Developing Professional Practice In HR: a Self-Assessment
Introduction
The key objective of this assessment is to demonstrate the author’s ability to understand the requirements of being an effective and efficient HR professional, to perform efficiently and effectively as a HR professional and to apply CIPD techniques to construct, implement and review a personal development plan.
Activity 1
The Effective HR Professional
The CIPD profession map captures the knowledge and behaviours which HR and L&D professionals should emulate in order to meet the requirements for professional CIPD membership. The map depicts the components of effective people management practice across 10 professional specialisms and portrays 8 fundamental behaviours that underpin good practice across each of these specialist areas. The CIPD profession map is made use of for CPD planning, preparation for an appraisal or review, preparation for CIPD membership, looking for a new job, building a case for professional development, learning about the profession, interview preparation and developing specialist expertise. Organisations make use of the CIPD profession map to identify the skills needed to make change happen, identify teams’ capability, build a competency framework, build a case for development programmes, develop career pathways, focus on behaviours needed for success, build role profiles and identify areas for development. Individuals can also use the map to identify opportunities for further development relevant to their individual needs.
Personally credible: shows enthusiasm to broaden own experience, knowledge, skills and self-insight. Passes on own skills to others, sharing knowledge and experience readily. I have selected these skills, items of knowledge and behaviours because these are two key areas which are paramount to the success of an organisation. The learning and development function within an organisation is vital to identify the training and learning needs of employees and to produce innovative ways of delivering this training. Employee engagement is fundamental to an organisation’s success, to promote an inclusive culture in which the employees align themselves with the organisation’s goals and consider them their own. To develop to band two of learning and development, a HR professional should know the external learning market and be able to map this by researching other organisations. From collating and analysing data at Band one, the HR professional should progress to band two by using this information to identify the capability levels and gaps at team and individual level which affect the organisation’s performance. Within employee engagement, band two should be improved by research and models outlining the key drivers of employee engagement and how they link to organisational performance as part of the psychological contract, that is the non-written contract between an employee and his/her employer. At this level the HR professional should look to ways of improving the interaction of a diverse workforce with a view to improving the company’s performance.
The potential for employee engagement to raise levels of corporate performance and profitability has been noted by the government and policymakers and led to the highly influential and successful work of Engage for Success. The aim of the movement is to provide employers with free tools, techniques and guidance on how to raise the engagement levels of workers, based on the principle that an increasingly engaged workforce will perform better than one that is less engaged as well as benefiting from higher levels of personal well-being, thus ultimately helping to boost the UK economy (MacLeod and Clarke, 2009, Rayton et al, 2012).
The hugely influential work of Gallup, as reported by Harter et al (2012), played no small part in the rise in interest in employee engagement. Gallup began by looking at what was unique to high-performing businesses and business units. Extensive work resulted in the development of the Q12 tool, a 12-question survey to measure engagement. Each of the 8 behaviours is described at 4 bands of professional competence. The 10 professional areas set out what you need to do and what you need to know for each area of the HR profession.
Insights, strategy and solutions and leading HR sit at the heart of the profession and are applicable to all HR professionals, regardless of the role, location or stage of career, whether internally or externally. The other 8 areas identify the knowledge and activities that are needed to provide specialist HR support. The four bands of competence define the contribution that HR professionals make at every stage of their HR career in the following key areas:
- Relationship that HR professional has with client
- Focus of activities performed by HR professional
- Where HR professionals spend their time
- What services they provide to clients
- How their contribution and success is measured
Learning and development have high aspirations and want to be taken seriously, they need to create mutual and effective partnerships with business leaders to drive a strategy that reinforces a learning culture. Learning and development teams impacting results in the New Learning Organisation environment need to build a shared and joint learning vision, a practice of detecting shared ideas of the future that promote genuine commitment and enrolment. In Top Deck organisations, the L&D business leaders recognise that learning is aligned to the business plan. L&D team activity is 100% fully aligned with strategic goals of the organisation compared with only 57% in other organisations.
Activity 2
Group Dynamics & Conflict Resolution
Tuckman proposed a model of development stages for various group settings over time, labelled
- testing and dependence,
- intragroup conflict,
- development of group cohesion and
- functional role relatedness.
