Easing tough decision-making for HR directors in local authorities

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By Mary Clarke, CEO, Cognisco

With this year’s financial budgets now confirmed for local councils, HR professionals face the unenviable and difficult task of making employee cuts.

Their position is made all the more difficult by the fact that the headcount reductions needed are big – 140,000 jobs will go from English and Welsh local authorities, 53,000 will be cut from the NHS and 10,000 from the police force. Additionally, ten per cent of these job cuts will include HR professionals themselves.

Understandably, but unfairly, some HR professionals are facing a backlash from the employment unions and are being vilified for carrying out their jobs. What is certain is that any decisions made about employees will be scrutinised, so it is essential that these decisions can withstand any subsequent challenges. Managers must ensure that the quality of our public services and the performance and morale of those employees who remain is not unduly affected by the cuts or the decisions they make. Is this a poisoned chalice or are there solutions available that can help HR managers make the right decisions now, however tough?

One important consideration for any HR manager making decisions about headcount reductions is to put in place formal performance and evaluation processes that measure and assesses employee efficiencies in a number of key areas. While various tools have been developed to measure specific services, organisations now need to set criteria that capture key elements of performance in relation to:

• Financial management
• Human resources management
• Information technology management
• Capital management
• Managing for results

Key indicators are essential in the following four areas: record management, internal audit, performance appraisal, and project evaluation. And within those four areas, three intermediate dimensions of performance are needed: results focus, accountability, and employee morale.

There is no doubt that HR managers will have their work cut out establishing these new performance measures and evaluation processes, while ensuring they remain focused on results. They will also face other challenges including making redundancy decisions, redistributing job roles, delegating additional responsibilities to individuals and achieving more with fewer resources.

One of the main stumbling blocks HR managers often face in addressing these issues is a lack of accurate and up-to-date information about the skills, competencies and knowledge of their workforce.

In fact, many managers are completely in the dark about how their employees actually perform in their jobs on a daily basis. The main reason for this is that while employees may have been assessed when they were recruited, this is often the last time they were assessed, and many will have moved through several job roles since. Aside from annual appraisals and performance reports from line managers, senior management will often have little insight into the skills, knowledge and competencies of their employees. Now, with shared services models being adopted by councils across the UK, this lack of insight into how employees perform will become problematic. It will force HR managers to come to an objective decision about which employee to retain in a shared services situation where two individuals with similar skill sets have applied for the same job. How can they be confident they will make the correct decision if they don’t have information about how these individuals perform?

One solution is to introduce intelligent employee assessments that test an individual’s skills and knowledge as well as how that knowledge is actually applied on the job by assessing them in common job-based scenarios and asking them a series of situational judgement questions. The assessments will highlight not only their skills but also their likely behaviour on a day-to-day basis. Not only will managers get an accurate picture of the skills, competencies and performance of each employee, but their individual skills gaps and training needs will also be revealed.

Managers can then tailor training and development programmes to the individual. This approach is likely to improve employee performance quickly and boost morale as their training needs are being met; it will also reduce the need for costly ‘one size fits all’ training.

Star performers in each department who have the potential to deliver training or perhaps mentor or coach their colleagues will also be identified. So, if managers have their training budgets cuts, peer-to-peer training led by these individuals could be a viable alternative.

Most importantly, the insight from assessments gives managers the information they need to make the right decisions about employees. This includes how best to use staff, who to promote and when, who they can redeploy in other areas and, crucially, who is not performing well and may be a potential candidate for redundancy. This insight will ensure they make the correct –  objective and accountable – decisions about which employees will be a part of the council’s future and which will not.

There is no denying that HR managers are facing really challenging times ahead, but their burden can be eased if they have formal employee performance measurements in place and are using assessments to ensure they have the most up-to-date and accurate information about every individual in their workforce. With these elements in place, at least they can be confident they will make the right decisions.

www.cognisco.com