The Thames Building Society has a head office in Oxford that contains the operations, marketing, product development,

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The Thames Building Society has a head office in Oxford that contains the operations, marketing, product development, corporate planning, finance, IT, HR, and legal functions. The Head of HR is responsible for providing HR services in the head office and the regions. These services include recruitment at headquarters, training (centralized courses, mainly for branch staff), pay and benefits administration for the whole Society, and dealing generally with employment issues at head office. There is no recognized trade union – a staff association exists but it does not have negotiating rights and does not exert much influence. Little responsibility for people management is devolved to line managers, who are expected to use the services of the HR function on any matter affecting the employment of people, even first-level disciplinary problems. The Head of HR reports to the Operations Director. There are 180 branches split into four regions. Each region is controlled by a regional director who reports to the Operations Director. Regional offices are small but they include a regional HR manager who reports to the Head of HR in the center. Regional HR managers are mainly concerned with recruitment and dealing with employment issues that have to be referred to them by branch managers. Training and pay administration is handled by the head office. The number of staff in head office is just over 500. There is about 1,800 staff in the branch network.

The organization structure of HR is as follows:

3

Head of HR

HR Services manager Regional HR managers (4) Training manager

Society has been doing reasonably well in terms of sales and profits over the last few years but there are signs of the beginning of a downward trend. The marketing and product development functions at head office are effective (a number of successful new products have been launched recently) but sales at branch level have been disappointing. Serious doubts have been expressed in the board about the quality of staff in the branches. It is felt that inadequate people have been recruited and that they are badly trained and underpaid. Retention rates are getting worse. There is concern about the leadership capabilities of branch managers and a belief that they are not getting the HR help they need.

To address these issues, it was agreed by the Board that the branch network should be reorganized – the regions were far too large and were difficult to manage. It was therefore proposed to replace them with six regions, with an average number of 40 branches per region (some branches were closed) and an average of 250 staff in each region.

A complete re-think was also needed of the role and organization of the HR function. Providentially, the Head of HR was about to retire, so a new HR Director could be appointed who would report to the Chief Executive and would be given a brief to develop proposals on what should be done about HR.

Recruitment Officer

HR Officer (general HR matters) HR Administration Officer (pay and benefits, HR information systems)

Questions You are the newly appointed HR Director of Thames Building Society. Please choose only (4) questions to answer:

1) If you want to appoint better-qualified HR specialists, justify the added value they will provide.

2) What selection tests will you use to appoint HR specialists? Explain precisely which test you will use to test which criteria within the personality, interests or Job skills areas.

3) How would you go about checking the references of the candidates as HR specialists? Explain the background Investigations you would also make.

4) What types of training and development opportunities could be offered to employees at Thames Building Society? How would you evaluate the success of these training programs? 5) What improvements would you make to Thames Building Society’s new performance management system? What five tips would you give managers to help them deliver an effective performance review meeting? 6) What Benefits & Services programs may help to attract, develop and retain the human assets at Thames Building Society?