They are funded by international organizations such as the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the UK Government, but it is also necessary for International Aid to raise funds
Trang 1Case Study 10 Organization and Role of HR THE ROLE OF
HR AT INTERNATIONAL AID
The case
International Aid is a charity that operates as an NGO (non-government organization)
providing aid in the form of development projects in Third World countries, especially in Africa The projects may be educational, advice on healthcare, agricultural development or constructional, eg schools or wells They are funded by international organizations such as the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the UK Government, but it is also necessary for International Aid to raise funds itself to finance its headquarters operations and some projects in their early stages Projects are run by a leader from International Aid with other International Aid specialists in the larger projects, although maximum use is made
of local nationals as members of the team Currently there are 96 projects in 10 African countries and two in a South American country The total number of International Aid staff working overseas is about 350 The headquarters of International Aid is in Cambridge and employs about 200 staff in operations development and management, marketing and fundraising, public affairs, finance and personnel management
International Aid has run into some difficulties in recent years It has had problems in raising sufficient funds itself and it has been more difficult to get funding from the international organizations and the UK Government It has also been criticized for having too high an expense ratio arising from inadequate financial control and, possibly, over-staffing Consequently, a new chair of trustees has been appointed and about half the other trustees have been replaced, with a heavier emphasis on business and management expertise The Chief Executive of International Aid took early retirement and a new one was appointed He was previously the Group HR Director of a large property development firm with extensive overseas interests and his earlier career had been in financial management
The new Chief Executive was instructed by the Trustees to take a very hard look at the existing organization structure and the capabilities of the directors of each of the major functions and report back with his proposals in three months’ time The present organization was:
International
project directors
Head of Fundraising
Head of IT Financial
Accountant
Director of
International
Operations
Director of Fundraising and Public Affairs
Director of Finance
Director of Operational Planning
Director of Administration
Chief Executive
Trang 2The Chief Executive summarized his survey of the organization as follows:
● The Director of International Operations was a very efficient manager but had neglected her responsibilities for ensuring that overseas staff were properly selected, briefed and trained, possibly because in an ill-defined way the Director of Operational Planning was involved in staffing – the distinction between the two roles was unclear, which led to confusion and overlap
● The Director of Finance was technically good but had allowed the department to be overstaffed and needed the support of a qualified management accountant rather than an unqualified accounting administrator who was a glorified clerk
● The Director of Fundraising and Public Affairs did not have enough to do and was in any case hampered by an inadequate Head of Fundraising
● The Head of Public Affairs was good at her job but was given little scope by her Director who was essentially a fundraiser The result was that the organization was not presenting itself adequately to the Government and the international funding organizations or the public at large
● The Director of Administration did not have enough to do to justify his position and the administrative side of his department was grossly over-staffed; the Head of IT and Head of Personnel were quite capable of carrying out their roles without him
● The Head of IT was effective and could contribute much more given better leadership
● The Personnel Manager was perfectly adequate in her primarily administrative role but was given no scope or encouragement to contribute more, although it was unlikely that even given that scope she could do so
● The quality of some overseas staff was inadequate, which has led to questions from funders about the ability of International Aid to deliver on its project obligations
Head of Public Affairs
Head of Personnel
Head of Administrative Services
Trang 3● The rate of turnover of overseas staff was far too high; it seemed that they were inadequately trained or prepared for their duties (the responsibility, oddly enough of the Director of Operational Planning)
To deal with these problems the Chief Executive proposed the following new organization to the Trustees (only posts affected by the reorganization are shown):
* new post
** previously Head of Personnel The reaction of the Trustees to this proposal was on the whole favourable They grumbled that there seemed to be a lot of new posts, but the Chief Executive made a persuasive business case to the effect that they would provide added value They also questioned the creation of a Director of HR responsible to the Chief Executive A number of Trustees objected strongly to the term ‘human resources’ on the grounds that it was a demeaning concept that treated people as mere resources to be exploited by the organization Others asked if this post was significant enough to justify its position as a member of the senior management team, while others wondered what a Head of Organizational Learning was when he or she was at home
The Chief Executive was therefore asked to report back to the Trustees with a further justification for this proposal They wanted to know what added value would be provided by it, ie what, specifically, an HR function would contribute
Head of
Operations
Planning*
Director of
Operations
Director of Finance
Director of Fundraising
Director of Public Affairs
Director of HR* Chief Executive
Head of Organizational Learning*
Head of HR Services**
Head of IT
Management Accountant*
Financial Accountant
Head of Administrative Services
Trang 4The task
Prepare this justification for the Trustees
Comments
This case explores some fundamental issues about the role of HR and, but only incidentally, why it should be called ‘HR’ and not ‘personnel management’
Taking the last point first; the answer is that it doesn’t really matter and some people get over the ‘demeaning’ implications of HRM by calling it ‘people management’ But it has to be recognized that HRM as the name of the process and HR as the title of the function are now common parlance This might not be enough to satisfy someone hostile to the connotations of
‘HRM’ but there are some essential differences in the concepts as set out in Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice (Table 6.1, pages 126–27), the most
important being the strategic and business-oriented nature of HRM, its emphasis on integration
or fit, and its belief that employees should be treated as assets, not costs Research carried out
by Hoque and Noon (referred to on page 105 of Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice) found that people described as ‘HR’ tended to be more strategic than
those described as ‘personnel’
In this case there are some strong pointers to the need for a strategic HRM approach It can
be assumed that the strategic goals of the charity are to plan and deliver more successful projects, to run the charity as a whole as well as individual projects more cost-effectively, and
by so doing generate more finance from funders and the public This depends on having high-quality staff working on projects and directing their work from headquarters as well as better quality people in fundraising and public affairs The onus for doing this rests with line management but a strategically oriented HR function can make a significant value-added contribution by providing advice and services that support the achievement of strategic goals through recruitment and selection, learning and development programmes (with an emphasis
on organizational learning) and talent management In other words, as an HR function rather than one simply providing basic personnel services, it can make a major contribution to organizational success
Further reading in Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice: Chapters 1, 3 and 5.