Wordcount: 3137

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