How RBS turns human capital into business value
Greig Aitken, Head of Human Capital Strategy, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, discusses the bank’s market-leading work on establishing a measurable link between investment in people and performance and how it applies its pioneering frameworks and tools.

Minimising People-Related Risks
This briefing explores three of the currently most frequently quoted business risks: the bird flu pandemic, global terrorism and attracting and retaining talent. Find out what your organization should be doing to ensure business continuity.

HR Partnering: Choosing the Best Approach
This extensive briefing looks at some of the models that have been adopted by different companies to support HR partnering with the business. In particular, it looks at roles, capabilities and responsibilities. The briefing also shows what is involved at the demands made when HR has to act as an intermediary between internal customers and external service providers. (7367 words)

Finding the Hot Spot
Based on an interview with London Business School’s Professor Lynda Gratton, this briefing looks at the importance of engaging people's energy and passion, the secret behind effective retention and performance improvement. (632 words)

What is Strategic HR?
How HR's increasing value to the business and its growing relevance to delivering corporate strategy has developed over the past decade or so. Examples include the recent experience of Kelly Services, Orange UK and Allied Irish Bank, where HR has been successfully positioned as a driver of strategic success. (6602 words)

Tracking Progress
This briefing covers the measurement issues associated with demonstrating the effectiveness of HR to the business, including the achievement of business goals. Only around a third of the sample overall have found that HR has made a positive contribution to the business as a result of a formal evaluation, whereas all of those who enjoy a high level of confidence from the business can demonstrate this achievement. (5050 words)

Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital case study
How the RNOH developed an HR strategy to support a multi-disciplinary management development and clinical leader program, produce a profile of the future workforce to support the business case, manage junior doctor hours' issues as part of the NHS Plan, set up a Recruitment Group to provide a Trust-wide drive to lower vacancy rates, and also provide more robust HR information to both the Board and the Strategic Health Authority. (2886 words)

Delivering Services Effectively
This briefing deals with the effective delivery of HR services, particularly through outsourcing and shared services centres.  Their role in enabling companies to focus on core processes and reduce the cost of delivering services and improving service quality. The cost and other advantages gained by early adopters such as Shell and GE. (3323 words)

ITNet case study
How ITNET, Cadbury-Schweppes outsourced IT department, developed a comprehensive HR integration strategy based around systematic induction, one-to-one counselling, mentoring, upward feedback and appraisal and formal training; balanced scorecard measurement monitored monthly by the senior executive team in all operating divisions. (1090 words)

The New HR Director
This briefing deals with the personal qualities, experience and qualifications of the strategic HR director who can play a full role in defining and delivering HR strategy. Why the HR director needs to be accepted as a part of the management team, capable of demonstrating both strategic thinking and general management skills. (5464 words)

Phil Porter case study
A profile of Phil Porter, who, like many senior HR practitioners, achieved a good grounding in the professional aspects of his work including recruitment, selection, compensation and benefits, as well as management organization development. How he delivered HR and business goals as HR director. (2277 words)

Executive Summary - Achieving HR's Strategic Potential
The Strategic Role of HR, a study of 200 HR directors and senior managers. shows that only a third of respondents feel that HR's contribution is seen by line managers as strategically important. By contrast, other companies in the survey have yet to put in place all the capabilities that would enable them to become more effective strategic partners and enjoy the same level of line management confidence. (1301 words)

Strategic HR Survey Results
How HR directors reflect business objectives in their HR strategies. The survey is based on replies from 200 HR directors and senior managers from a wide range of sectors and companies, including many household names. (1856 words)

Reuters case study
How Reuters has turned its scorecard into a tool for performance improvement, with an integrated strategy, planning and people review cycle developed within the 'Corporate Performance Management' component of a broader change management programme. (3125 words)

Measuring Strategic Capabilities
The importance of gaining control of strategic capabilities that influence corporate success. Frameworks and techniques - including the balanced scorecard - that enable organizations to measure capabilities such as talent, speed, shared mindset and customer connectivity across functions and against industry norms. (1933 words)

The Children's Mutual case study
The launch of the Government's Child Trust Fund marks a new peak in the fortunes of The Children's Mutual, the newly-branded company that was formerly The Tunbridge Wells Equitable Friendly Society. David Bornor, fresh from a strategic personnel role at the Woolwich, was appointed to head up HR and revitalize the people strategy. (3427 words)

The Pathway to Strategic HR Measurement Excellence
What to measure to ensure that HR is aligned with corporate priorities and needs in a climate of continuing uncertainty and change where business resilience, strategic readiness and operational risk management are increasingly important. A top-level description of measures including those for tracking talent management, engagement, leadership and other high-profile people issues. (2458 words)

Procter & Gamble case study
In this case study Bob Livingston, vice president, employee services and HR explains why for Procter & Gamble shared services means more than just transactional processing. He demonstrates how it supported a corporation-wide restructuring effort and stresses why taking a customer-centric approach to service delivery was important from day one. (2151 words)

