Reporting for Duty...
Successful PAC Candidate Frank Price reflects on life in HR in the Ministry of Defence, and how he coped with working towards CIPD Chartered Membership
'How would you like to go to Afghanistan for 6 months?' I wonder how many people working in HR can start off a career interview with one of their senior managers with those words. But then not every HR practitioner is practising in the Fort Knox-like security that goes with the territory of the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall.
I set out to tell you about my experiences in working for CIPD membership through the Professional Assessment of Competence route, but I will have to leave that till later and tell you about my work first. The Ministry of Defence is one of the major Government Departments, being both a Department of State headed by a Cabinet Minister (from the 10th May, Des Browne MP) and a Military Headquarters providing strategic guidance for the Armed Forces.
Although we have shrunk quite a lot since the end of the cold war and the fall of the Berlin wall, we are still a substantial organisation, with around 200,000 people in the Services and some 100,000 civilians supporting them. We have an annual budget of around £30 billion. We buy everything from toilet rolls to tanks and are the largest single customer of British Industry. We are a very substantial landowner and our decisions on, for example base closures can have substantial impacts on the local economy. We can and do deploy people and equipment worldwide and operate on a 24/7 basis.
The HR mission is 'To enable civilians to make the best possible contribution to UK defence capability'. That defence capability is our 'output': the provision of well trained and equipped Armed Forces, able to respond rapidly and flexibly to the demands of the day in support of the Government's defence and foreign policy objectives. Civilians provide the essential underpinning to support the Armed Forces, be it through supplying equipment and spares, researching new weapons systems, running pay systems, providing accommodation or all the other support needed to keep the Armed Forces operational.
My particular responsibility is for the management (in both Personnel Management and HR terms) of the senior civilian staff in the Department - the 250 staff who form the top leadership cadre in MOD and who, together with their military counterparts, provide the strategic leadership and direction for the Department. I also have responsibilities for the staff just below this level.
These middle managers are an important management level in their own right as the engine room of the Department where much of the day to day management and execution of policy is undertaken. As well as this, they are the main feeder grade for the senior level, through an assessment and selection process which I also 'own' on behalf of top management.
As those of you who are what might be called 'operational' HR practitioners will know only too well, managing the (sometimes unrealistic) expectation and aspirations of the top 250 managers in an organisation can safely be described as 'challenging.' My team and I manage the posting plot for these staff: keeping the plot in balance so that individuals are matched (qualitatively and quantitatively) to post, taking account of personal preferences and circumstances, development needs, line manager requirements, skills and experience, geography and a host of other factors is never easy and I sometimes liken it to keeping 250 plates spinning simultaneously. It is also like painting the Forth Bridge - it never stops.
People move jobs every 3 years or thereabouts, so at any one time there can be upwards of a dozen active moves being planned or executed. Some of these can be relatively simple - two people swapping jobs for instance is a self contained operation. Some can be much more complex, possibly involving a succession of moves, creation of a new post, a promotion or a retirement. My record is a seven piece linked set of moves. This is rather like buying a house - a complex chain is set up and it needs all the pieces to fit together, at the right time, for it to work.
There is a peculiar satisfaction in pulling off a particularly complicated series of moves - the end result may be just a set of posting letters but these are the product of lengthy and sometimes difficult negotiations with the various stakeholders. For us, the position is complicated by both the range and variety of posts, so that one size definitely does not fit all, and also our geography.
I mentioned Afghanistan earlier, where we have just deployed a senior civilian as adviser to the UK led NATO force for the next 6 months or so. That is unusual but by no means unique. We also have senior people on the ground in Iraq, the Balkans and other operational theatres, providing advice and support to the Armed Forces. We have a substantial presence in the USA, and a number of senior posts in Europe, particularly Brussels, both at NATO and the EU.
Within the UK, while the majority of senior posts are in and around London, we have a substantial presence in the West Country, with our acquisition organisations based in Bath and Bristol. And we have other posts at sometimes surprising locations: for example our bill paying organisation is in Liverpool, our agency for service veterans is near Blackpool and our security vetting agency is in York.
