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Council chief executives and HR heads in Northern Ireland are currently planning a strategy to handle the transformation agenda. Adrian Kerr reports on latest developments, including a keynote conference next week. Traditionally, change in local government in Northern Ireland, has come from two sources. First, through changes imposed on the system by successive government initiatives and planned reorganisations – which have often resulted in passive commitment to implementation – and second, emergent change, where the people in local government themselves decided to make things happen, with a number of committed champions acting, often in differing roles, to implement new systems following research, and taking appropriate actions determined by benchmarking and pilot studies. The later source has tended to be more successful, in that ownership of the change process has been evident from the beginning, with all those involved committed to effective implementation and developing joint solutions. Chief executives and HR managers in Northern Ireland are now engaged in a substantial emergent change process where they have identified a series of improvement initiatives based on the improvement, collaboration and efficiency (ICE) agenda. Work began 18 months ago when the Local Government Staff Commission (LGSC) organised a meeting of interested chief executives who identified change challenges in the local government system, and decided to establish a series of improvement and development pilot initiatives in councils to address the challenges. These pilots are now established and, with assistance from the Local Government Training Group, work is under way to investigate how improvement changes may work in practice. A second attempt to bring about change and improve collaboration and efficiency between HR professionals has also started where, with assistance from the Public Sector People Managers Association (PPMA), HR managers, having determined their improvement agenda, have initiated a series of research groups to investigate in practical terms how improvements and efficiency savings can be made. In order to bring the learning from these initiatives together and develop an outline HR strategy which will deliver the change outcomes, the LGSC is staging a conference on 6-7 October, the outcome of which will be an outline HR strategy for local government in Northern Ireland, and a related action plan for the years ahead. Commission conference formats are designed as part of an action research process where, having identified the problems to be addressed, those involved meet to investigate solutions which, in turn, are applied and their feasibility tested. Session one of this conference reappraises the ‘Challenges facing local government', both at national (UK) and regional/local (Northern Ireland) level to ensure a common understanding of the problems to be addressed and related people challenges. Presentations will be made by representatives of the Association of Public Service Excellence (APSE), the Department of the Environment (DOE), the Society of Local Government Chief Executives (SOLACE), and the Institute of Employment Studies. Session two is entitled, ‘From challenges to opportunities', and appraises the feedback from the five OD pilot projects. These include, Organisation readiness for OD, Management and operational team development, Leadership development, Developing a competency framework, and Coaching for performance. These pilots are showcased by an AV production which has recently been prepared, detailing progress made in each of the pilots, and presented by those involved in their practical implementation. This production is followed by a panel session with representatives from the pilot councils, and provides an opportunity to discuss their planning, implementation and evaluation. Session two also includes feedback from HR research groups examining HR systems, performance, recruitment and e-learning, and is organised by the chair of the Northern Ireland branch of PPMA. The session ends with the introduction of a strategy template predesigned by HR delegates and detailed by Penna Plc, as well as case studies of successful collaboration at regional level, presented by Carecall, Learning Pool and southern Ireland colleagues. Session three, entitled ‘Building an HR strategy for local government', and the remainder of the conference is designed for delegates to design an HR strategy to support the required change process. This is achieved by a series of workshops were delegates, through the use of their predesigned template, examine the challenges and relate them to strategic HR objectives. The results of the workshops are validated in a combined feedback session, and feed into an outline HR strategy for local government to be implemented across the sector in the years ahead. The outcome from the conference – the outline HR strategy – will be further developed by Penna, PPMA and the Local Government Staff Commission, and issued to councils for final consultation and implementation. This strategy will be used to inform policy-making, both at local and central level, with regard to HR issues, and to support the ongoing improvement agenda. The production of the strategy is, in itself, an ICE initiative, whereby local government stakeholders have come together to develop the strategy in a co-operative manner to provide improvements in service delivery. More importantly, it is a demonstration by HR professionals that they are committed to the ICE agenda, and the development of an appropriate HR strategy to support the necessary change process. Adrian Kerr is chief executive at the Local Government Staff Commission in Northern Ireland

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WHITEHALL

Meeting the transformation agenda in NI

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