Return on Investment

Speaker: Prof Andrew Mayo

The pressure to be able to justify HR and Training initiatives is growing all the time, and yet it is not easy to do.

For further details about this event click: Return on Investment 10th July 

Basic Finance and the Principles of Costing  16th June 2008

Speaker: John Kind

This event enabled you  to:

• use and interpret financial information in order to become a more active contributor when financial issues of importance to the HR function are being discussed. 

• appreciate the practical significance of a variety of financial performance indicators

• become conversant with the different kinds of costs and costing techniques and to appreciate the impact of different cost structures on financial performance.

For further details about this event click: Basic Finance and Principles of Costing

Essentials for the Business Orientated Practitioner

Organisation Design  4th June 2008

Speaker: Naomi Stanford

This interactive session was designed to help develop organisation design skills. 

It showed how HR practitioners can work across an organization to change the shape and structure in order to improve performance.

For further details about this event click: Organisation Design 4th June

Joint Event with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales

Are People Really our Most Valuable Asset?   22nd May 2008

Speakers:Tony Powell, Deputy Chairman, Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales, Andrew Mayo. President of the HR Societyand Duncan Brown, Director of HR Services, Pricewaterhouse Coopers.

For more details please click Event on 22 May 2008

Essentials for the Business Orientated Practitioner

Conducting HR Research Projects - 19th May 2008

Speaker - Wendy Hirsh

This session was intended for HR practitioners who are required to conduct applied research or evaluation projects as part of their work in organisations.

It was also of value to those who commission researchers or consultants to undertake projects on their behalf.

For further details about this event click: Conducting HR Research Projects 19th May

HR: the Creative Profession

Speaker: Richard Beresford, Director of the Centre for Creativity and Enterprise Development, Oxford Brookes University Business School

Employment Demographics - Demography is Destiny - 17th March

Speaker - George Blair

This session looked at what demographic information should be collected by the organisation and how significant changes in the population, such as those to the age and gender profile, ethnicity and disability, might become in the future.

Questions discussed included:

• Where will we get our future staff from?
• Where should we be located, in the UK or abroad?

• What demographic statistics should the HR department produce, for whom and how often?

Decision Making in Uncertainty

Speaker: Gillian Stamp, Director of Bioss the Foundation, (the research wing of the Brunel Institute of Organisation and Social Studies).

Gillian Stamp, the Director of Bioss for more than twenty years, told us about what she has learned as a sounding board for people in the private and public sector who have extensive leadership responsibilities and have to make decisions about 'wicked' problems.

The exercise of judgement is fraught with uncertainty.  It is therefore the responsibility of leaders to build and maintain a framework that can support and cultivate confidence in the judgement of those who work for them, and crucially, confidence in their own judgement. 

Such frameworks may not seem necessary when life is moving smoothly and problems are “tame”.  A “tame problem” is one that may be complicated, but has likely occurred before – a combination of experience, knowledge and judgement can be applied to resolve it.  “Wicked problems”, on the other hand, are the ill-defined, ill-structured, real-life decisions that have incomplete, contradictory and changing requirements.

For a report about this event go to HR Society - News

Essentials for the Business Orientated Practitioner

Project Management - 18^th February 2008

Skilled Project Management is becoming more and more important for every HR professional.  This session was designed for those who wish to learn more about Project Management as an essential business tool for HR.

Business expects HR to lead all their projects in a way that is systematic and coordinated with other business developments.   Each HR project therefore needs not only a good business case, but must also be managed through a business-like process.  All projects are affected, whether they be large-scale change management programmes or more focused developments.

Leading and Managing a Lean Enterprise: from managing by results to managing processes

Speaker: Professor Daniel T. Jones

Founder and Chairman, Lean Enterprise Academy

Lean is not just tools for improving operations or a way of locking employees into standardized work. Seeing the organization as a collection of processes fundamentally changes what managers do and how they lead. This new lean management system is built on developing the experience of every employee in the use of the scientific method to plan improvements and to solve problems. It also opens up new business models designed back from customers rather than forwards from existing assets. Through real examples the talk  demonstrated that there is much more to lean than most people think.

Models and Practice for Workforce Planning

Colin Richards-Carpenter and Prof Andrew Forbes, 7th November 2007

This Master Class explored the approaches and techniques of HR planning so that participants would be able to make judgements on the applicability and value of the process to their own organisation. We introduced the concept of HR modelling and showed how a small investment in analysis can avoid potentially disastrous and expensive mistakes in HR policy.

