Leadership and Management System of Countryside Charity, the UK - Research Paper Example

LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF COUNTRYSIDE CHARITY, UK BACKGROUND Leadership and management development is a very common aspect of human resource management in the present world. Leadership and management development has been given various tags and definitions by different scholars. And this section of the report will delve into the essence and expectations of LMD. “Leadership development creates leadership and leadership creates organisation and order in the face of complexity and chaos... leadership development is the true source of leadership” (Mumford, Gold, & Thorpe, 2012, p. 41). This implies that leadership development is an important part of human resource management that leads to the creation of senior leadership staff members. It involves various tools and techniques for transforming ordinary leaders into exceptional leaders as per the expectations and desires of a firm. Management development on the other hand is about results but leadership development is about transformation and conformance with goals of a firm (Armstrong, Armstrongs Handbook of Management and Leadership, 2009). The authoritative view put forward by Armstrong indicates that leadership and management programmes are specialised and consciously planned activities that are meant to nurture and enhance the next generation of managers in an organisation. “Leadership and management development programmes provide for managers to have the leadership and managerial qualities required to achieve success. They form a vital ingredient in talent management in association with the career planning and career management activities.” (Armstrong, Armstrongs Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 2012, p. 310). Management and leadership overlap, hence they treated in the same category. Leadership means inspiring people to do their best to achieve desired results and it involve developing and communicating a vision for the future and motivating people and securing their engagement (Collins, Ensell, & Claydon, 2009). Leadership involve inspiring people and helping people to willingly act differently in order to attain specific results as expected by a given organisation. Leadership involve clarifying what ought to be done and communicating a sense of purpose to a group so that members understand the need to improve their affairs and attain specified ends. Management is to have charge over responsibility or something and it involves getting things done through others, therefore it involves empowering people, managing them and developing relationships (Armstrong, Armstrongs Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 2012). Therefore the development of people to take up this role comes with specific and hands-on methods that will get the trainees to become productive in dealing with the requirements of their roles. In summary, leadership and management development is defined as “a systematic effort to train, educate and develop individuals to influence other people in positive ways. It is conducted on-the-job or off-the-job to meet individual, group and organisational performance needs” (Rothwell & Kazanas, 2009, p. 6). This implies that leadership and management development is a consciously planned system and method through which a firm trains the next generation of managers and leaders. This could include the use of various practical and theoretical methods for the training and nurturing of the next generation of leaders and managers of a given firm. The main processes to ensure a structured method and system for LMD include the following: 1. Identification of the organisation’s LMD needs; 2. Formation of LMD strategy; 3. Implementation of LMD strategy 4. Integration of ethics and professional considerations into the LMD strategy 5. Monitoring the LMD strategy and system (Byham, Smith, & Pease, 2012; Fisher-Yoshida & Geller, 2013) AIMS AND OBJECTIVES This project analyses the learning and management development aspect of Countryside, a specialised UK charitable organisation that seeks to undertake a conscious development of its management and leadership. To this end, the paper will use various tools and theories in learning and management development to critique and analyse the important issues and consideration that must be integrated in dealing with LMD in Countryside. The aim of this report is to analyse the factors and relevant considerations that must be taken into account in designing an LMD programme for Countryside. In order to attain this end, the following objectives will be explored: 1. A critical analysis of the current state of human resource development in Countryside and an analysis of the important expectations and needs of the organisation; 2. An formulation of a strategy for meeting Countryside’s LMD needs; 3. An evaluation of the implementation needs of Countryside’s LMD requirements and this will include amongst other things the ethical considerations, cost considerations and other relevant issues on the subject; 4. An analysis of the monitoring process and other relevant considerations that must be taken into account to ensure that the LMD process of Countryside is conducted in a way that meets all relevant results and expectations. ANALYSIS OF COUNTRYSIDE’S HR SYSTEMS From the case at hand, the Countryside is a major entity that provides various forms of services in preserving the countryside and also raising funds for its charitable activities. The company has numerous processes and activities that affects the company’s top level structures which are relevant to any future training and development needs for managers and leaders. A number of relevant issues that can be identified in Countryside include: 1. An apparent conflict between the field and the fundraising units of the firm. There is a general tension between both groups and they seem to disagree with each other on the significance and importance of their roles and their activities. This creates tensions and has an impact on the productivity of the charitable organisation; 2. The traditional training methodology is mainly ad hoc. There is no laid down route and laid down system for training and recruiting new managers and leaders for the firm. Thus, training is done without much emphasis on current needs and this causes so much conflict for Countryside Charity since the training is not done in a systematic manner to address important matters and issues; 3. The management trainees are not picked in a way and manner that promotes transparency and fairness. They are chosen at random and this is done with no