When Monica McKay first heard she was in line to join her employer's new management development scheme and have her work appraised by a fellow manager she had never met, she was suspicious. With the threat of redeployment to a non-management role if she did not measure up, she says: "I was wondering: is this just a way to get rid of staff?"
That was last summer when she was tenancy management team leader at Homes for Haringey, an arm's-length management organisation in London that oversees 21,000 homes. Now, thanks to that appraisal, which included measuring current performance and feedback from colleagues against key indicators, McKay has been promoted to business support quality and learning manager. She loves the new role, which involves helping staff with their professional development.
She says: "It was a lot of work but, for me, going through the process of putting labels on the things I was doing and realising that these were recognised skills, was useful. It gave me the time to reflect on what I was doing and where I wanted to go."
The appraisal, part of the management development scheme launched in 2007, was not a way to get rid of staff. Of 35 people who were appraised last year, two went through a capability review to discover how able they were to do their job well, and only one was redeployed.
Homes for Haringey, which has 800 employees, does not see the recession as an opportunity to cut back on staff development. "We are a major employer locally because we are undertaking a £200m regeneration project," says chief executive Paul Bridge. Bridge feels he has responsibility to employ local people in deprived Haringey - according to government statistics it is the 18th most deprived local authority area of 354 in the country. This requires even more focus in a recession, when it would be easy to get better qualified staff from outside the borough.
"I started in housing in the 1990s recession," Bridge says. "I remember when I got my first job, there were 200 applicants for four jobs. Last year we had jobs with no applicants here, but that is already starting to change."
As well as management development schemes, Homes for Haringey has an apprenticeship scheme that leads to full-time jobs for plumbers, electricians and builders. Bridge is now looking into a future graduate scheme to spot talented local youngsters at 16 and see them through university.
There is also still a place for traditional schemes such as employee of the month. Vivienne Bennett, a tenancy management officer, won the award last summer after she cleared an elderly resident's overgrown garden: "Our policy is that a garden is the resident's responsibility, but here was this elderly man who could not get the palm leaves out of his garden and I could not find anyone to help. So I did it," she says. Getting a reward for that "made me feel really special."
The Hyde connection
That Bridge is so wedded to staff development is not surprising. He started life at the leading south-east housing organisation the Hyde Housing Association, which holds the Investor in People standard for its staff development work. Bridge is one of three senior managers to have left Hyde in the last year to become a chief executive of a housing provider. The organisation has 40,000 homes, mainly in the south-east, and employs 1,600 staff.
Far from seeing the staff departures as a problem, Karly Olsen-Haveland, group director of people at Hyde, views it as vindication of the social landlord's approach. "We are now the place to come if you want to be a leader of tomorrow," she says. "We are creating succession opportunities ... it is very positive."
But if a recession does not mean an end to staff development, it does mean changes. Hyde Housing has begun to bring more training and education in-house rather than use outside contractors. Olsen-Haveland is moving Hyde towards what she calls the 70/20/10 model in which 70% of learning takes place on the job, 20% in coaching and 10% in the classroom or through e-learning.
Helen Giles, head of HR at homelessness charity Broadway Homelessness and Support and runner-up for the Guardian public servant of the year award 2008, agrees with Bridge and Olsen-Haveland. In a recession more than at other times, organisations need to have the right people with the right attitudes and skills in the right place. "If money for training is the first thing to get sacrificed, then staff get resentful," she says. "In hard times you need staff who can think on their feet and spot opportunities. Unless you have a well-trained workforce you will not be able to do that."
Switch from external providers to using internal resources and train your staff to do the training, she says. "But never cut the training and development activity more than you absolutely have to."
Weblinks
Homes for Haringey: homesforharingey.org
Hyde Housing: hyde-housing.co.uk