Putting the "people agenda" at the forefront of the "business agenda" is essential for business success, according to a leading human resources senior manager.
Businesses must "work out the issues that affect people's lives on the ground", said Mr John Guinan, director of human resources at Bank of Ireland. He spoke to The Irish Times before presenting a paper on Making People Management a Priority at a recent seminar on employee well-being, organised by Liberty Risk Services. If businesses want enhanced performance, it will only beachievable by engaging with employees as people with human needs and concerns, he said.
One initiative undertaken by the bank is a leadership programme that has run for several years. It facilitates managers to reflect on the decisions they make about their areas and their businesses.
"We've been consistent. We've tried to run these things, rather than as a one-off, as a staged process. We've built in what we call a `climate survey'. We now measure the climate of each branch or unit every year," Mr Guinan said.
The "climate survey", entitled What's it like to work here?, explores the relationship between the individual employee and the bank; the company direction; and the worker's perception of the quality of management, work organisation, their level of skills, communication, and their remuneration and career. "They're the banner headlines. People are asked `Are you encouraged to seek new and better ways to do things? Do you get sufficient training? Have you sufficient authority to get on with your job? Are communications good? Are management responsive to issues that you raise? Are promotions based on merit? Who's responsible for your career development? Do you feel empowered? Does management act with integrity?" he said.
The results of the climate survey are dealt with locally - managers sit down with their staff and look at the results for their region or branch. "We call it a workout session and we go through the issues that were involved there," he added.
"One of the things we do every year is each manager is assessed against a number of people-management practices. They're assessed by the people they manage. The results of that are fed back to the manager. The manager has to share them with their manager/supervisor and with their own people. "
There are about 37 people-management procedures, in six "clusters", namely "communicating the business context", "leading for change", "giving clarity and direction", "building high-performance teams", "motivating people", and "managing individual performance". "It takes time to understand people as individuals and how they approach their work," Mr Guinan said, commenting on the "motivating people" cluster. Under the "building high-performance teams" cluster, managers are assessed on their effectiveness in giving the group a sense of having a common purpose. Other people-strategies from a wide range of initiatives include an emphasis on internal communications, skills training and certified management programmes. "We've got internal communications managers to support line management. We've done a significant investment in training and skill levels and getting skill levels up."
New management programmes include numerous opportunities for certified training. Training leading to a qualification is more popular and beneficial to the individuals who do the training and to the Bank of Ireland. And participants get more out of such courses because they feel they're getting personal development as well, he said. Another initiative is a CDROM that enables people to create a personal development plan that is agreed with their supervisor. The personal development plan helps people to feel that the organisation cares about them. They feel they've got an individual learning plan and they're working through it.
There is also a nine-month induction programme that leads to a certificate in financial customer services. "Again, it gives a certificate to people and it's done on the job with mentoring."
jmarms@irish-times.ie
