Harmonisations And Improvements Projects

The scope of an HR harmonisation/improvement project is to develop a HR strategy to achieve the new plans.

Increased global business complexity requires robust and globally deployed strategies, with scalable processes and organisation structures, greater flexibility and responsiveness, as well as availability of accurate information.

It should make the organisation’s values as an employer clear, ensuring that the workforce needs are effectively identified, planned and delivered so that resources are aligned to the priorities of the organisation and ensure that employees are motivated and engaged to deliver the very best services on behalf of the Human Resources team.

Employment Relationship and Experience

As an organisation aims for excellence and in order to attract and retain first class staff, HR needs to ensure that the employment package and experience reflects these aspirations. HR will also be researching other comparable organisations to ensure that the employment package is competitive and consistent with best practice.

Factors that influence the choice of employer will be different to everyone. HR therefore needs to identify what it means to employees. This can be done by consultation exercises to identify priority areas for action. For each action within the plan there will be a ‘SMART’ measure, reasons for each will be given such as performance, employee satisfaction, or compliance with legislation.

Human Resources, of course, needs to be mindful of the business financial position. This may mean that HR cannot necessarily meet all employees expectations. HR will therefore need to target the resources in line with the priority workstream/project areas identified.

The Improvement Project

The improvement project process asks the questions ‘Where are we today?’ ‘Where do we want to be tomorrow?’ ‘What is the gap between today and tomorrow?’

Once the gap is identified, options will be identified to address the gap and those options are evaluated to inform the conclusions and recommendations. The recommendations will lead to a detailed implementation plan with ‘smart’ targets that will facilitate the delivery of the HR Strategy.

A HR harmonisation and improvement plan is a huge challenge for any Team. There are many workstreams/projects that are very difficult to design, customise, implement and review with employees that may not have experience and knowledge of such a project.

An organisation needs to reflect ‘excellence’ in all areas of the employment relationship. It therefore needs to ensure that HR develops appropriate policies, procedures and guidance tailored to the needs of users, whilst recognising the requirements of employment legislation and reflecting ‘best practice’.

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