scientific criteria and it is not linked to motivation and job satisfaction. This can potentially create conflicts in the firm and lead to the lack of goodwill; 4. The leadership and management process that is being proposed is meant to affect all the departments and units of Countryside Charity. This emphasises the need for conscious planning and critical review of different activities and processes that will enable the firm to meet its processes and needs. Countryside Charity will therefore need to find ways of ensuring that there is the appropriate method of selecting leaders that will be involved in the new training process. This will involve a critical analysis of existing processes and an identification of an appropriate criteria that will cover all the issues and situations that relates to promotion and development of top staff members at the different levels of the managerial positions and also cover aspects of the supervisors’ training and leadership needs. There is therefore the need for a careful stratification in selecting the best and most appropriate members of staff who deserve to be trained and given improvement. And this must be tied to important concepts like motivation, development and appraisals which are fundamental human resource management processes that can be added up tot he firm’s activities. IDENTIFICATION OF COUNTRYSIDE’S LMD NEEDS In order to conduct the planning for leadership and management development, there is the need to ascertain the requirements and processes for training individuals and people who will go through the process. Adair’s model of task-team-individual development indicates that there must be: 1. Worthwhile goal; 2. Clear goal; 3. Agreement between stakeholders on the goal; 4. Action plan to achieve the goal and; 5. The ability to assess the attainment or otherwise of the goal (Obolensky, 2012; Bossons, Kourdi, & Sartain, 2013). The main goal of the process will be to train a number of people to meet certain needs which include amongst others: 1. Individual Training Needs: This involve the need to belong, contribute to Countryside, seek status, seek powers and seek personal developmental needs and targets (Harrison, 2012); 2. Team Cohesion: This involve training the participants to be responsive to team building efforts and expectations and contributing to the group and dealing with issues and matters relating to the group and its needs (McKimm & Phillips, 2013); 3. Succession Planning: This is about identifying the needs for change and modification of affairs and how this can help Countryside Charity to deal with its problems and needs. This will involve the methods for stabilising the environment, eliminating all obvious conflicts and disagreements and also linking different elements and aspects of human resource management to the training and development of top management; 4. Succession Development: This involve the development of a method of appraising records and determining performance movement and performance improvement after the LMD process is over. Therefore Countryside Charity will have to define the fundamental goals which from the scenario involve the following: 1. Identification of the criteria for the selection and training of the various participants in the training programme; 2. Development of new leaders and linking the development to the environmental factors for the firm (Garavan, Ross, & Stein, 1999); 3. Assess the financial performance of Countryside Charity and try to streamline the processes and systems in order to deal with the expectations and the desires of consumers. 4. Provide a timeline for the training process in order to modify the leaders’ needs and expectations in order to train them and 5. Develop monitoring mechanism that will be put in place to examine the participants and their progression after the training is completed. COUNTRYSIDE’S LMD STRATEGY FORMULATION Countryside needs to do the following things to deal with their LMD system and process. And this must provide solutions to issues and meet all the needs and expectations of Countryside. Selection of Participants The participants for the LMD process must be selected from the field and finance unit and it must be done in such a way that the units are equitably selected and the hierarchies within each unit is respected and given appropriate consideration. To this end, there must be a selection of half of the trainees from each of the units and each of the units of Countryside Charity. This will involve the selection and choice of trainees from various backgrounds and also try to represent all the geographical areas and the geographical process. The selection process must take into consideration, a thorough appraisal of the efforts and the contribution of each trainee candidate. Thus, the LMD planner must interview the potential candidates, analyse their contributions and take submissions on the basis of various criteria that will be determined and identified to be important and vital to conduct investigations on the basis of: 1. Communication of Criteria; 2. Interviews; 3. Appraisal; 4. Analysis of results; 5. Communication of results. Through this, there will be a thorough evaluation of each of the over twenty potential junior managers and supervisors that can be selected to the LMD process. This process must be transparent and it must be communicated to the potential participants. This will be presented in a transparent way and manner to ensure that the people who could potential partake in the process can be made to understand the basis of the selection process. After that, the interview results must be presented to all the potential candidates. This will enable the process to be presented as one that is universally accepted and the process will be handled as appropriate. Development Process The LMD process will best be served if it is a reasonable blend of conscious training sessions and on-the-job training. For the conscious training, there must be a series of a three-day seminar to be held one weekend of each month for a consecutive period of six months. This will mean the selected participants will be given a break in the middle of the month for the six-month period. After that, the trainees will be given various on-the-job training for 6 to 18 months as per the position of each manager. This will involve supervision and in-house training by various managers who will supervise them. The participants will be made to train together and they will be selected in a way and manner that will include all the deputies of the managers who are six in all and three participants each from the lower tier managers of the sub-units (6 from both