Saturday, September 24, 2011

Case Study 2: Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC)



This case illustration demonstrates the value of an extended face-to-face dialogue with managers affected by the transformed HR service delivery model, following the merger of two 'titans' — the former Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise — in 2005.
The HMRC Operating Model and launch of new HR policies brought a shift of responsibilities for some HR functions from the centre to managers. When the Filling Vacancies policy was launched in February 2006, it exposed a lack of confidence in managers who felt ill-equipped to make difficult decisions affecting their staff. The Head of the Strategy and Policy Team immediately recognised that, with HR Service Centres not yet fully operational, the lack of effective management capability to deal with the cultural change meant that HMRC was exposed to a serious business risk.
Key stakeholders were consulted and the concept of a Taskforce to provide a mobile face-to-face service for HMRC's 17,000 managers was agreed as an innovative and essential tool.
The strap line for the change had been publicised as 'Managers Decide — HR Supports' but managers clearly felt in need of more support than was immediately available. The Taskforce was setup and mobilised within 6 weeks of the concept being proposed, including the recruitment of 20 'core' members from across the business.
To give the team impact and identity, people were appointed with proven leadership skills, who were eager to be involved in change management and could deliver a quality, professional service to their customers, and reflect the community of customers they would serve. This involved the creative use of resources within HR and Learning including restructuring and capitalising the skills of pre-surplus staff.
The Team Leader worked with the HR team subject experts to develop materials for delivery to managers; trained and upskilled team members to give them a clear understanding of the new HR policies and canvassed managers in business areas to gauge the support required. By 30 June 2006, the Taskforce had actively engaged with almost 90% of business units and by 30 June 2007 had delivered 773 events to 11,746 managers.
Reflecting on the formation of the Taskforce, Martin Warlow, who was the team leader, remembers clearly the unusual speed with which the Taskforce was assembled. Martin remarked:
From a standing start to becoming operational, we had a great deal of work to accomplish quickly in terms of getting our ideas, materials and logistics sorted out. Mobility was very important; being able to respond efficiently to the needs of managers was a high priority. We relied to a large extent on a 'pull through' effect — the HR Business Partners operating across the organisation would act as the gateway to their manager communities.
Nick Tooley, another core Taskforce member from HR, recalls how some of the early sessions in particular were treated by managers as surgeries where they expected the Taskforce presentation team to have ready-made answers to their operational issues.
We had to assume an assertive stance in these situations and make it clear that we were there to advise them on how to make judgements and decisions, not to take them on their behalf. This required persistence and practice and eventually the penny dropped and managers started to engage with the Taskforce in the right way.
The success of the Taskforce has developed and improved HR's standing throughout HMRC; provided a conduit for real-time feedback about the effectiveness of policies and has proved a positive platform for HR to demonstrate a truly customer-focused approach. As previously noted, a strong customer relationship was developed with the HR Business Partner network, the primary customers for the service, who work with senior Directors to identify the need for Taskforce interventions and to prioritise requests across their business areas. The context of the sessions was developed around the 'Raising the Bar/Driving Up Performance' theme, underpinned by a passion for and an ethos of continuous improvement.
Management guidance in the form of a set of materials called BOOST was developed and deployed to support managers in their day-to-day role as coaches and motivators of their people. Intended to supplement but not replace other published guidance, it was essentially designed to help managers to work with both individuals and teams to build positive working relationships to ensure high performance, and to tackle under-performance, built on a practical, commonsense approach to the broad principles of good management practice.
An example of its use in supporting managers about the best way to praise and acknowledge good performance is shown in Box 1
Box 1: BOOST example

Elaine had been in post for 5 years and her performance was above average but she sometimes had difficulty in resolving customers' enquiries quickly and effectively. Helen, her manager, had observed this. She worked with Elaine to identify the problem by coaching her for a short time each week to help her improve. With Helen's encouragement and support Elaine was soon making good progress and Helen was quick to praise her for the extra effort she was making. Within 4 weeks Elaine was managing all her customer calls much better and Helen gave her some very positive feedback. At the team meeting, Helen also praised Elaine's effort and achievement and other team members also said 'well done'.
Use this activity to check how you give praise or acknowledge good performance in your team.
  1. How many times have you given praise or acknowledged good performance in the past month?
  2. Think of the last time you gave praise to a member of your team 
    • What was it for?
    • How did it make you feel?
    • How did they react?
  3. How could you improve the way you praise people in your team when they perform well?

A bespoke, but simple, database is used to identify the most appropriate service (e.g., presentations, coaching, mentoring, workshops, master classes, etc.) and to allocate resources, mixing and matching team skills to provide the best possible service delivery.
In addition, the Taskforce is the public face of HMRC in international relations and has delivered special one-off events for the Royal Institute of Public Administrations, foreign delegations including the Ethiopian Ministry of Revenue and delegations from France and Poland.

Measurable Benefits

The Taskforce programme has delivered a range of benefits to HMRC, summarised as follows:
  • Reaction sheets completed at Taskforce events show:
    • the content of interventions 'useful or very useful' — 97%;
    • overall 'good or very good' — 89%;
    • Taskforce team member's delivery 'effective or very effective' — 90%.
  • Detailed evaluation carried out after managers have had the opportunity to put their learning into practice confirms that they are better equipped to understand their role in implementing the new policies.
  • Taskforce interventions covering the new HR policies for managing poor performance and attendance and managing sickness absence have contributed to the reductions in sickness absence levels across HMRC, that is:
    • Days lost 12 months to January 2006 = 1,138,587
      • average 94,882 per month
      • average 11.68 per employee per year
    • Days lost 12 months to January 2007 = 966,252
      • average 80,521 per month
      • average 10.34 per employee per year

Testimonials — Examples of Unsolicited Feedback from Different Parts of HMRC

  • Tax Credit Office:
     the workshop has equipped managers with the tools and confidence to implement HR Policies positively 
  • Central Compliance:
     it was brilliant. All of it. From the way the material was used to deal with the issues they had at the beginning, to the way they were guided through the policies so they now understand how everything fits 
  • Debt Management and Banking:
     our people have valued these events. it's essential we continue to offer this support across HMRC — there is the demand and need 
  • Director of Studies at the Royal Institute of Professional Administrations (following a Taskforce presentation on 'Leading Strategic Change'):
     your excellent presentation  was extremely interesting and relevant. As you will recall, the participants asked many questions during the visit and I believe we could have continued with more 
  • Detection:
    They were impressed by the speed with which the event had been arranged; We have generally developed good HR working practices but we need to persist and further improve. Your session was critical to this process and I am looking to use the HR task team to roll-out the HR changes to all Regional managers; Speaking as a manager I feel I now have a far clearer understanding of the key issues. I feel more in tune with what is expected of me as a manager and how to achieve this with HR supporting my management decisions. I think the concept of a task force is an excellent one and I hope this method will be used in other areas in the future.
  • Comment made at a People User Forum:
    the Taskforce event was the best HR event I ever been to in all my years in the Department.
These results demonstrate that the use of an intelligent blend of face-to-face events in the form of presentations, coaching, mentoring, workshops and master classes served to engage managers in a major transformation of HR service delivery and helped to equip them to carry out their people management responsibilities. Identifying the managers as key stakeholders and then responding efficiently with interventions that were appropriate to their operational circumstances were the foundation stones of the Taskforce approach.

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