Amid all the talk of the scale and impact of the cuts announced by the Chancellor on Wednesday, relatively little has been said about the management challenge of executing such a colossal change programme.

There was the obligatory press release from the CIPD on the day, about how important HR would be to the process etc, but we had to wait until today for someone to really hit the nail on the head.

Stephen Toft, who blogs at Flip Chart Fairy Tales, distils the issues with great precision in his guest post today for the Guardian.

His first point relates to the unprecedented nature of the challenge:

Few people, even in the private sector, have experience of reducing an organisation's running costs by over 20 per cent in four years. For the public sector this is all completely new. Almost no-one has experience of managing a downsizing on this scale.

The reason that this is important, of course, is that these changes are not simply going to happen because the politicians have announced them. The politicians have set the policy, but now it has to be delivered. From now on it's all about execution and delivery, which is the most difficult part.

Why is delivery so difficult? Stephen gives two main reasons. First, lack of experience among the managers who will need to implement the changes. Second, the Government's so far rather hazy vision of the new order that will replace the public sector as we have known it:

The management challenge for the public sector over the next few years is immense. It requires organisational change on a scale that few leaders have ever seen and which almost none has any experience of managing...

However, the vision for the public sector is anything but clear. Perhaps this is the biggest challenge of all. Public sector managers, used to steady-state operations and ever increasing budgets, are being asked to interpret vague ideas about collaboration and social innovation, and then turn them into creative and cheaper services. All this must be done in four years with next to no investment.

It seems to me that what's needed is a credible vision of exactly what public services will look like in four years' time: a narrative of change with a clear destination that people can grasp and understand - even when they don't agree. If this isn't forthcoming, the prognosis for delivery of this most ambitious of organisational change programmes is not good.

The Government's planned permanent cap on highly skilled and skilled non-EU migrants due from next April will be bad for business, says Baroness Jo Valentine, the cross bench peer and chief executive of London First, in an article today on the political website epolitix.com.

She makes the very good point, in the light of yesterday's swingeing comprehensive spending review, that the government is reliant on economic growth as a pathway out of recession.

As the public sector shrinks the private sector is expected to take up the slack. But private sector growth is partly reliant on the attraction of world class talent to work in the UK. Businesses must be able to recruit the best people and move both people and teams from 'a' to 'b' as required - otherwise eventually they will base themselves elsewhere.

Some 50,000 people fell into the highly skilled and skilled non-EU category last year, says Baroness Valentine. "These individuals," she adds, "contribute directly to the Exchequer through tax and national insurance, indirectly through their employers or the businesses they set up, and through the extra UK jobs they create."

Clearly the Government is under political pressure to appear to be tough on immigration, because it is an issue that voters are concerned about. But the Government needs to weigh this against against the urgent need to promote economic recovery.

It should also consider the broader picture about what kind of Britain we want, she argues.

Some of our biggest achievers - the likes of Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy of Art; Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid, who designed our Olympics Aquatics Centre; James D Watson, who came here from Chicago, and discovered the structure of DNA at Cambridge University - all fall into the group being targeted by the cap - the highly skilled and skilled non-EU immigrants. This is the group most likely to make UK residents better off, and one which we drive away at our peril.

You have to admit she's got a point.

UPDATE 22 October
One day later, the UK Border Agency announces that no more visas to workers from outside Europe are being issued this month as the 600 limit (under the interim cap due to be replaced next April by the new permanent cap) has been reached.

Today the Chancellor, George Osborne, announced as part of the comprehensive spending review (PDF format 2MB) a 26% cut in the Department of Work and Pensions core budget over the next four years - to be achieved partly through "better targeting of spending" on the Health and Safety Executive.

We don't yet know the details of the impending cuts to the HSE, nor how they will combine with the Government's new approach to health and safety, but it seems reasonable to expect a shake up, especially in the light of Prime Minister David Cameron's recent comments on ending the "compensation culture" and getting rid of "senseless" health and safety regulations.