Although all our senior staff are mobile (this is reflected in their contracts) we do of course try to marry personal and family circumstances to job requirements whenever we can. (This is another complication when seeking to match people to posts.) So it is fair to say that there is rarely a dull moment in this part of the MOD HR machine.
In addition to what might be described as the day to day management of people, we do try to find time to think about the broader strategic issues, such as talent identification and management and succession planning, and how to balance a sensible rate of promotion into the senior levels with an ageing workforce and a static or declining total number of posts. Over the past 18 months we have been juggling these priorities with redesigning our corporate HR structure, to reflect a move away from transactions and towards a more strategic value added approach. An article in 'People Management' (23rd March 2006) goes into more detail.
It was while my line manager and I were reviewing my development plan last year that she suggested that I should consider going for CIPD membership. This sounded an attractive option. Little did I realise at the time what I was letting myself in for! I started by picking out one of the accredited advisers for an exploratory discussion. I have to say that this stage of the process left something to be desired - CIPD provided a list of approved 'suppliers' but nothing more and it was largely a matter of pot luck that I chose Cullen Scholefield.
As it turned out, it proved to be a happy choice (although I have little to go on by way of comparison) and I have been very happy with the help and support they have given me. 'Not too heavy, not too light' as those who spent their formative years in the North-East might say.
After an initial discussion with Maureen Scholefield we agreed that I was a suitable case for the PAC treatment and I signed up for what turned out to be a pretty intensive few months of work on the programme. I shan't rehearse the detail of the four fields and their composition as these should be familiar to those who have travelled this road, suffice it to say that my secretary was kept pretty busy typing up my responses to the various workbooks and my research report.
Following discussion with Maureen, I selected a research topic based around identification and selection of our senior leaders - this has been of interest to me for some time - I have been an assessor for our middle management level for several years and the possible extension of an assessment centre-type approach to the selection of our senior staff is very much on the Department's current HR agenda.
The main challenge for me in undertaking the PAC in addition to continuing to undertake what was (and is) a busy and demanding HR job in a major Government department was in balancing the demands on my time and in making space for the amount of effort that it was necessary to devote (and which I wanted to put) to do justice to the demands of the CIPD qualification.
If I have a criticism to make of the process, it is that the process owners either under-estimate or choose to downplay the amount of time and effort that one has to expend to achieve the required standard. To say, as does the introductory brochure that 'PAC will recognise your existing experience skills and competencies and fit alongside your busy work schedule, providing you with a seamless route to becoming a Chartered Member of the CIPD' gives a misleading impression of what is involved and is, to quote Alan Clark 'economical with the actualité'.
On the positive side, the process certainly encouraged me to stop and think about what I was doing, and why, and whether it could be done better. The 'thinking performer' concept, with its emphasis both on delivery and adding value, is a useful one here. Of course the assessment process has to be robust and thorough, and I have no quarrel with that. But I did feel at times that the process was somewhat heavy and became almost an end in itself.
The same sentiments also applied to the interview with the CIPD appointed assessor at the end of the process. Billed as a relaxed exchange of views based on the material prepared for the workbooks it turned out to be a 3 1/2 hour interview, longer than for my Ph D all those years ago! I was probed in some depth on a wide range of HR issues, and invited to produce all the 100 plus pieces of evidence that I had quoted in support of my responses. It was just as well that I had prepared for this and had them all laid out ready for inspection in best military fashion.
So the interview was nothing if not thorough and I felt quite drained at the end. But it was also stimulating and, in a funny sense, enjoyable and exhilarating. I could not complain that the assessor had not earned her fee - although again I do worry slightly about proportionality of effort.
Well, was it really worth it? Yes, I think so. I now have a professional qualification widely recognised as an industry standard, I have learnt a lot and hopefully will continue to do so through my CPD programme. I am able to speak with authority and can practise what I preach about the need for civil servants to be more professional. But (and there is always a 'but') my word of caution has to be, 'Do not start unless you are serious and are sure that you have, or can make, the time to do it justice.' It is not a soft option. Come to think of it however, I am not sure it should be. But then I would say that wouldn't I? After all, I have done it!
1 September 2006