units) and three participants from amongst the supervisors in each of the units (6 from both units). This will mean there will be 18 participants for the LMD process. The process must proceed and it must include important factors and pointers which will include the following: Business Learning & Culture (Gold, Thorpe, & Mumford, 2013) Business In the area of business, there must be an action focus that will involve the setting up of criteria and a design of the needs of the processes of Countryside. This must be presented in a way whereby the manager trainees will all be given a basic insight into: 1. Fundraising and the processes of conducting it in charitable entities; 2. Field work and the elements and aspects of conducting it and managing it; 3. Responsibility of managers for meeting targets; 4. The leadership targets of Countryside; 5. Practical exercises and processes Culture There must be an insight into the needs and expectations of Countryside and how its culture has evolved over the year. To this end, the trainers will need to study the culture of the company and analyse the relatively stable norms and practices that have evolved in Countryside Charity. These cultures will be observed and documented by the LMD trainer and the trainer will present these in general terms to the participants in the six week period. Finally, there must be experience-sharing. And this will be done by presenting people from various units to come over and share experience. To this end, the CEO and her two deputies will be presented to the training programme and they can share their experience and views about things and processes that come together to define the culture of Countryside Charity. Learning There will be a process where participants will be given assignments and evaluated after each session. Some of the assessments will be done on the first day and this will include an assessment of previous studies and previous matters. There will also be research work that will be given after the sessions. And participants will be given practical scenarios and there will be times where presentation and managerial practices will be tested during the sessions. These assessments will test the speed at which people are learning. This will be documented and each participant’s file will be put together and evaluated in relation to leadership and management. Time Table & Monitoring The participants that will be selected will go for the training from midday on Friday once a month and stay at the training site from Friday to Sunday afternoon. This means they can have a half-day session on Friday, a full day on Saturday and a half-day session on Sunday. The six-month training session will involve hiring a facility that will host the participants and the trainees. The trainees will be given different processes and they will go on-site once a month and go through various structured study sessions. This will last for a period of six months and each month, they will be made to go to a facility. And these facilities will rotate between Birmingham, Wales and other locations that will keep trainees closer to the fields and others that will get participants to have a feel of fund-raising. The members of the team will involve three categories. Category 1 will be the deputies of the top-tier managers. They will get another 6 months of training which will include 3 months secondment in a different unit and sector of the company. In this period, they will be expected to take instructions from another supervisor or leader that they will not know. They will also be expected to supervise subordinates from a different unit or sector of their practice. Through this, there will be the opportunity for these senior managers to build rapports with other subordinates. Prior to secondment, these managers will be given a short training on their leadership roles for a week and they will get a one-week orientation in their new sites. The Category 2 trainees will be lower managers and they will do most of their training on-site. They will be supervised by their immediate superiors and there will be monthly meetings between them and their supervisors. They will also be given higher technical managerial roles whilst they host Category 1 managers from the other unit. This will enable them to assert themselves and also learn important things from their new colleagues. Conflicts in this process must be presented to the overall manager and this must be resolved through dialogue and explanations. Category 3 trainees are mainly supervisors selected from junior roles and frontline roles. These leaders will be evaluated and analysed on a periodic basis. They will be given roles that are often preserved for the Category 2 managers. This will include the process of examining them and analysing them. They will be supervised by the Category 1 managers and they will have various evaluation sessions over the time. This will include various assessment sessions that will revolve around interviews and conversations. In cases and situations where Category 2 managers are given Category 1 roles, these roles will be made to fill up the roles of the Category 2 managers. They will be reviewed and evaluated and where possible, they will be corrected and given guidance as appropriate. These evaluations will be filed and the different managers and trainees will be analysed and evaluated quarterly, right from the 6-month of taught-learning through to the on-the-job process. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN COUNTRYSIDE’S LMD STRATEGY The main ethical consideration involves the need for Countryside to deal with their staff members in a fair and morally acceptable manner. To this end, important pointers that must be taken into consideration before, during and after the LMD process include: 1. Diversity matters; 2. Transparency; 3. Ethical processes; 4. Ethical programming Concerning diversity, there are numerous rules and regulations like the Equality Act 2010 which consolidates the different discriminatory processes and systems. Therefore, it will be important to be very sensitive to the diversity aspect of the selection and training process. There must be on systematic or indirect discrimination and this should focus on minorities. In order to go the extra mile to promote equality and ethical behaviour, there is the need for the trainers to select people as a way of promoting positive discrimination. To this end, minorities must be given equal chance and they must be accommodated and given extra treatment where necessary. Transparency revolves around the need to use fair methods of selecting trainees and communicating these methods to the entire organisation. This will involve the use of fair methods like objective assessment criteria amongst others to choose the trainees. Throughout the training, there must be an ethical audit of the processes and systems used by the trainers. This should encompass a proactive approach and method for training the trainees. Also, there must be ethical programming and ethical modules that will be taught to the trainees. They must be made aware of the need for ethics and this will be presented to the studies and the cultural training process. COST CONSIDERATIONS OF COUNTRYSIDE’S LMD STRATEGY Item Description Quantity Amount (£) Firm Analysis An evaluation of the background of Countryside. This will involve the: Observation Interviews & Analysis of HR files 2 senior staff members will undertake this job 3,000 Appraisal & Selection This will involve setting metrics, undertaking analysis of HR files of selected personnel and interview of potential candidates. 