Special Interest Groups
“Informative and enjoyable as ever”. " Always really good meetings and great insights" “Exciting event!” “The SIG day was fantastic” “I have been to a number of these networks and the CPHR one is the best of the lot”
Membership to the Centre generates excellent networking opportunities. HR Directors and their teams benefit from the informal Special Interest Group Meetings (SIGs) hosting the day and setting the agenda allowing them to discuss the most relevant current topics of the moment.
These groups are self-organizing, tasked with establishing meetings, exchanges of knowledge and repositories of knowledge Each network involves a Partner leader, Centre leader and various HR practitioners from the Members. They can draw upon broader expertise, brokerage of leading HR research, and other external networks and resources. They are tasked with helping produce material for White Papers and positioning documents.
These SIGs, open to the functional specialists within HR of sponsor organizations, serve three purposes. They:
- Help sharpen up Centre research, by interpreting emerging findings and applying the themes to practice.
- Act as an advanced form of executive education, through which the individuals involved are not only kept up to date on issues, but share understanding across other organizations and deepen their professional expertise.
- Provide the opportunity for joint writing and internal research with professionals from other organizations on mutually challenging issues.
There are three core SIGs on Organization Design, Employee Engagement and Talent Management, and two recent SIGs have begun on HR Strategy and Global HR.
Organization Design Special Interest Group
These SIGs, attended by those members working or having a responsibility for organization design or organization development within their company, exchange knowledge on topics such as organization design approaches, models and philosophies within companies, how organisation design can fit in with the organisation business model and capabilities required for organization practitioners.
There have been seven meetings in this series. The first meeting was a sharing of OD strategies between partners, analysing where OD was located and the key OD models in practice. The second meeting looked at the key academic frameworks that are available and the capabilities needed in an OD function. The third meeting examined external practice at Hay Management Group and the use of metrics at Vodafone. The fourth meeting examined experience on Nestlé’s Global OD Development Program for Business Partners and discussed practice in relation to the management of innovation and customer centricity. The fifth meeting developed a stage model for use in OD interventions and examined the ideal positioning of organization effectiveness work by looking at approaches in Honeywell and Sun Microsystems. The sixth meeting finalised the OD Model and moved into the area of “Lean” by looking at the work that Nestle UK have been undertaking in the this arena. At the seventh and most recent meeting a series of internal case studies were developed against the finalised OD toolkit and external input received on leading organizational transformations.
The practitioners associated with the Centre have now co-developed a common Organization Design process, endorsed and being applied across member organizations. In January 2009 the Centre produced a White Paper on “Integrated Organization Design: The New Strategic Priority for HR Directors”. In that White Paper we argue for a fresh look at the fields of Organization Design and Organization Development, as we believe they present a major opportunity for HR Business Partners to make a contribution to strategic debates about business model change.
This toolkit is aimed at HR Business partners rather than OD specialists and provides ideas, insights and practical resources for use in a range of OD projects. It has been developed and produced by a sub-group of the Organization Design SIG. That sub-group believed that there was benefit to be derived from the development of an OD Toolkit that could be used by HR Business Partners when discussing organizational change and re-design with internal clients. All members of the sub-group were OD Practitioners and included Sue Bland and Jackie Blear (Co-operative Financial Service), Mark Blundell (McDonalds), Alastair Lord (Sellafield), Dave Nuttall (BAE Systems) and Robert Watson (Vodafone). The group was facilitated by Martin Hird (CPHR). All contributed to the development of the document and Dave Nuttall and Martin Hird compiled and edited the final version.
The toolkit is available to members of the Centre only.
Employee Engagement Special Interest Group
The Employee Engagement SIGs discuss issues such as employee engagement approaches used in companies, how engagement fits into the overall business model and key measures and models of employee engagement. Members directly involved with employee engagement as well as general managers and HR professionals attend these SIGs.
