INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Modernising the Directorate of International Relations



Modernising the Directorate of International Relations

1. In what ways could the establishment of an integrated HR team provide improved services for the Directorate of International Relations?

The government of the Republic of HARASTA received several loans from international banks, the senior management of the department should restructed and establish four divisions including HR.

The HR-line set-up. Differences in opinion existed between HR and line managers as to the general effectiveness of the current HR-line set-up. From the line perspective, one International Relations director (IRD) stated that he worked “as a team” with HR, with responsibility and accountability being “two key factors in making the relationship work”. Another IRD thought that, while IRD s had got the art of recruiting doctors “nailed down”, they “do not have the kind of knowledge involved” to do the same for recruiting nurses, and were reliant on HR for help. He saw the chief executive's positive orientation to people management was important for generating close ties between HR and line, but having an HR manager on the same site was also “extremely valuable” on a day-to-day basis. One operations manager said HR are “a resource” for their knowledge on employment laws and procedures and policies, and described the state of work relations between HR and line as “a good, flexible one”.

From the HR standpoint, one HR manager thought the Trust's general problem was that “the edges” between what is HR and what is line managers' work “have always been blurred” and, as some HR work has been devolved to the line, “a lot of them do their own”. She thought this left HR in the position of still doing basic HR work but put it down to “a lack of confidence rather than a lack of ability” on the part of line managers as to why they did not do more HR work alone. Another HR manager stated that the director of nursing had reported favourably on HR's representation on cross-functional workgroups[13], and did not see “much tension” between HR and line on them. Another HR manager commented that IRD s needed HR input in the directorate teams to function more effectively and stressed the benefits of generating an informal working relationship with the line through “interpersonal contact”.

Conflictual relations

Although the general view from both HR and line was that the current HR-line set-up produced satisfactory work relations, conflicts were apparent on a number of issues. From the line, one IRD thought the new performance appraisal system being introduced by HR would be “too time-consuming”, and reminded him of his “old view” of HR - that they were “slow, inefficient and made mistakes, they were awful, just absolutely awful”. Still, he added, after HR had moved into the directorates, “the days of us and them” had “largely gone”.

Another IRD commented that relations between the HR director and the chief executive had been “certainly strained”, but this had altered and they now “get on very well, and think highly of each other”, ...