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September 2008 - Issue 3
Features
This month, in this special double edition, we present the following:
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 Knowledge Management – Retaining Intellectual Capital in a Global Retail Bank
Knowledge Management was the buzz concept occupying the Corporate conscience at the turn of the millennium, However the term lost its vogue status as the concept began to suffer from a ‘bad rep’ as organisations struggled to deliver quantifiable benefits as executives and change managers alike failed to meet the challenge of retaining and harnessing the intellectual capital of their organisation. This paper aims to dust off the concept of Knowledge Management and explore its achievability and necessity in the modern business. It also aims to provide an insight into a successful Knowledge Retention programme delivered for a large Retail Bank in the UK and illustrate the practical framework the organisation used to develop and implement a sound Knowledge Management proposition. Click here to read the full article |
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The Importance of Size in Organisational Design
What Managers can Learn from the Monkeys Flat hierarchies and lean management structures have been buzzwords for many years now. However, even before these things became paramount in management literature, various human communities throughout history as well as the high tech company Gore (known through their Gore-Tex products) learnt that there is one alternative to complex structures, laws, rules and incentive mechanisms: getting the group size right.  Managers might actually be able to learn something from the monkeys.Research about ideal groupsize started with observations on monkey communities. The number of 150 proved to be the best size for a homogeneous group of people to follow a common goal and know each other well enough to solve problems without strict control from above. More recently brain science and evolutionary psychology have confirmed the relevance of this number (147.8, to be precise) for organisational design. Click here to read the full article |
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 Strategic Agility — Driving Cost Savings Without Eroding Competitive Advantage
With the state of the economy making headlines on a daily basis, many businesses are considering new waves of cost cuts. Even those businesses not directly affected by the current climate will benefit from regular drives to increase business efficiency. The traditional response to deterioration in the economic cli-mate was to drive through headcount reductions and cut costs across the board. These arbitrary cuts are at best a short-term solution, as they do not address underlying causes of cost ex-pansion; research suggests that costs that are cut arbitrarily tend to have a habit of growing back. A better way of cutting costs lies through Strategic Agility. This paper outlines the concept of Strategic Agility, and demon-strates how organisations can make the transition from struc-tural rigidity to agility. Click here to read the full article |
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 Client Case Study: Effective Integration A respected property services business is born from the merger of two former businesses, together with a revised growth strategy that allows it to leverage the growing commercial and public sectors. iProCon HCM helped them eliminate financial and operational waste and create more efficient and agile operational structures and processes, whilst improving the transparency and effectiveness of performance and reward mechanisms. Click here to read the full article |
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Mini Case Study: Salesforce Incentivisation
It’s not a secret that aligning the individual employee’s goals (allegedly maximizing his or her income) with the organisation’s goals (profit maximization) is generally a good idea. At first sight, for recruiters in a professional recruitment company it seems as straightforward as for any salesforce: pay them a bonus based on how much they sell, or how many candidates they place - maybe build in something to incentivise for margin as well as quantity, and that’s it. Unfortunately it’s not always as straightforward as this. In this case study we show how this oversimplified reward mechanism is destroying the reputation of a recruitment company and how it can be explained by a well known and common sense concept of microeconomics: the so called Prisoner’s Dilemma Click here to read the full article |
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Mini Case Study: The Importance of the Direct Manager to Attraction and Selection The overwhelming importance of the direct superior in people management has been widely acknowledged – at least in theory. In the real corporate world, there still seems to be a strong believe that a great employer brand, sophisticated talent development policies set up by corporate HR, or simply paying higher salaries are enough to attract, develop and retain top talent. The role of the direct superior, these top talent report to on a day to day basis, is all too often ignored. This case study talks about one of the many small battles on the battleground of the famous “War for Talent”. It shows how a Big5 consultancy managed to be beaten twice by the same small IT consultancy, just by ignoring the importance of the direct superior. For the purpose of this paper, we call the two companies Goliath plc. and David ltd. Click here to read the full article |
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BiteSize
Industrial action seen as more likely A CIPD survey published this month analyses industrial relations in the UK. While the majority of employers still regard the relations between employers and unions as positive, respondents see an increasing danger of strike action in the near future: 51% of public sector employers expect a strike among their workforce in the coming year. For the private sector it is 28% for services and 15% for manufacturing and production. Pay is considered to be by far the most important trigger for industrial action. Click here to download the full survey Outsourcing and shared services become more popular in local government In the article “How far should outsourcing go?”, the magazine “Human Resources” (July 2008) reports that outsourcing back office functions is a popular way for local councils to respond to increasing pressure on budgets. However there is a debate about how far this should go. While Dartford Borough Council according to the article became the first UK council to fully outsource HR and payroll, others are concerned about the long term consequences about losing strategic HR. Reading that one council outsourced “employee retention” among other things, makes us worry about more than just outsourcing: the notion that there could be a function responsible for employee retention – whether outsourced or not – seems to indicate a shockingly disintegrated view of people management. This approach at best aims at keeping people from leaving rather than making them keen to stay and engaged. In other cases neighbouring councils join forces to build a shared service centre for back office functions. Certainly an interesting alternative, which helps to achieve economies of scale and to use collective buying power. What seems to be left out of the equation in most discussions is the question about the core competencies of councils. The fact that the first wave of outsourcing in local government hit frontline customer services, indicates that the core competency is seen in administration rather than service delivery, but the problem is likely to be more complex. As cities and regions com-pete against each other for investment and citizens, councils have to get clear about how their county differentiates and then decide how they can leverage this advantage through effective and efficient administration. |
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Recommended Book: “First, break all the rules”
The knowledge source on our website offers a selection of books that the team at iProCon HCM have found beneficial. This month we present a book that bases its recommendations on the largest study of management ever undertaken.  “First, break all the rules” gives great advice for everybody who cares
for organizational culture and leadership and also deals with the
question of measurement of “soft skills“ in human capital management
and its impact on companies‘ profits. Click here to read the full article |
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 Events — iProCon HCM 2008 Conference In keeping with their philosophy of providing thought leadership in the field of Human Capital Management, on the 22nd October 2008 iProCon HCM is hosting a conference at the Century Club in central London. The conference is specifically targeted at senior managers and executives seeking to achieve their strategic goals more effectively. It aims at building a bridge between people management and business strategy with a diverse selection of speakers, primarily not from an HR background. Speakers from British Airways, British American Tobacco, The Cranfield University School of Management and others address topics such as innovation and learning organisations, cost re-duction, performance management, change and crisis management. For further information, please click here. |
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Publications: HR & Innovation Culture Professors Keith Goffin and Rick Mitchell from Cranfield School of Management and iProCon HCM consultant Sven Ringling published an article in the German magazine “Personalführung”, the magazine of the German Association of People Management. In “Eine Frage der Kultur” (Innovation-promoting organizational culture) they provide an overview of innovation management successes and take into account the high importance attributed to personnel, culture and organisa¬tion in promoting innovation. To view the English and German abstract, please click here. |