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Returning the investment. HESDA’s response to the Rewarding and Developing Staff initiative Lesly Huxley and Bob Thackwray. Outline. Contexts Project outline What have we learned (broad themes)? Evaluation reflections. Contexts. Rewarding and Developing Staff initiative, HEFCE 2000
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Returning the investment HESDA’s response to the Rewarding and Developing Staff initiative Lesly Huxley and Bob Thackwray
Outline • Contexts • Project outline • What have we learned (broad themes)? • Evaluation reflections
Contexts • Rewarding and Developing Staff initiative, HEFCE 2000 • Encouraged development of HR(D) strategies in UK higher education institutions • Evaluations in 2002/3 • Moves towards more strategic HRD/M • Standards frameworks being adopted and found useful • BUT Investors in People adoption variable
HESDA’s response • The UK Higher Education Staff Development Agency • Support for group of HR / organisational development practitioners working with Investors in People Standard and the EFQM Excellence Model • Need for further investigation into good practice and embedding of Investors principles
The project for SSDA • What does development look like in Investors institutions UK/Europe? • Joined-up thinking, strategic HRD? • Process-in-a-box? • Has staff / organisational development come of age? • Views of senior managers?
Project structure and methods • Project teams in each strand • Interviews, desktop research, surveys and questionnaires • Sharing of questions and responses • Meetings of team leaders to draw separate elements together and reflect on common themes
Factors in strategic HRD (1)? • Addressing specific challenges, such as: • Organisational culture(s) • Globalisation • Marketisation • Regional issues • Quality assurance/Research Assessment • Diminishing units of resource • The management of knowledge workers • Innovation, creativity, risk-taking
What have we learned … • Growth in earlier perceived trends of greater staff developer involvement in strategic planning and thinking • Senior managers accept that people issues need to be integral to organisational planning and development • Value of personal learning (action learning, communities of practice, appreciative enquiry) • People processes sometimes continue to be fragmented • Investors in People and similar frameworks need to be a coherent part of organisational planning, not a separate exercise
Outcomes • Discussion paper: View from the Top • Project report: Appraisal • Project Web presence • Project reports • Case studies • Instruments and strategies http://www.hesda.org.uk/activities/projects/odhe.html
University Organisations(Becher 1996) • Hierarchical • authority conferred from above • regulations, procedures, specified roles, chains of command • Collegial • authority ratified from below • decisions exposed to dissent, high personal discretion • Anarchical • authority eroded by personal loyalties • ambiguous goals, pluralistic values • influence based on expertise • Political • authority deriving from personal power • conflict as basis for decisions, politics of compromise • influence deriving from interest groups
An evaluation is definitive To evaluate is to be effective Staff/education developers are responsible/accountable for effectiveness Kirkpatrick’s level four, impact on the organisation, is the most important Quantification is essential Some myths about evaluation
Donald Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation • Reaction • Learning • Behaviour • Impact (NB Each level measures different but complementary aspects of a training and development action.)
Self Audit...... • What are you trying to achieve? • Why are you trying to achieve it? • How are you trying to achieve it? • Why are you doing it that way? • Is it the best way of doing it? • Is it effective? • How do you check its effectiveness? • What do you do as result of the check?
Evaluation • Why is the evaluation taking place? • Who is the evaluation for? (ie who will use the results?) • What is the evaluation for? (ie what will the results be used for?) • Where will evaluation take place? • When will evaluation be used? • How will the evaluation be conducted?
Responsive Evaluation • Personal & political aspects of decision making • Less focused on quantitative data • Sits well with HE • evaluation will be a mix of fact and values • nothing is monocausal • Stake’s basic rules:: • know your organisation (& be known in it) • know funding mechanisms • don’t produce huge amounts of data • remember who will be using material and why • Questions for stakeholders • Why is this evaluation important to them? • What actually is their stake in it? • What values/experiences might influence judgement?
Payforward • Benefits described in terms of capacity to learn and change… • cultural/behavioural change • increased staff identification with business objectives • observed changes in team or individual behaviour Goal - purely financial systems ‘fade into insignificance’ - development no longer separate from management
Quantitative v qualitative…. ‘Not everything that counts can be counted & not everything that can be counted counts’ Cameron, WB (1963) Informal Sociology