Projects

IES worked with the Director of Resources and his team at Harrow Council to address their challenges of succession planning and staff development and to embed still further the positive culture of employee engagement which their Gold Standard IiP award recognised.

IES worked with Birmingham City Council on implementation of its succession and talent management strategy. Birmingham is the largest city council in Europe and has already shown itself to be innovative in deploying the skills of its staff during periods of re-organisation. It wished to strengthen the pro-active development of its talent pipeline and link this with workforce planning, succession planning and learning and development.

Wendy Hirsh supported the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) as it developed its strategy for talent management. NOMS covers both prisons and probation services which have different traditions in how they grow future leaders and diverse business needs. Working with senior stakeholders is especially important in this area so that new initiatives can keep existing strengths as well as facing new challenges.

IES engaged in a six-month development programme for the HR leadership team of a large local council. This had six coaching sessions combined with three workshops designed to help the team identify their vision for the future of HR, their personal strengths and how they could work better as a team. In parallel, IES assisted IDeA and PPMA in their objective of ‘Raising the standards of HR professionalism in the public sector’ by helping to design a self-assessment tool for senior HR professionals to determine how well they are performing and progressing against a national set of agreed indicators that describe the minimum standard requirements to deliver modern, strategic HR services.

IES conducted telephone interviews with very senior women around the globe who are Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) members, to ask about their career experiences and what advice they would give to women wanting to rise up the career ladder in what is often thought of as a male-dominated profession. We produced a themed report, and case studies constructed from the interviews.

IES helped Plan International, a major children’s charity, to address its succession and talent management challenges worldwide. Regional, Country and Functional Directors were involved from the start in reaching a shared understanding of the challenges in filling roles both at Director level and Middle Management. IES facilitated policy and process development working with Plan’s own specialists and leaders in HR, and also running workshops for middle managers and the top team to shape how the policy would translate into practice. This covered succession planning, talent forums and two leadership programmes. The agreed approach was implemented in 2012, and involved the production of written guidance, running workshops for the People and Culture (HR) business partners and supporting the first Regional Talent Forum meetings.

IES worked with researchers at the University of Hertfordshire on a new project funded by the Society and College of Radiographers to investigate the impact of Agenda for Change on career progression amongst radiographers. The work explored NHS radiographers’, assistant practitioners’ and support workers’ expectations of career development, identified the career progression opportunities that are currently available to these groups, and highlighted barriers to career progression.

IES worked with NHS Yorkshire and the Humber to identify and understand the diverse career paths that chief executives of NHS trusts take in reaching this position. The aim of the project was to make public the variety of these paths, to encourage other potential chief executives, and to provide practical advice and guidance to these aspiring executives about to how to manage their careers. In addition, the project was designed to identify how the NHS Y & H could better support those aspiring to be chief executives, in developing their careers.

Many organisations need to develop the careers and potential of specialist professional groups as well as managers. The Civil Service employs around 1,000 social researchers, spread over many departments and agencies and usually embedded within multi-disciplinary teams. Wendy Hirsh advised the unit, based in HM Treasury, which is responsible for the career development of this professional group. One particular issue was how to enable some of those at senior levels in this group to access a wider range of leadership roles in the Civil Service if this wass the most suitable option for them.

The Royal Navy’s flexible careers structure initiative intends to offer a more flexible approach towards careers in the Navy/Marines. The current engagement system is to be replaced by three types of career: full, extended and tailored. IES was commissioned to investigate whether other organisations have a similar model, with particular emphasis on the remuneration package, workforce planning models and the types of jobs/trades/professions that are most suitable for flexibility.