The Problem: Difficulties in handling employee-related challenges
This education institution faced increasing difficulties in handling employee-related challenges. Their HR policies, such as disciplinary, capability, and absence management, had grown overly complex and rigid, often reaching 30 pages long.
This resulted in:
- HR and line managers becoming entangled in complicated, outdated processes.
- Policies being outdated and, in some cases, non-compliant with current legislation.
- A lack of flexibility within policies, preventing managers from adapting to specific circumstances.
- Employees struggling to understand how policies would be applied to them during difficult situations.
- Frequent disputes with unions over policy interpretations, leading to deteriorated employee relations and severely damaged staff morale.
The Solution
We proposed a full overhaul of the HR policies, modernising them to reflect the needs of a leading employer.
Our approach included:
- Conducting a comprehensive review of all HR policies to identify key issues.
- Creating a set of working groups involving managers, HR colleagues, and unions to ensure input from all key stakeholders.
Establishing clear principles for new policies, ensuring they were:
- Brief and high-level, with procedural guidance for managers.
- Flexible, allowing managers to handle situations in the most appropriate way.
- Written in plain English to ensure they were easy to understand.
- Designed to empower managers, reducing their dependence on HR for daily decision-making.
Key Outcomes:
After 18 months of collaborative work, the new policies were successfully implemented, leading to significant improvements in:
- Handling of employee matters, with more efficient and effective processes in place.
- Working relationships between the organisation and trade unions, thanks to clearer, mutually understood policies.
- The overall employee relations environment, where morale improved, and disputes were reduced due to more transparent and flexible policy applications.
- These changes have had a long-term positive impact on how the institution manages its workforce, setting them up for continued success
.
