So, why is it important to build business management thinking into your people function? We’ve talked for a long time about needing to understand the organisational context, the CIPD released an interesting pod cast in 2012 on this subject. Therefore, building our own knowledge is critical if the function is to succeed in delivering the organisations strategy & plans. Too often though we don’t operate the function with a business mindset. InFocus HR can provide interim/consulting support providing tailored solutions to support your need.
So, what do we mean by Business Management Principles?:
Business management as a term can be quite broad. However, at InFocus HR we like to think of it covering a number of key areas required to manage a successful people function.
Even the smallest of people teams can use some of the thinking to help them manage both the day to day challenges as well as thinking about the future.
What does good business management look like?:
- Finance – Working with finance to ensure budgets are understood and planned. Helping to build investment cases using combined finance and people insight. People leadership team have the skills to manage budgets. Budgets are tracked so that plans can be amended to leverage available spend.
- Risk – Identification, management and tracking of functional risks in addition to the wider people risks. People team receive risk management training and understand why it’s important for the function.
- Audit – Liaising with the audit team to ensure planned people audits, with agreed scope and outcomes delivered.
- Strategy & Planning – The People leadership team is able to define for example a vision, people strategy and delivery plan. Working with any organisational strategy team to gather wider people implications. Agreeing an approach to help you define strategy. Turning your strategy into an agreed plan.
- Projects – Effective delivery of plans and changes through project management. Implementation of basic tools such as scoping documents, milestone planning, resource allocation and reporting. Setting targets and measures of success to track progress and outcomes.
- Process Management – Using Process management and continuous improvement tools to improve end user expereince. As a result you have defined end user experience and journeys. Agreeing process accountability across the people team.
- Analytics – Generating the right people insight for the organisation. Organisational wide data (i.e. finance, marketing and operations) is used to support root cause analysis and consequently options planning.
- Measures – Defining, agreeing and tracking operational key performance indicators or service level agreements.
- Supplier Management – Effectively managing suppliers to ensure they are delivering the services expected at the agreed cost. This can be achieved through frequent review sessions and clear escalations routes.
How can we help you?:
At InFocus HR we offer simple, end user focused solutions to help you run your function. Therefore you get the right balance of service delivery, cost and risk. So, what can we offer?:
- Firstly, we’d undertake an initial assessment of your current business management activity. We can then make recommendations for areas to work on.
- We can help you define a Chief Operating Officer HR/People role.
- Insight into the best way to provide people analytics. So whether that’s creating in-house capability or outsourcing. We also have access to great partners who can help with benchmarking or data analytics.
- Facilitating your team to define a People Strategy & plan. Identifying the correct mix of people to implement your plan based on impact and contribution, using The GC Index tool.
- Defining a project management approach that works for your team. With access to simple tools and advice on project management training.
- Introducing simple user experience / journey mapping tools. In addition we can support the creation of a process improvement team and approach.
- Reviewing your approach to risk management, working with the organisation’s risk team. As a result you will have better insight into your functional risks.
- Working with audit to agree joint ways of working and agreeing a rolling audit plan.
- Defining ways to manage your functional suppliers.
- Reviewing and creating appropriate Delegated Authorities for the function.
For an initial conversation, or if you think we can help then please complete the contact form below and one of the InFocus team will be in touch!