Case Study - Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Background
The Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) is one of Europe's leading open-air art organisations showing modern and contemporary work by leading international artists.
Issue
- Rapid growth and cultural change
Over the past 5 years YSP has experienced substantial growth and completed major capital developments creating an internationally renowned centre of open-air modern and contemporary art. YSP staff numbers have had to grow dramatically on very tight budgets with limited internal HR resource.
Although it still has charitable status, the commercial performance of the new visitor centre (including retail, restaurant, café and conference facilities) has become critical to the sustainability of YSP.
Solution
Red22 provide ongoing HR advice and guidance to support management decision making as required. Red22 have worked with YSP for 5 years supporting the management team in understanding good employment practice, and guiding and mentoring internal management on many employee issues such as recruitment and assessment, managing performance, dealing with sickness and absenteeism and the development of robust employment contracts and policies and procedures.
Result
The Red22 approach has been one of guiding and mentoring, transferring knowledge so that YSP now has internal capability, whilst still providing the team with specialist support when needed.
Your business is growing or changing
HR infrastructure
- Determining terms and conditions that support the goals of your organisation
- Developing clear contracts of employment that are legally sound and easy to understand
- Establishing ways of working - including policies, procedures and induction that meet legal requirements and best practice
- Developing employee information (such as a company handbook or intranet) for clear, unambiguous understanding of organisational expectations
- Planning redundancy programmes, including:-project managing the communication and consultation process, developing a selection procedure which is right for your business, implementation of the redundancy programme, outplacement for those employees being made redundant
Case Study- Wilson Connolly
Background
Wilson Connolly was one of the UK's largest home builders, employing over 2,000 people across 9 regional offices. The business was acquired by Taylor Woodrow in October 2003.
Issue
- Limited HR culture or infrastructure
Wilson Connolly was a large employer within a very traditional industry sector. It had very little HR infrastructure, and due to its regional organisational it suffered from a fragmented and inconsistent approach to people management. The HR function was under resourced and burdened with poor employee relations.
- Preparing the business for sale
A new Director of HR joined the team with a clear remit to improve employee relations and update the HR infrastructure, with the possible ultimate goal of preparing the business for sale.
Solution
Due to lack of internal HR resource and an immediate requirement to focus on employee relations, Red22 were asked to completely overhaul a range of employee information and communications. Red22 worked with Wilson Connolly over a period of 18 months as outsourced expertise.
Result
A clear, fresh approach to employee communications was developed providing Wilson Connolly with a set of HR essentials that ensured that the HR function was well placed for the due diligence process. The project included:
- A complete revision of existing company policies and procedures, along with the development of new company policies and procedures, all written in the new HR style
- The development of a new fresh employee handbook
- Complete overhaul of all company job descriptions, across all regional functions
Pay & benefits
- Developing the salary review process
- Ensure you stay competitive in your market place
- Annual review of benefit providers
- Introduce cost effective benefit schemes
Case Study- EarthTech
Background
Earth Tech is a global provider of consulting, engineering and construction services. It is part of the Tyco group and employs over 8,000 people in 130 offices around the world. The organisation has gone through significant change in the last few years and has grown rapidly through acquisition.
Issues
- Attracting, motivating and retaining high calibre specialist employees
- Key long term aim to position Earth Tech as a leading engineering employer within the market place
- Very small HR department already stretched by significant workload created by recent merger and acquisition activity
Solution
As part of a broader reward strategy review Earth Tech needed specialist resource to support the HR team achieve this key strategic goal. Red22 worked alongside the HR team to develop an appropriate approach to investigating the options that Earth Tech had for introducing Flexible Benefits across the company. For the first time in the company history employee focus groups were set up to collect employee feedback, and a plan was developed integrating existing reward packages with flexible options that were designed to meet employee wants and needs.
Result
The resulting plan helped Earth Tech towards their ultimate goal of reward strategy review, with minimal disruption to the existing HR team. The review genuinely involved employees and helped to support the overall goal of motivation and retention of specialist staff.
"We had a specific project that needed undertaking, which required expert knowledge, good organisational skills and considerable internal liaison. Internal resource was limited and it was great to be able to outsource the job to Red22 knowing that they would work well with the company and deliver thorough results to a deadline."
European HR Director, Earth Tech
Performance management
- Create clear and relevant job descriptions so employees know what is expected of them
- Managing performance - i.e. any training, development, coaching and guidance necessary to ensure that the individual performs well in their current job, and will develop into further roles
- Reviewing performance - i.e. regular and consistent feedback on how an individual is doing 360-degree feedback processes, self assessment, assessment centres etc.
- Rewarding performance - i.e. recognising achievement and high levels of performance
Case Study- Shell
Background
Shell is a global group of energy and petrochemical companies operating in more than 145 countries. Shell Aviation is a part of the Shell group selling products and services to the aviation industry.
As a result of a restructuring of Shell Aviation Europe there was both a need and an opportunity to review teams in relation to jobs, skills, performance and development, enabling the company to place the most appropriate people into the new structure. The new structure had a variety of positions to fill some of which were completely new positions.
Issues
- Restructuring of the European team
- Assessment and feedback for performance management and succession planning
- Assessment and selection for new positions
Solution
Red22 worked with Shell in the development and running of a bespoke Assessment and Development Centre. The two day event was structured around the Shell Aviation competencies, and consisted of a range of case studies, group and individual activities, role play and interviews all relating to a fictitious company. Each candidate was observed and assessed and a detailed feedback report on strengths and development areas was produced. As part of the project assessor training for Shell Aviation managers was also provided.
Result
An objective, partially independent and challenging assessment and selection process that enabled Shell Aviation to make quick but firm recruitment and restructuring decisions. The process also provided the management team and internal candidates with extensive personal development information. |