The stages of task activity are labelled
- orientation of task,
- emotional response to task demands,
- open exchange of relevant interpretations and
- emergence of solutions.
Tuckman suggests that groups initially concern themselves with orientation accomplished predominantly through testing. Such testing serves to identify the boundaries of both interpersonal and task behaviours, coincident with testing in the interpersonal realm is the establishment of dependency relationships with leaders, other group members or pre-existing standards. It may be said that orientation, testing and dependence constitute the group process of forming. The second point in the sequence is characterised by conflict and polarisation around interpersonal issues, with emotional responding in the task sphere. These behaviours serve as resistance to group influence and task requirements and may be labelled as storming. Resistance is overcome in the third stage in which in-group feeling and cohesiveness develop, new standards evolve and new roles are adopted. In the task realm, intimate, personal opinions are expressed. Thus, we have the stage of norming. Finally, the group attains the fourth and final stage in which interpersonal structure becomes the tool of task activities. Roles become flexible and functional and group energy is channelled into the task. Structural issues have been resolved and structure can now become supportive of task performance. This stage can be labelled as performing. The final stage of adjourning (life cycle) or termination which is concerned with disengagement and ending of the team.
As an example, Tuckman’s theory can be related to a number of teams in which I have played an integral part. In particular, it resonates with the formation of a brand new team project which was created as a pilot, an internal sales team. Each team member came from a different background and the team was diverse and newly formed. On observation, the team was formed as a new function within the business and this created a bond within the team as other teams within the organisation were reluctant to accept the change within the business. The diversity within the team created a team spirit as employees learned from each other and recognised each other’s strengths and weaknesses, during group discussions it was evident the role that each team member played, for example the dominant leaders and the influencers. During the “storming” stage of team development, the team members competed with each other for acceptance and praise from the team leader, settling into each of their respective roles and responsibilities. We then progressed into the norming stage, the team was performing much better and working together effectively, everyone was more respectful of each other and valued each other’s differences, listening to their peers and knowledge was shared freely within the team. The team became very successful and worked well together, friendships were forged and there was a level of trust between team members, although smaller groups within the team began to form. Clear communication and positive and open team meetings allowed for the team to perform highly, with less input from the team leader. Gradually, as the project had been live for a number of years, the team began to disband and disperse as the overall objective of the pilot project had been reached and the team members progressed onto new ventures.
Thomas (1976) interprets this newer classification system as combining two independent dimensions: co-operation or attempting to satisfy the other party’s concerns and assertiveness or attempting to satisfy the one’s own concerns. Thomas depicts five modes of handling conflict, these are: competition, collaboration, compromise, avoiding and accommodation. An advantage of five specific modes is that it reflects independent dimensions of interpersonal conflict behaviour. As interpreted by Thomas (1976), the scheme is based on two separate dimensions of co-operation and assertiveness: competing is assertive and uncooperative, collaborating is assertive and cooperative, avoiding is unassertive and uncooperative, accommodating is unassertive and cooperative and compromising is intermediate in both cooperativeness and assertiveness. The Thomas-Kilmann model has 30 pairs of statements describing modes of handling conflict. Each mode is paired with the other 4 modes an equal number of times. In this model, subjects were asked to choose the statement in each pair that best describes their behaviour in a conflict situation, a profile of behaviour for handling conflict is obtained by totalling the number of statements for each mode which the subjects have chosen. The Thomas-Kilmann model is designed to identify a more specific behavioural intention (accommodation)and to distinguish it from avoiding and other intentions.
Conflict management is viewed as containing 3 major interrelated events: a) perceiving/experiencing unacceptable conflict, b) diagnosing sources of conflict and c) intervening. The model organises 5 conflict management styles based on two dimensions: assertiveness and cooperativeness. On the other hand, the Fisher & Ury model of conflict resolution illustrates a step-by-step method for negotiating conflicts. Principled negotiation, emphasises deciding issues on their merits rather than through competitive haggling or through excessive accommodation. Principled negotiation shows you how to obtain your fair share decently and without having the other person take advantage of you. The Fisher & Ury model comprises four principles. Each principle directly focuses on one of the four basic elements of negotiation: people, interests, opinions and criteria. Effective leaders frequently understand and utilise these four principles in conflict situations.