The day was designed for Personnel and Line Managers that wished to have an overview of  “Best Practice” in HR planning and make judgements on what it should mean to their organisation. It was also invaluable for budget holders and those needing to anticipate, initiate and manage changes in employment policy.

Sector Based HR Benchmarking

FISSING Benchmarking Meeting 11^th October 2007 

This meeting looked at alternative ways of going about deciding what to benchmark and the benefits of sector level benchmarking and partnerships.

Roger Parry, Director of Agenda Consulting discussed the work they had undertaken using a sector based HR benchmarking approach and outlined:

• What is being measured and why

• Overview of the information that is produced

• Benefits gained

• Key findings at a sector level

• The approaches and partnerships used

• The kind of events used to share good practice.

Following Roger’s presentation we discussed key ideas of interest.

President’s Forum

Managing Change in the Royal Mail

17th September 2007 Speaker: Kevin Green, People and Organisation Development Director, Royal Mail Letters

Kevin Green, People & Organisation Development Director, Royal Mail Letters, told us how Royal Mail engaged its staff in the biggest turnaround in the UK corporate history.

The session described the journey this 360 year old institution has gone through, from losing over £1.5 million a day to making over £500 million profit in just over 3 years. 

Kevin highlighted Royal Mail's:

• Change architecture

• How the relationship with the managers and people changed

• How they built a new way of working with the trade union

• How they secured the talent needed to deliver the change

• How they radically overhauled the HR function so they could lead the transformation.

Don’t go Naked into the Board Room

12th July - FISSING HR Strategy Research and Benchmarking Meeting

Intellectual capital drives an organisation forward – and  human capital is its key component.  Or is it?

Three questions:

1. why do good measures of human capital drive organisations in the wrong direction of change?
2. why are profit per employee and added value per employee completely misleading indicators of performance?
3. why is social capital a much better predictor of future organisational capability than organisational or human capital?

The meeting introduced better measures of organisational, employee and HR department performance. 

The Foundation of Human Capital strategy

24th May - FISSING HR Strategy Research and Benchmarking Meeting

This meeting underpinned the foundations of a new practice – that of the management of investment in human capital. 

The HR practitioner is the new provider of capital.  As such we must keep an eye on the external environment that affects both the business and the skill capital markets, measure returns on investment in HR programmes, and understand the day-to-day risks throughout the business, including those of neglecting the human capital. 

President’s Forum

Hot Spots - why some teams, workplaces and organisations buzz with energy - and others don't

2nd May  - Speaker: Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management at London Business School

In this session Lynda gave a stimulating talk about her latest book 'Hot Spots - why some places and organizations buzz with energy and others don't'

Over the last decade Lynda has been studying times and places when energy appears, and teams and places become highly innovative and productive. She talked about the three key elements: a cooperative mindset, boundary spanning and an igniting purpose,  that together increase the probability of a Hot Spot emerging.

With insights from Nokia, BP and Linux she showed some of the steps executives can take to increase the probability of Hot Spots emerging in their company.

Lynda directs the London Business School's executive programme "Human Resource Strategy in Transforming Organisations".

A global authority on the people implications of strategy, Dr Lynda Gratton writes, teaches and consults across the world on human resource strategy.

Master Class

Value added from HR and the HR Scorecard

20th April led by Andrew Mayo, Professor of Human Capital Management, Middlesex University Business School

When it comes to measures, there is a distinction between those which concern human capital generally, and those which relate specifically to the HR function. This Masterclass was about the latter. It explored the different kinds of value HR can add to its stakeholders, and also how its operational activities and project initiatives can be effectively measured and monitored. No function can call itself professional if it does not develop “a scorecard” which keeps track of its performance.

This event outlined analytical techniques that will enable the evaluation of the return on HR investments in a credible way to appeal to managers.

One More Time, How DO we classify people and work when we plan?

15th March 2007  Facilitated by Dr Wendy Hirsh, an independent researcher and consultant in the fields of employee and management development, and strategic human resource planning.

Strategic workforce planning requires information linking workforce supply with business demand, and capable of addressing both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Such analysis requires robust ways of classifying people and work. This think-tank sought to answer questions such as:

• How do we classify, measure or describe people and jobs for planning purposes in today’s turbulent environment

• What variables about people are useful in projecting workforce supply, especially how do we plan in a world of more flexible retirement ages?

• How do we generate valid aggregate information about the capability or skills of the workforce? 