Evaluating The Strategic Contribution of HR
This briefing shows what the HR function must do to become a full strategic partner within an organization. It provides an explanation of the key components of the balanced scorecard and the implications of the scorecard - in particular, its learning and growth perspective - for the role of HR professionals. Key components of other performance measurement frameworks are outlined, notably the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model and the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Model and human capital models. (9005 words)

Corus Colors case study
Corus Colors is using the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model as a framework to assess the performance of the business and its work units/functions, including human resources. This case study describes the benefits to the business generally, and HR specifically, of taking this approach. (3676 words)

BC Hydro & Power Authority case study
The HR community in the Canadian utility company BC Hydro and Power Authority has built a scorecard that assesses its performance against its customer value statement. The scorecard is fully aligned to the organization-wide strategic objective of 'building a strong and capable organization'. The HR community is the 'owner' of this corporate objective. How the scorecard captures key HR priority areas and how it is helping ensure BC Hydro recruits, retains, develops and competitively compensates the people it needs to deliver to its business goals are covered in this case study. (3493 words)

Measuring and Demonstrating The 'Customer Value' of HR Services
This briefing shows why HR must develop 'hard' measures of the value it delivers to the business that demonstrate how HR interventions are helping the business drive forward towards its goals. It includes an overview of the HR auditing process that helps HR to identify the performance levels it should be delivering, assess performance against best practice standards and identify continuous improvement opportunities. (8131 words)

Aligning HR Staff with HR Strategic Goals
This briefing shows that the process of identifying and developing new skills in HR can be successfully focused through the lens of the learning and growth perspective of an HR scorecard. Becoming strategically and business-focused is the key 'competence' requirement for HR leaders. Included here are details of the five key competency requirements for HR staff who want to successfully contribute to their businesses along with other practical guidance from leading practitioners. (6194 words)

Positioning and Structuring Talent Management
This briefing examines talent management from five perspectives - the internal rationale, its positioning, rethinking/repositioning organizational efforts, how they are structured and organized, and the challenges being faced in these areas. (9802 words)

Continental Airlines case study
How Continental Airlines transformed its fortunes from a company facing bankruptcy to profitabililty. The story behind its Go Forward Plan, which has helped to build a new, and winning, corporate culture. (4748 words)

Linking Internal Communication and Business Strategy
Many internal communication professionals have expressed a desire to link their efforts more closely with their organization's overall strategy. This briefing describes how to develop a strategy for an internal communication department that clarifies how it intends to help fulfil organizational goals. It also shows how, Faced with the threat of cutbacks, the communications team at Royal Bank of Canada proved its strategic worth to the business by transforming itself from a tactical communications service to a strategic partner. (3643 words)

Business Drivers and the Strategic HR Response
This briefing focuses on the main drivers that call for HR to develop a strategic response to business and performance improvement initiatives and other external factors that result in significant organizational restructuring and change. Examples include RNOH, Abitibi-Consolidated and Orange Group HR (3876 words)

Royal Bank of Canada case study
Royal Bank of Canada, Canada's largest financial institution, in common with other financial institutions, was looking to cut costs and outsource non-strategic activities. The case study explains that the communications team had tended to focus on 'tactical' production of communication materials and needed to prove their strategic worth. This entailed restructuring the communications team and ensuring that formal communications were aligned with business strategies and actions, in addition to proving their success in doing so. (1269 words)

Orange Group HR case study
When France Telecom acquired mobile telecom innovator Orange. The resulting integration of resources and values between parent and subsidiary, far from marginalizing its operations, has transformed Orange's Group HR function's capability and capacity. Orange's head of group HR strategy Alison Speak demonstrates why. (1881 words)

HR Alignment with Corporate Goals
This briefing examines the options for companies that set out to align HR with corporate goals.  The weaknesses of subjective techniques such as scenario planning on the one hand and over-analytical planning on the other, have led companies back to methods that rely on an iterative process of planning, review and adjustment. (2793 words)

BT Plc case study - The BTHR Strategy
The case study describes BT Group's iterative HR strategy process and rolling business planning model, developed during the first years of the new decade and shows how they are designed to integrate key elements that help to shape the company's goals and key activities. (1243 words)

Allied Irish Bank case study
Does the strategic credibility of an effective HR function derive from the standing of the function itself or the team leading it? Mike Lewis, head of strategic human resources at the AIB Group (Allied Irish Bank), drew on his own line management and consultancy experience in leading a team which re-established the authority of HR in Ireland's leading international banking and financial services company. (2019 words)

Developing a Strategic HR Capability
This briefing highlights the development of skills and competencies that enable HR to play a strategic role in the organization. At a time when more companies are turning to shared services and outsourcing to allow HR to focus on more value-adding activities, it underlines the risks of losing control over service delivery. With examples from BAE Systems, British Telecom and Kelly Services (3342 words)

Kelly Services case study
How the UK and Ireland division of US-owned employment services group Kelly Services took a pro-active stance on upcoming European legislation that will require agencies hiring out temporary staff to fully employ them. How this HR-led strategy become an integral part of Kelly's commercial proposition and full members of the sales and client service team. (2062 words)