Greenwich HR Transformation
About the roles
All of these posts are key parts of a radical restructure of the council's HR function. The council's HR function performs well but needs to modernise. The restructure reconfigures the function to meet some key challenges:
- We need to provide more strategic people input to the council’s decisions
- We need to change our focus from traditional advice giving to coaching managers to skilfully deal with people issues
- We need to rationalise and improve our transactional processes to get maximum value for money
- We need to implement a successful business partnering model that's right for Greenwich
- We need to develop a customer ethos, becoming more accountable for the cost and quality of the service we provide
- We need to respond to the really challenging financial landscape in local government, ready to embrace shared services and integrated working with our partners
- We need a modern HR function to support the councils ambitious modernisation programme
- We need to set an example to the rest of the organisation of good people management and innovation
All of these roles have a huge potential to make a significant difference to the performance of the Council
About the HR Function
We have just completed a restructure of the whole fuction top to bottom.
Below is the new functional structure of the service accompanied by a brief description of each of the new sections:
HR Functional Structure
click the image to enlarge
The Policy and Projects Team will act as the HR project office. In developing policy, strategy and procedure we intend to work more in partnership with service managers and staff. Because policy needs to make sense in the context of different operational environments we will look to develop broader frameworks rather than very prescriptive policies.
Therefore rather than drafting policy and acting as experts, the policy and projects team will set up time-limited working groups to develop policy and practice. These groups will include service managers and other stakeholders.
The remuneration team will remain unchanged until the planned retirement of the current manager. From then on and until the work on Single Status is completed the Head of Policy and Projects will manage the ongoing work of the remuneration team
There will be eight Business Partners, one allocated to each of the following service areas:
Children’s services and schools
Chief Executive’s Department
Adults and Older Peoples Services
Housing Services
GSPlus Ltd (formerly Trading Services)
Department of Community Safety and Environment
Department of Regeneration , Employment and Skills
Department of Culture and Community Services
One of these Business partners will be the Lead Business Partner and have the responsibility for managing the other seven; there is a different grade to reflect this.
Other than the Lead Business Partner these officers will limited operational or managerial responsibilities and will focus entirely on supporting their department by providing people input to service activities as early as possible. They will also act as a client to the rest of HR on behalf of their allocated department.
The OED team remains unchanged and will continue to work on providing high quality learning and development for all staff. They will provide advice and support to the rest of HR on learning and development approaches and will have a key role in coordinating the HR development plan. They will also jointly lead on workforce planning with the Business Partners for the council as a whole.
Health and Safety has had its remit broadened to include wellbeing. This additional focus will allow us to do some work on proactive approaches to health and wellbeing at work. More and more, the HSE is involving itself in standards around issues such as stress at work. The integration of wellbeing into this team capitalises on the links between safety and a healthy workplace. The team will manage and develop the occupational health contract, work closely with our health partners and create a wellbeing strategy for staff. They will also support the coaching and advice team on sickness casework.
The People Centre is the transactional service centre for all HR processes. It combines HR administration with payroll and recruitment.
We are looking to develop a contact strategy for HR. this will incorporate a range of ways of talking to HR including a new HR intranet, a single telephone number for all HR enquiries and a better process for referring managers for advice and casework that allows us to record things and learn from them.
The People Centre will deliver basic advice and act as a referral mechanism to Coaching and Advice for more complex matters. The new team where possible is multi-disciplinary. At present, processes are dealt with unnecessarily by up to four pairs of hands and in many cases the same data is keyed more than once into the HR system. Through working more closely together and reviewing all our processes we can make things faster less bureaucratic and better value for money. It also means that staff in the People Centre can spend less time on transactional work and get some development through being involved in giving advice and working on a range of HR projects.
The team will also take responsibility for the development of Oracle.
HR Coaching and Advice replaces the existing consultancy function. The focus of the team will shift over time to coaching managers and building skilled capacity in the area of day to day people management. The work will be complemented by the corporate management development programme with the team focusing on the practical application of the learning delivered through courses. The team will provide:
Advice on complex cases to managers and staff via email or on the telephone
Advice on complex casework through meetings and coaching sessions
Support to managers undertaking case work around capability or conduct
Support to managers on pay and grading
Task force approaches to particular service issues
Practical on site booster session to managers
Support with redeployment and redundancy
Supporting managers to work positively with the trade unions
Working closely with the appropriate Business Partner on major service changes such as restructures.