3 senior staff of the team 5,000 Course Material Development There will be the development of course materials for the six-month period and the monitoring documents and processes for the six month-period of practical evaluations. 5 staff members of the training team 5,000 Tuition per session Each session will involve 4 hours of training. There will be one session on Fridays, one session on Sunday and two sessions on Saturday. 4 sessions a month for six months @ £2,500 per session £60,000 Accommodation per session Six venues will be used. And this will vary. Venues will be selected in the UK and this will include: London, Birmingham, and Wales. Other venues to be considered include Oxford, Cambridge, Nottingham and other venues that might be conducive. An estimate of £5,000 for food and accommodation per weekend will be considered. £30,000 Transportation for Trainees Arrangements will be made to convey trainees to venues An estimate of £800 per session will be arranged. £5,000 Training Materials Stationery and other materials to be presented. An estimate of £10000 for the whole programme £10,000 Seminar by Top Managers Top managers of Countryside Charity will be given extra money to provide seminars. The money will be paid to the top three managers who will deliver their views on culture in Countryside £9,000 Monitoring Session Monitoring of the results and undertaking corrective action Money will be paid to the managers to be involved in the monitoring and external staff members who will compile and review results. £20,000 Secondments Secondments will include sending managers to different premises of Countryside to learn. This will include transportation, resettlement and adjustments amongst others. £10,000 Managers/Training Supervisors’ Allowance Managers will be paid to supervise their subordinates in the six-month process. Three primary managers will do this at £3,300 per head in the programme whilst other junior managers to be involved will be paid a total of £1,000 £20,000 External Evaluation This will be a quarterly evaluation and analysis of the process This will involve a monitoring staff from the HR system that was not part of the process. £10,000 TOTAL £187,000 IMPLEMENTATION OF COUNTRYSIDE’S LMD STRATEGY The implementation of the training plan will involve a critical review and a proactive approach that will be handed to an outsourced human resource management firm. This firm will be chosen through a tender and the tender will be presented to different HR firms in the head office zone of Countryside Charity. The winning firm will be charged with the initial design of the training material, selection of trainees and conduct of the on-site LMD training sessions that will last over a six-month period. The outsourced HR entity will also train the managers who will handle the in-house practical monitoring session and they will continue to monitor the process of secondment and practical monitoring and evaluation. CHANGE MANAGEMENT CONCERNS Change management will be taught to the participants of the programme. They will be given the information and guidance about the importance of change management as a unique and distinct process in organisations. The idea will be to provide a system and a process through which the trainee managers can adapt to the modifications that are bound to occur in their role as managers. Change management will also be emphasised in the training process and this will be done through the identification of important elements of change and change management. This will involve the identification of realistic issues that occurred in Countryside Charity and this must be integrated into the design of the course material. This will involve documenting issues and matters that relate to the modifications in the external environment and postulation of possible changes that will occur in the future. MONITORING OF COUNTRYSIDE’S LMD STRATEGY There will be a continuous monitoring as part of the training process and the training activity. To this end, there must be an independent training monitoring unit of the firm that will win the bid to run the programme. This unit will examine affairs right from the development of course materials through to the final stages and final ends of the study. After the on-site studies and evaluations, there will be a process and a tilt towards the evaluation of the in-house practical study process. This will enable the study to be conducted in a way and manner that will involve the analysis and evaluation of progress and this will be compared to an independently defined monitoring metrics that will be analysed from time to time for proactive action to be taken where required. CONCLUSION It is identified that to conduct a cost effective and appropriate LMD process, Countryside will need to create a two-part LMD process. The first part will include an on-site learning system which will require a structured process that will teach leadership and management to a group of selected participants. These trainees must be chosen through a transparent process that will include the identification of trainees from the different ranks. Also the training process must consciously unite the different classes of managers from the two main departments. It must be done in a way and manner that will consciously eliminate discrimination and help the participants to understand things and elements of management. The second part will include practical monitoring to be done in-house. The process will be done by an outsourced HR entity and this entity will use various techniques and processes to monitor and analyse results. Bibliography Armstrong, M. (2012). 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