The coalition government’s plans to reform public services are at risk of failing to deliver any lasting benefits unless HR is placed at the heart of the change process, according to a study.
A joint report entitled ‘Boosting HR performance in the public sector’ published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and the Public Sector People Managers Association (PSPMA) warned that too little emphasis was currently being placed on the people and HR management issues required to lead, support and embed behavioural change and new ways of working in front line services.
But the government’s aim to transform public services against a backdrop of £81 billion in spending cuts over the next four years would not succeed unless policy makers recognised the importance of enabling a step change in HR management capabilities.
Key considerations here included supporting effective change management, workforce planning and organisational development in order to support employee engagement and positive employee relations.
Stephanie Bird, the CIPD’s director of HR capability, said: “Public service transformation is critically dependent on developing new skills, changing engrained behaviours and managing the uncertainty and conflict that can arise as a result. Unless HR is involved at the heart of this process to ensure the key people management issues are addressed, public service reform plans will remain frustrated.”
Unfortunately, however, public sector HR had simply been viewed by successive governments as simply a cost to be managed or a means of making redundancies. But it was no coincidence that previous attempts to make big changes to the quality of public service delivery had failed as a consequence. “This government cannot afford to make the same mistakes,” Bird said.
The report argued that higher levels of adoption of shared services and outsourcing could increase efficiency and free up the resources so that HR departments were in a position to provide more strategic support in order to improve the delivery of front line services.
But Dean Shoesmith, the PSPMA’s president, said that public sector HR was at a crossroads and that the reform agenda presented both an opportunity and a challenge. “HR can build and establish its reputation as a key strategic function if it is at the heart of managing change, helping to facilitate service delivery redesign and building the necessary leadership and management skills for sustained public service transformation,” he explained.
But if it remained preoccupied with traditional activities such as hand-holding line managers, it would be left behind as its reputation for simply being a transactional function was reinforced, Shoesmith said.
