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At a meeting of the North West grouping of the Staff Development Forum there was a discussion item on ‘best practice working’ between staff developers and generalist HR staff in supporting institutional HR/skills development/‘people’ strategies. Arising from that discussion the group agreed that this was an important sector wide topic worthy of further consideration/investigation and the group agreed to seek wider support for a project bid to SDP.
There have been a number of initiatives over recent years which have been geared to aligning and encouraging holistic HR practice across institutions – most obviously the HEFCE Rewarding and Developing Staff Initiative. Whilst these kinds of sector wide encouragements have focussed institutional energy on the ‘what’ of HR strategy, less attention has been paid to the ‘how’ – in both structural terms i.e. how are HR/Staff Development/Educational Development Functions organised, and in terms of best practice partnership working between staff/educational developers and HR generalists i.e. what works and does not.
Increasingly the language of OD and business partnering has been commandeered to allegedly strategically focus the work of HRD/HRM functions. However despite the seductive rhetoric, what this means in terms of organisation, philosophical/business outlook and practice on the ground has been less well documented. This project aims to add to the stock of knowledge about what is going on in the HE sector about how HEIs organise their staff and educational development/HR functions and disseminate case studies of good practice where the relationship between the two functions really works well in supporting the institution. More specific objectives are set out below
Collaborating institutions
University of Manchester
University of Northumbria
Edgehill University
University of Chester
University of Westminster
Liverpool John Moores University
Project leaders
Paul Dixon, University of Manchester, Head of Staff Training and Development Unit and NW representative to Staff Development Forum Council
Susan Field, Head of HR, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences,. University of Manchester
Project steering group
Sally Wilson, Staff Development, Edgehill University
Julie Mulliner, Assist Dir HR Chester
Jean Harrison, Interim Dir of HR, Westminster University
Meriel Box, Staff Development, Liverpool John Moores University
Project adviser/quality assurance
Jane Embley, Dir of HR, University of Northumbria and Vice Chair Universities HR
Matt Levi, Executive Director HEATED, Deputy Chair, Staff Development Forum
Aims and objectives
The project’s over-riding aim is to: investigate the range of organisational models for structuring the HRD/HRM functions in the UK HE Sector and to consider the factors that support best practice partnership working between staff developers and HR generalists.
Specific objectives are to:
Methodology
The project will be conducted as a small research project based around the objectives set out above. It will included research approaches and methods associated with both scientific and qualitative research paradigms. The various data gathering strategies are set out below.
Institutional Survey – this survey will be sent to all Universities for completion by Registrar and Secretary or Director of HR – the aim will be to identify the range of possibilities for organising the HRD/HRM functions and get some initial feel for what are considered the most effective models of organisation to secure partnership working between staff developers and HR generalists.
Project Workshops – as part of the data gathering it is anticipated that two or more project workshops are run and attendees will be a mix of HR generalists and staff developers. Depending on the interest shown in such project workshops we might envisage more being run on a regional basis – however the intention is to start modestly with a capacity to widen out if sufficient interest exists. The project workshops will both gather data about what works and good practice, operating largely as focus groups writ large. They will also include some developmental input for participants around potential models of organisation etc.
Individual Interviews – either face to face or telephone – a semi structured interview format will be used to interview a number of Heads of HR Teams/SDUs/EDUs and practitioners about their views around the ‘research’ questions set out above.
Structured discussions with various interested groups – for example an agenda/discussion item at the meetings of Regional Staff Developer Groups, discussion at OD in HE group, similar discussions with any regional Universities HR groups etc.
Outcomes and outputs
The ultimate outcome from the project will be a written published project report. This will be accompanied by various ongoing presentations to the Staff Development Forum, Universities HR and key note presentations at both the National Staff Developers and Universities HR National Conferences.
Project benefits
Ultimately a set of tools and information that may influence HRD/HRM practice significantly within Universities or at the very least kick start an important debate that will become critical during harsher economic times.
Milestones
We anticipate a 12 month project – rather than set out specific dates the plan below sets out plans over a year from receipt of project funding.
Month 1
Finalisation of Project Terms of Reference
First meeting of Project/Steering Group and Agreement of project plan
Consideration of Content of Preliminary on line institutional survey, and agreement on final survey format
Months 2/3
Month 2 - Launch of Institutional Survey
Month 3 – First Project Workshop
Month 3 – Project Group Meeting – either virtual or face to face (after first project workshop)
Months 4 – 6
Month 4 – Steering/Project Group Meeting to review results of on line survey and agree semi structured interview format
Month 5 – Semi Structured interviews begin (through to month 7/8)
Month 6 – Second Project Workshop
Month 6 – Project Group Meeting to review second Project workshop and progress with interviews
Months 7 - 8
Interviews continue
Month 8 – Project Group Meeting
Months 9 to 12
Month 9 – Project Group full day meeting to review data collected
Month 10 – First Draft Project Report Completed
Months 11/12 – Revisions to Project Report as needed
Plans for dissemination
Key note presentations at LF/SDF Staff Developers Conference and Universities HR Conference
Distribution of project report and prominent positioning on various websites
Sustainable future models of organisation – synergies between HR and Staff/Educational Development are likely to become more important in future challenging years in facilitating change management, developing individual discretionary effort, developing continuing individual commitment to the institutional effort;
Enhancing the LGM agenda – recent years have seen a move to more informal individual leadership and management development through coaching, small group interventions and small scale consultancy. Fundamentally the HR role (Staff Development and Generalist HR) in its widest sense is around managing institutional skills supply strategies and securing staff energy towards institutional vision, including developing management and leadership capacity. We believe that enhancing the HR/Staff Developer relationship has further capacity to support developing better leaders and managers across the sector.
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