EFFICIENCY AND HR
HR at the
The London Borough of Waltham Forest was the best public sector performer at the recent CIPD People Management Awards, winning one award and highly commended in another. The council’s director of human resources and transformation Althea Loderick has also just been personally recognised as the eleventh most infl uent person in the fi eld of HR. PSE spoke to her.
W
altham Forest Council won the ‘Building HR Capability’ category at the CIPD
People Management Awards in September, and was highly commended in the ‘Change Management’ category.
Like all local authorities, the council has faced big funding cuts in recent years and had to undergo an organisational transformation and cut posts. That has been a big challenge for the HR team, which has also faced a major restructure and reorganisation itself to deal with a 28% budget reduction over three years.
The council’s director of human resources and transformation, Althea Loderick, told us: “Dealing with that was going to mean making massive changes to the way we did things. It was the equivalent of 23 full-time posts.
“Obviously we didn’t necessarily take out all of those posts because there were some vacant but it was quite a signifi cant change, it wasn’t like we could just take off a few people here and there.
“I restructured the whole service and the way we deliver our service. We took out our business partners and developed a corporate shared service centre approach, so there was a tiered approach to the way people had their issues dealt with by HR.”
She said one of the key factors that gave the council an edge at the CIPD awards was its carefully planned two-pronged approach to change, in which the capabilities of the HR team itself were carefully developed and tailored to suit the new structure, while general managers across the councils were trained to become ‘self-suffi cient’ in handling the more basic HR tasks themselves.
34 | public sector executive Sep/Oct 13
Loderick explained: “There were a series of two- hour ‘espresso sessions’, bringing in managers from across the authority to take them through how this new service would work and how to operate in that environment.”
“ I’m a senior person in the public sector, funded through people’s council tax, and I can’t expect to have an easy job.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84