Evolve Associates Limited

The client has invited evolve to assist in three key elements of its ongoing HR strategy: Culture, Communication and Talent Management.

Against the recent decline in economic conditions and pressure on the traditional sources of income the HRD wants to ensure that he makes best use of the ‘flat’ period to prepare the business for the upturn. Concerned that a return to normal economic conditions would bring a new level of competitiveness, he did not want to see his talented employees ‘poached’ by competitors. Given the prevailing strategy through 2009 of deferring or even cancelling trainee programmes he is concerned that this will bring a wave of pressure in the next year or two on ‘head-hunting’ to fill the gap in newly qualifieds and pipeline talent.

With approval of the executive team evolve is working with the HR team to:

• develop the vision and values of the busness in line with a change in Culture
• to ensure that the employees are fully engaged through a comprehensive consultation and communication programme
• devise and implement a talent management process that is relevant, innovative and carefully measured to track progress and results

Using the next 12 months (2009/10) to formulate and complete this strategy project it is planned to move into tactical implementation in 2010/11. This is seen as only the beginning in a continuing evolution to move this practice from a traditional law practice to a modern, commercial enterprise and will work closely with other projects within the business.

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Historically this organisation had been three separate government sponsored organisations that had merged over a period of years up to 2007. The legacy of different reward and pay structures had left the organisation with a planning and structure problem that appeared to be exposing them to talent poaching into the private sector and no defence against inflated salary promises. The project was broken down into three key components:

• Pay
• Benefits
• Job Evaluation

We were asked to address these three areas with a view to rationalising, harmonising and benchmarking for competitiveness with the private sector.

Pay

evolve worked with associates to design and implement a new pay progression strategy allowing individuals to be re-banded where appropriate, red-circled if necessary and provide clear progression from one band to the next by working closely with the job evaluation team to ensure consistency and clarity of qualification to move through the bands. Benchmarking of pay revealed that there was no serious issue around pay competitiveness but that the bands could be clouded by inaccurate role descriptions and job titles. This element involved working closely with the Assistant Directors of both Finance and HR and their teams including regular reference to the executive team for approval and liaison with the trade union.

Benefits

The benefits were split into two main categories: those in line with public sector ie: pension, death in service and sickness (these were excluded from the review) and the non-pay or voluntary benefits element. Streamlining the benefits and creating instead a cash payment relieved the HR team of a tremendous amount of administration and enabled finance to predict and control budget spend more accurately. This involved evolve facillitating an independent communication programme of focus groups across the organisation to allow all employees to freely express their views and aspirations whilst also managing expectations. This part of the project has been interrupted by the potential change in government guidelines and remains open ended in terms of the next steps and communication programme.

Job Evaluation

Due to the legacy of different organisations merging there was a disproportionate number of job descriptions and this was causing some confusion of job roles and impacting on job evaluation. Without a clear pay progression strategy it was also proving difficult to reward performance in a structured manner and had caused a degree of grade drift and ‘points’ bartering.

We conducted a volume of job interviews with both employees and their line managers to draw up a shorter but more accurate generic job description which was then correlated with the pay strategy element of the project. We created a job evaluation process including a new JE Panel which enabled disagreements and threats of equal pay claims to be thoroughly investigated and resolved without escalating into full disputes.

The key role of evolve was to co-ordinate the different elements of the project by bringing in specialists but also managing costs to only use this expertise as and when required. By supporting the HR and Finance Assistant Directors evolve enabled the project to continue to stay on track, over a three year period, taking account of holidays, absence and other business pressures including annual Treasury pay remit requirements. Evolve has received excellent feedback from the business and now continues to work with the organisation on a retainer basis.

"...LL delivers and delivers and delivers"

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The energy sector is a highly competitive industry requiring skilled and talented individuals at all levels.

This has created an environment of 'chasing the dollar' (or pound!). This particular energy generating business is part of a larger conglomorate facing some key structural changes between now and 2012. Recognising that the success of future strategic decisions relied heavily on the talent and discretionary efforts of its staff, it is seen as imperative to retain their current employees.

The Chairman and MD wanted to 'test' their own beliefs that their staff were committed, happy and fully engaged and that the benefits package was competitive and up to date. After some discussion at board level it was agreed that isolating feedback to the elements of reward and benefits would be a clear 'tangible' measure of one level of employee engagement.

The station already conducts employee consultation forums on a very regular basis so it was felt that qualitative data was readily available. What was lacking was quantitative analysis of employee feedback and it was agreed that an employee survey would provide this data.

As a pre-requisite to the survey evolve conducted a full audit of the existing benefits to establish what benefits were available and whether there was any discretionary loyalty elements.

What did we do?

As a first step evolve conducted a full audit of the existing benefits. This was then benchmarked against eight other businesses within the sector that were seen as main competitors to this organisation. evolve also consulted with the pension actuarial consultant regarding the final salary scheme and its relevance to modern day practice of money purchase arrangements.

Having provided a full report back to the Board regarding the value and imporatance of each benefit we highlighted that in this sector final salary schemes are ‘bucking the trend’ and generally remain open even to new employees and we were able to evidence this to the board as a key attraction and retention tool.

Based on the benefits audit and the results from the benchmarking analysis we were able to design, construct and deliver a bespoke and relevant employee benefits survey to the staff. This was completed by 97% of staff and provided valuable data and feedback to the business.

The project was completed on time and inside of budget and currently we are in regular contact with the business to monitor their strategic process. It is anticipated that we will work closely with this organisation again in late 2010/11 when other projects are completed which will enable us to consider the feasibility or otherwise of a flexible benefits programme.

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This business offers complex energy soltions on a regional and global scale and have just completed their first 10 year plan. Entrepreneurialism is prized and encouraged throughout the organisation. They plan to accelerate an expansion programme and want to ensure that the vision values and strategy of the orgnanisation properly reflect these growth plans and are embedded from the very top to the very bottom of the business.

A fundamental part of this strategy is to underpin the entrepreneurial growth with strong risk and financial systems and a recognition of the need to stay ahead of the market in recruiting, developing and retaining extremely talented people. With a move of premises and all the logistical issues that this entails we are not due to start this project until November of this year (2009) but our plan is to encompass the following:

Work alongside the HR Director and her team on interpreting the vision and values set by the executive team and what this means in terms of:

• what good looks like
• expression in terms of behaviour requirements
• communication

Consult with the team on pay reward and benefits, setting these against the behaviour requirements. This will involve:

• quanititative data analysis
• qualitative data analysis
• global mobility issues
• external research and competitor analysis

There are expectations that each of these elements will themselves be broken down into a combination of:

• pure delivery by evolve
• guidance only be evolve - supporting the in house team to take control of these components
• bringing in specialists and associates as and when required

evolve will be responsible for ensuring that the objectives of the project are clearly defined and delivered on time and within budget and be accountable for project management in liaison with the HR Director and other Executives within the business.

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