During negotiations, you are dealing with human beings, they have emotions, deeply held values, different backgrounds and viewpoints and are unpredictable. Misunderstanding can reinforce prejudice and lead to reactions that produce counter-reactions in a vicious circle, rational exploration of possible solutions becomes impossible and a negotiation fails. The purpose of the game becomes scoring points, confirming negative impressions and apportioning blame at the expense of the substantive interests of both parties. Dealing with a substantive problem and maintaining a good working relationship need not be conflicting goals if both parties are committed and psychologically prepared to treat each issue separately on its own individual merits. The basic problem in a negotiation is not in conflicting positions but in the conflict between each side’s needs, desires, concerns and fears.
An example of conflict which occurred was between a manager and previous colleague, there was a breakdown in communication and lack of understanding of their expectations of each other. At the time, the HR Business Partner conducted a mediation meeting to resolve the issues and to improve the working relationship. Each party read a statement to the other person to air their feelings and how they had been affected, giving the other person an opportunity to address the issues that were raised. The HR Business Partner applied the principles of the Fisher & Ury model to resolve the conflict as she separated the issues, objectifying the problems and working with each party to invent a resolution which both party agreed on and which was mutually beneficial. She made it clear that it would only work if both party was unanimous in their decision and that they were both willing to put in the necessary effort. Key action points were set and there was a time limit for each action, these were to be reviewed after a given time period.
Activity 3
Project Management
A current business project which I am part of is the Culture Club which is a regional initiative to create a more diverse and inclusive workplace. The purpose of the project is to talk about equality in the office environment, to promote wellbeing and to increase employee engagement. Two project management/planning techniques which I have applied are SWOT analysis and drill-down problem solving. A SWOT analysis was applied by creating an anonymous survey to understand the positives and negatives of the current workplace environment and to gauge ideas from employees. By circulating an anonymous survey, this encouraged free speech and employees were more likely to be open and honest about what was working well and what areas they felt could be improved. The questions were phrased in a way that they were open and allowed the employee to answer with as much information as they could. I then applied the drill-down problem solving to analyse the data from the questionnaires and to identify what were the issues within the office environment, to identify the recurring issues which were more frequent, I also interrogated the data to identify if certain issues were applicable to isolated groups within the workplace environment. Following on from this, I and the rest of the project team discussed the feedback and created ideas which could resolve the issues and create a more inclusive workplace.
During this project, I applied the Rational Model to overcome an organisational issue which arose. The solutions which I had considered had to be in line with corporate policy, I therefore took the time to analyse all of the results and to generate innovative ideas and solutions. I considered the benefits of implementing these solutions and evaluated each on its own merit to propose the most valuable solution rather than the one with the least risk attached.
When expressing my ideas, I have influenced and persuaded other members of the project team as they made objections, I highlighted the benefits of my ideas and influenced them with my ideas by probing their reasons for objecting, listening to their objections, seeming to agree with them and then explaining to them the benefits of my ideas. As an example, some of the issues that were raised were that people do not talk to each other and they feel that top billers in the office were treated preferentially, another issue that was highlighted was that incentives were alcohol-related, I suggested a breakfast catch up as part of “Wellbeing Wednesdays”. This would be an informal get-together, with breakfast smoothies and a chance for people to talk to each other and connect with colleagues who they wouldn’t normally speak to. I encountered objections over the time it would take away from the business, not following corporate policy and the frequency of when it would be held. I successfully negotiated each of these issues by overcoming each objection and highlighting the positive outcomes that could occur if my ideas were implemented. As a result of my negotiation and influencing power, the event was a great success and is due to be repeated on a monthly basis.
Activity 4
CPD
The results of my self-assessment indicate that I am exceeding expectations in the following areas: personally credible, collaborative, driven to deliver and courage to challenge, closely followed by curious, skilled influencer, employee relations and resourcing and talent planning. I believe that these areas are all fundamental in my role within resourcing and talent planning and that these are closely matched to my behaviours which I have developed within the role. The self-assessment indicates that I am emerging in employee engagement, insights, strategy & solutions and learning and development. One way in which I could develop in the employee engagement area could be to study case studies of external organisations whereby developing their employer brand has helped them to increase retention and retain talent. Through sharing knowledge with colleagues in other areas of the business, this could improve my insight in the organisation.