But just as the state prepares to retreat from unpopular aspects of health and safety regulation, up steps the private sector, in the form of troubled oil giant BP, with a new scheme to link employee reward with performance on safety.

According to the BBC, BP's new boss Bob Dudley has told the company's employees that safety will be the "sole measure for bonus payments in the fourth quarter".

Dudley is quoted as saying that "we are committed to ensure that a low-probability, high-impact incident such as the Deepwater Horizon tragedy never happens again".

BP's focus on "low probability" incidents may come as no surprise after Deepwater Horizon, but it is an interesting perspective nonetheless. It is a reminder that risk assessment - and health and safety regulation generally - needs to take into account not just the likelihood of incidents that threaten health and safety but also the impact of even unlikely or low probability incidents, where that impact would be severe.

A good place to go for information on tomorrow's comprehensive spending review as it happens is straight to the horse's mouth - the horse in this case of course being Her Majesty's Treasury.

Another place to look will be Twitter, especially tweets tagged with the #spendingreview hashtag, which will be used by HM Treasury, other Government departments and sundry commentators, analysts and pundits for updates relating to the spending review.

Today's HR Link of the Day points to the Treasury's spending review news page, which includes links to the Treasury's Twitter channel, RSS feed and email alerting service.

The CSR for HR
For immediate reaction to the spending review as it happens, from an HR perspective, register now to receive a reminder of Personnel Today's comprehensive spending review live blog and to take part in the discussion. For other useful links see Sarah Welfare's post on the Employment Intelligence blog today.

Returning to London from New York on Saturday morning, I found the debate on the Government's comprehensive spending review, to be delivered this week, hotting up nicely.

All are agreed that Wednesday will see Chancellor George Osborne announce the biggest UK government spending cuts since the second world war. But opinions are sharply polarised on the desirability of the cuts programme at this time and the likely consequences.

The Government's opponents are predicting dire consequences, none more so than the Guardian, which had this to say in a strongly worded editorial last week:

If in next Wednesday's comprehensive spending review [George Osborne] presses ahead with his scorched-earth fiscal policy, the chancellor will be choosing to ignore all the signs of worrying weakness in the UK economy. He will be plumping for discredited ideology over common sense. The result is likely to be a massive gamble with the economy and serious damage to public services.

On the other side, the Government's supporters are fighting back. In a blog post yesterday, the Daily Telegraph's deputy editor Benedict Brogan quoted in full a letter from an impressive collection of UK business leaders urging George Osborne to press ahead with the cuts envisaged in the Budget earlier this year.

According to Brogan:

At a time when some, led by Labour, question whether the Chancellor is going too far too fast, it is reassuring to hear those in the City who have not lost heart or are not muttering about the perceived risks of the CSR. The Treasury will be delighted to have these endorsements. The most powerful argument these businessmen advance is that the private sector will easily make up the jobs lost in the public sector.

In the letter itself, the business leaders, from major companies including BT, Asda, Kingfisher, Arup, Alliance Boots and Diageo, say:

There is no reason to think that the pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget will undermine the recovery. The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities.

Since there is little doubt that the Government is determined to press full-steam ahead with its cuts programme, albeit with some political spin around the edges to soften the headlines, I sincerely hope that it is the business leaders and not the Guardian who are proved right in the end.

A personal perspective - invaluable for HR
In the meantime, a most engaging and interesting take on the Government's public sector cuts is provided by the anonymous author of A redundant public servant's blog. In my view this should be compulsory reading for HR professionals in the public sector and beyond, so I have made Sunday's post my HR Link of the Day.

On his biography page, the author of this blog says:

I have been a public servant for some 20 years. I am now being made redundant. This is a blog about my experiences in facing up to this fact, dealing with the consequences and trying to find a new job.

In this post he talks about his, so far unsuccessful, experiences of job seeking in the private sector. Later he develops an argument that, from his perspective, the coming CSR looks like an inflection point, leading to significant historical change:

This weekend a small group of men (largely) meeting in an obscure English country house will complete their plan to reshape our country. Permanently and for the better they hope.