 President’s Forum

Building strategic capabilities for sustainable competitive advantage

6th February 2007  Speaker: Professor William Scott Jackson, Visiting Fellow, Oxford University

The effective development, utilisation and measurement of human capital has long been recognised as crucial to organisational success. Successive research studies, however, demonstrate that a useful framework still eludes many organisations.  

Professor William Scott-Jackson presented the findings and recommendations from a major research study ‘Measures of workforce capability for future performance’, conducted amongst 259 senior directors and decision makers from around the world on behalf of the Chartered Management Institute.

President’s Forum

Employee Engagement - HR's key to driving business performance

Standard Chartered Bank has measured employee engagement for the last six years with a voluntary participation rate consistently over 90%. The concept is an inherent part of the fabric of the organisation and most importantly, simple. They aspire to create winning teams who thrive on their diverse strengths and constantly strive to improve and deliver sustainable business performance. Robust internal research proves what we instinctively know - employee engagement is strongly linked to measures of business performance (including profit margin growth, customer service ratings and employee attrition).

Standard Chartered's research highlights the role of the manager as directly accounting for increased engagement and thus business performance. This session discussed how and why, with reference to how the findings are being implemented at the Bank and the implications for the HR function of the future.

President’s Forum

The Role of Compensation in Defining Strategy

20th September 2006 Speaker: Neil Foulger, Liberty Global

Discussions around the traditionally separate productivity and talent agendas continue to divide opinion on the value of tangible and intangible people outcomes. A new approach to valuing people is needed and this should underpin an organisation’s reward strategy. The old adage "you get what you pay for" was turned on its head as we explored a new model of value - "Stock of Worth".

Using this approach, management can leverage organisational productivity, but also recognise that they must work harder at efficiently valuing their people. This can drive a mutually beneficial and sustainable cycle of improvements in rewards and returns - the basis of a great Compensation Strategy.

President’s Forum

Aligning HR and Business : How desirable and how feasible?

14th June 2006 Speaker: Linda Holbeche, Director, The Work Foundation

The conventional rhetoric/key goal is that HR is fully aligned to business strategy. Indeed HR faces a lot of criticism for not achieving alignment.

In practice, how achievable is alignment when the average business cycle is short term and development of an effective organisation is a continuous process which needs to be both pragmatically actualised in the here and now and focussed on future business needs?

President’s Forum

The Dilemmas of Modern Management and the role of HR in the Strategic Response

This President's Forum on 15th March which was led by Chris Bones, Principal, Henley Management College.

The discussion was wide ranging and addressed issues including:

• What is management in modern organisations?
• What are the major challenges for the 21st Century?
• How can a strategic response from HR managers help organisations deliver effectively?

To read the article Aligning and Understanding Reputation within the Organisation by Chris Bones click on the title.

The Workforce Planning Approach

This module of the Practical Workforce Planning Programme was announced for the 7th February 2006.  The day, led by Colin Richards-Carpenter and Andrew Forbes, includes the aims of workforce planning, a general introduction to the subject, analysing how people work in organisations, HR Systems and Key HR indicators.

Future Oriented Human Capital Benchmarking

This was the concluding day for the recent Hard Edge Series, held on 26th January 2006 and led by Chris Nutt in his capacity as researcher for the FiSSInG HR Benchmarking Club.  The discussion included the business case for human capital benchmarking, how it determines the future role and priorities of HR, how it can increase the present value of companies, and the legal requirements for it - and why we need to go beyond compliance.

Human Capital Management and the OFR

This was the title of the President's Forum held on 29th November 2005 and led by Richard Donkin, renowned author regular columnist for the Financial Times on employment.

The forum explored how standard measures of human capital management can be developed to become a key influence in investment decisions. 

Attracting and Developing Talent

This was another day in the Hard Edge Series.  Held on 16th November 2005 it was led partly by Wendy Hirsh, Independent Researcher and Consultant, Fellow, National Institute for Careers Education and Counseling, visiting Prof at Kingston University.  The other leader was Linda Barber, Institute for Employment Studies, leading work on graduates using what has become known as the IES Graduate Value Chain for developing, evaluating and reviewing the effectiveness of graduate strategy and its linkages.

Site visit to Standard Life in Edinburgh

This was a FiSSInG HR Benchmarking Meeting hosted by Allan Muir, HR Information Development Manager and David Barr, Head of Shared HR Services on 12th October 2005

The day included presentations, sharing experience and data, and discussions on the business drivers for the introduction of Shared Services, alternative approaches to benchmarking Shared Services, how to decide which 'services' to offer, Service Level Agreements and Relationship Management, how to price services, the invoicing process, and future developments.