How are public sector HR departments coping with their current circumstances? 2011 has been a particularly challenging year for many public sector employers as the full impact of Chancellor George Osborne's package of economic austerity measures begins to be felt.Today's entry in our series in which HR practitioners, bloggers and consultants share their experiences of their year in HR so far comes from Jane Pound, Director at Signal Business Consulting.
Jane has worked with a number of different public sector HR departments over the last year, and is therefore well placed to provide an overview of the impact that austerity measures are having on public sector HR departments.
You can connect with Jane via LinkedIn and follow Signal Business Consulting on Twitter.
If you'd like to share your own experiences of your year in HR so far, please feel free to have your say. You can post a comment via the box below, or get in touch via e-mail, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn.
- My year in HR so far... Catch up with all the posts in this series.
"I bet you think we're utterly in chaos."
I've lost count of the number of times I've heard this from fraught-looking HR colleagues in the public sector this year.
Since the beginning of 2011 I have been working on assignments in three major public sector areas: Education, Health and a Central Government Department in Whitehall.
Each of these organisations is going through an intense period of change. This is a direct result of the Comprehensive Spending Review, the prospect of significant budget cuts and the "normal" course of organisational change.
I find myself increasingly reassuring the public sector HR people I meet that no, I do not think that they are in chaos; I think that they are coping with the reality of working in the public sector today.
Some common themes from these experiences;
- The focus is absolutely on preserving the quality of frontline services, to minimise the impact of organisational change on service users, that they at least should be offered a decent, reasonable alternative access to the services they need where service offerings are changing.
- Where job losses need to be made, these organisations are doing everything they can to accept volunteers and only take the compulsory route when completely necessary.
- These processes should not be overly prolonged. Once committed to the savings they need to make they're getting on with it. The public sector so often finds itself on the receiving end of bad press for acting too slowly. But my experience this year in the public sector is quite the opposite. Organisational change in the public sector in 2011 has been fast and deep. Whilst this approach undoubtedly ensures that the demands of finance are met, the impact on people is another common theme.
- The thing that characterises this year in HR for me above all previous years, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the concentration of HR matters arising due to the impact of change on people in emotional and behavioural terms. I anticipate that this will continue to be the predominant feature of my year in HR and well into next year too.
- My year in HR so far... Catch up with all the posts in this series.
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