The shock, despair, anger, confusion, resentment and over-riding sorrow among colleagues losing their jobs and the people losing the services they rely on tells me that the country is already changing. Changing rapidly. Changing fundamentally. And, while we may still feel the same sort of country on Thursday morning this will not last.

Day by slow day. Job loss by job loss. Service cut by service cut we will change. Until we end up, if not somewhere better, certainly somewhere very different.

Whatever happens, voices such as that of the redundant public servant will be an invaluable aid to understanding the perceptions of people at the sharp end and the human consequences of the cuts for employees.

For a first line manager or head of function the decision-making process in recruitment is made easier by the fact they will normally know a great deal about the requirements of the role, having done the job or one very like it themselves.

By contrast, senior managers further up the hierarchy, including CEOs, often make hiring decisions about people with specialist knowledge and experience that they simply don't share. So how can they make reliable decisions and get the best people?

Ben Horowitz, of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, shared some good ideas on this on his blog yesterday. These will be particularly helpful to small businesses or start-ups, but the points also hold true in organisations of any size.

The first step as a senior manager recruiting specialists whose specialism you don't share is to acknowledge your own ignorance, but also to resist the temptation to use the interview process as a way of educating yourself. If you haven't thought through in advance what your selection criteria will be, you may end up making classic mistakes, such as selecting someone out of central casting because they look the part.

One way to prepare, he says, is to talk to domain experts:

If you know a great head of sales, interview them first and learn what they think made them great. Figure out which of those strengths most directly match the needs of your company. If possible, include the domain expert in the interview process.

Ben also discusses the composition of the interview panel, the use of references and the final decision-making process - and he provides example interview questions.

Recruitment: the basics
The XpertHR employment law manual provides guidance on every aspect of the recruitment process, from determining the needs of the job to induction of new recruits (subscription required).

The gender pay gap is a hot topic both sides of the Atlantic right now, so it seemed an appropriate subject for my second post from New York. At its core the debate looks fundamentally the same in the US and in the UK, though the legal technicalities are different.

On the one hand, there is the issue of sex discrimination by employers, leading to unequal pay between men and women doing work of equal value or, in the words of the US legislation, performing "equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility" (The Equal Pay Act of 1963). On the other hand, there is the stubbornly persistent gender pay gap, which continues in both countries despite decades of legislation outlawing discrimination in pay.

The common issues are well illustrated by two posts that caught my eye this week, one from the US and one from the UK.

The first is by Stephanie R. Thomas, Director of the Equal Employment Advisory and Litigation Support Division of MCG, on the Compensation Café blog. She looks at the Paycheck Fairness Act, not yet signed into law, which is being promoted by the Obama administration as "a common-sense bill that will help ensure that men and women who do equal work receive the equal pay that they and their families deserve".

Among other issues, she cites a key criticism being made by opponents of the Paycheck Fairness Act: that it is somehow based on a false assumption that pay disparities between men and women are predominantly the result of discrimination by employers, when in fact much of the remaining gap can be accounted for in other ways.

In an interesting post on his Flip Chart Fairy Tales blog, the anonymous UK HR blogger Rick, makes the same point:

[T]he factors that contribute to the gender pay gap are overwhelmingly social. Like just about every other society in the world, we expect women to take most of the responsibility for looking after children. Much of the gender pay gap is due to the conflict between the requirements of a corporate career and those of childcare.

As I am in New York this week, it seems appropriate to focus some of my HR link of the day posts on issues affecting HR practitioners in the US.

With the midterm congressional elections fast approaching, the issue of employee voting rights crops up. The elections take pace on Tuesday 2 November - a normal working day.

Most employees in the US have a legal right to take time off to vote if the polls are not open for some hours outside their regular shift. But here's the rub: the relevant laws vary in each of the 50 states.

Step forward employment lawyer and blogger John Phillips, who very usefully surveys the law on this issue in every one of the 50 states, from Alabama to Wyoming, in his Word on Employment Law blog.