There have been six meetings in this series. The first meeting examined the findings from the Centre’s White Paper and shared engagement strategies across partners by looking at their approach to engagement, the origins and characteristics of the engagement model, how it fits in with their overall business model, who is responsible, and the pressing issues. The second meeting received external input from the MacLeod Review, reviewed the case study of Vodafone, and looked at research that links engagement to Individual well-being outcomes a pharmaceutical organization. The third meeting examined the key practitioner and academic measures and models of employee engagement, practice at McDonald’s, the genesis of sponsor firm’s surveys, how they measure employee engagement, what works well, and where measurement should move to in the future. At the fourth meeting the group received a briefing from Nita Clarke on the developments following the latest MacLeod Review on Engagement. BAE Systems discussed how they have managed the shift from employee relations to employee engagement, and RBS outlined their approach to human capital strategy and business metrics. At the fifth meeting the SIG discussed the latest developments in employee research and the use of HR 2.0 and social enterprise approaches. It looked at the use of employee advocacy and application of customer reesearch methods to employee measurement in Co-operative Banking Group and Vodafone. In the sixth and most recent meeting the SIG hosted a debate with David MacLeod and Nita Clarke on Nailing the evidence and beyond: future directions of the engagement debate. It also received input on lean management as an engagement strategy at BAE Systems and from HM Revenue and Customs on whether the impact of lean in the public sector is about engagement or empowerment.
Professionals from Centre members will produce a Thought Leadership Paper on the barriers to taking action in on engagement data. This will explore the operational insight into the business measures that could be linked to engagement, the HR capability to manage all the data, and the challenges for people acting on the data.
The Talent Management Special Interest Group
Designed specifically for those members working in talent, this SIG shares knowledge, methods and practices on talent management including the local and global challenges involved, talent management at the strategic and operational level and the talent management systems used by practitioners.
There have been six meetings in this series. The first meeting shared practice across sponsors by looking at: the organization’s philosophy/approach to Talent Management; how Talent Management fits into the business; who is principally responsible for Talent Management; what the nature of the resources are available for Talent Management activity, and what are key current priorities in Talent Management. The second meeting looked at the issue of boardroom engagement with the talent agenda and how functions understand this engagement. The third meeting received feedback and discussion on the SIG’s work on Board engagement and also an internal survey on Talent Management analytics. The fourth meeting explored the future of HR including the location of Talent responsibilities, and looked at the link between talent systems and leadership models, with inputs from legal and general and RBS on their leadership model thinking. The fifth meeting was devoted to reviewing and analysing the Centre's White Paper on Talent Management: Time to Question the Tablets of Stone. The sixth and most recent meeting looked at the issue of Diversity and Talent systems and why we still struggle with the glass ceiling, and also at the measurement of leadership impact within talent management.
Professionals from the Department of Work and Pensions, Royal Mail, Royal Bank of Scotland and NG Bailey collaborated via the Centre to produce a White Paper on the challenge of Boardroom Engagement with the Talent agenda.
Internal Strategic Impact Events
“…It has begun a process of thinking which we did not have the opportunity to do before”
“… We have reviewed some difficult issues as an HR team and the Centre has helped clarify our overall direction in these areas”
“… Provided an objective perspective, stimulated learning and pushes us to solutions”
Centre staff have also presented at Annual HR Conferences for Royal Mail, BAE and Nestlé, helping run a number of workshops and planning processes inside sponsor organisations:
- For McDonald’s the Centre designed and facilitated strategic insight days that formed part of the annual HR strategy planning processes, receiving excellent evaluation.
- For Sellafield the Centre helped run workshops as part of an internal review of the HR Delivery Model. The workshops combined the Centre’s ideas of these issues with an analysis of what was being experienced on the ground in the organisation. For Nestlé the Centre hosted an away day on establishing the Strategic Purpose of the HR function and the key role of HR for next 3-5 years, providing inputs on Strategic Capability and Resource Based View of the Firm.
92% rating on “Broker research in ways that are relevant to you as a practitioner”
82% rating on “Put management fads into context”
94% rating on “Provide thought leadership (through ideas or people) and produce new ideas based on emerging trends”
94% rating on “Generate insights of relevance and utility to your HR function”
90% rating on “Provide a reflexive, evidence-based decision-making environment”