My eye was drawn to the relevant laws in this neck of the woods:

32. New York - An employee who is registered to vote is allowed "sufficient time" to vote if polls aren't open four consecutive hours outside the employee's regular shift. The employee must notify the employer of the need for time off at least two but not more than ten working days prior to the election, and the employer may specify whether the employee takes time off at the beginning or end of the shift. Employers must post a conspicuous notice of employee rights at least ten days before election day. If an employee has four consecutive hours either before the opening of the polls and the beginning of a working shift, or between the end of a working shift and the closing of the polls, the employee isn't entitled to any paid time. If there aren't four consecutive hours before or after the regular working shift, the employee is entitled to up to two hours paid time off at the beginning or end of the shift. (N.Y. Election Law Sections 3-110 and 17-118)

So there you have it.

In case you were wondering, there are no similar laws in the UK, where elections also take place on normal working days. Although given the situation in last May's general election, when tens of thousands of people were prevented from voting in the evening because polling stations were unable to cope, perhaps we could do with such laws on our side of the pond too.

The first ever UK unconference for HR professionals will take place on on the 21st October in London. Titled Connecting HR, the event will focus on embracing social collaboration, including social media tools, within the HR function and the wider organisation to improve business performance.

As I type this, my spell checker is underlining in red every instance of the word "unconference". I'm not sure I like the word any more than my spell checker, but I do like the concept.

Wikipedia describes an unconference as...

...a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered on a theme or purpose. The term "unconference" has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations

The idea is that the agenda is driven by the attendees rather than the organisers, and the day is broken up into discussion groups based around the topics suggested by the attendees in the lead up to the event.

Now I have absolutely nothing against traditional events. I am more than happy to sit and listen to speakers make prepared presentations - formal lectures even - in a regular conference format, with space for a few questions at the end, provided said speakers are engaging and know what they are talking about.

On the other hand, I think there is also a place for less structured events, where the participants drive the agenda and the discussion on the day.

The more formal approach works well where there are speakers with acknowledged expertise and there is a need for them to impart this to attendees who know less than they do. Employment law topics, for example, spring to mind as being more suited to the traditional approach.

The unconference approach, by contrast, is I think better suited to exploring areas of shared interest among groups of peers who are more evenly matched in terms of their knowledge and experience of the topics under discussion. That's why I think the theme of this month's Connecting HR event is well chosen.

Sadly, I am not able to attend, but I am looking forward to following the discussions remotely on Twitter (via the #ConnectingHR hashtag), Yammer, the Connecting HR website and the HR blogosphere.

HR and social media: mitigating risks and maximising the impact for your business
For those like me who appreciate being well informed by acknowledged experts in more formal events, a great opportunity to learn about the risks as well as the opportunities of social media for employers will be provided by the XpertHR conference on HR and Social Media, to be held in London on 2 December 2010.

The organisers of the London Olympics are seeking up to 70,000 volunteers to help make the event run successfully. Prospective volunteers have until midnight on 27 October 2010 to apply.

Known as "Games Makers", the volunteers will be required to work for a minimum of 10 days in summer 2012, or 20 days if they volunteer to help at the Paralympic Games too.

In the run up to the events, successful Games Maker applicants will need to attend a 90-minute selection event between February 2011 and February 2012, following which those who are offered a role will have to attend a minimum of three training sessions in the first half of 2012.

All of this adds up to a lot of time off work and, not surprisingly, XpertHR has had several enquiries from HR professionals working in the London area about employer policies on volunteering for the Olympics. Hence today's HR link of the day: the official "Games Maker" information page for employers.

Issues arising from employees volunteering for the Olympics are also discussed in a blog post by my colleague Stephen Simpson and in our latest XpertHR weekly podcast (first item).

Audio: XpertHR Weekly, 8 October 2010   Podcast: Staff volunteering for the Olympics and return-to-work interviews

XpertHR subscribers have access to a new model policy showing how employers can support staff volunteering to help in the Olympics (subscription required).