Human resources
2
- PLANNING FOR
GROWTH
4
cbs organization
What's News Issue 5 May 1996
Current growth forecasts for CBS indicate rapid expansion
worldwide over the coming years. In terms of personnel, CBS
looks set to increase dramatically in size by the year 2000.
According to chief of human resources Flip Goudsmit, one of
the challenges will be to find the right people, both within
and outside the present organization to support that growth.
He outlines a new strategie HR plan to achieve it.
Flip Goudsmit
Goudsmit and his team have been working
on the development of a comprehensive,
proactive HR plan for CBS since he joined
the bank last September. 'Our approach
was to come up with a number of ideas
which we subsequently tested out with
senior management, both in Utrecht and
around the regions. We talked - fruitfully -
with general managers at the regional
conferences in New York, London,
Singapore and Buenos Aires before actually
sitting down and finalizing the write-up of
our plan. We feit it was extremely
important to have the support of the whole
management team - both national and
international - before we got down to
work.'
STAFF MOBILITY
According to Goudsmit, the present plan
differs from previous approaches in a
number of ways. 'That's right,' he says.
'One major change is that we will be
introducing a planned, proactive strategy
to meet our human resource requirements.
This means we'11 be doing a lot more
planning on management development,
training and creating the terms and
conditions to support staff mobility. We
envisage a future organization in which
increasingly more people of different
nationalities will spend periods in offices
other than where they started. To achieve
that, you need clear policies and an
integrated approach to human resource
development and management.'
AMBITIONS AND SKILLS
Asked what this means in concrete terms,
Goudsmit says: 'For a long time, the
concept of "careers are the responsibility of
individual staff" has been part of the bank's
culture. That is all well and good, but if you
never teil people what you think about
them, what you think they could potentially
achieve, it is very difficult for them to be
responsible. What we want to do is to work
more closely with our personnel, not least
to discover what their ambitions and skills
are and how these can best be deployed in
the organization. If we want to retain and
recruit quality people, then you have to
offer perspective. You cannot hire someone
and say: this is your cliënt base, get on with
it and 1*11 see you in five years; we'11 talk
about your bonus at some point, but don't
ask us about future development. The
chance that good people will still be there in
five years is very slight indeed.'
STAFF FEEDBACK
One of the basic elements to Goudsmit's
plan is inventorization of existing skills
and potential within the organization. 'In
recent months, we have done a number of
pilot projects to define the best instrument
and how we have to use it to make it work.
What we needed was an objective system
which would assist us in placing the right
person in the right place. Over the next six
months we'11 be carrying out our
"inventories", so staff should already be
thinking about what that means for them.
You know, the "individual responsibility"
concept has led to a lot of internal job
hunting. People see an opportunity
elsewhere within the organization and
they go for it. That is actually detrimental
because it makes planning very difficult.
The system we will be putting in place
now will be much more objective and I
think staff will welcome it. The idea is for
regular appraisals, not only on past
performance, but on what people's
ambitions are, and we will provide more
feedback to staff. In addition, man-
MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT
ON TRACK
One of the concrete results of the reoriented
human resources plan is a new management
development plan, not only for senior staff, but
for personnel in all levels of the organization.
Pieter van Gent is the man behind the new
plan. He explains how it will work in practice.
Rabobank has actually had a management
development plan for at least the past eight or
nine years.'But,'says Van Gent,'like most
traditional plans, it focused on higher
management positions - the"crown princes"
What we want to do now is move from what is
in effect a senior management model to a
more comprehensive human resources
strategy - and that means everybody.'
CAREERS NOT JOBS
The plan Van Gent will be putting in place over
the coming months is inspired by the need to
ensure that an organization will have qualified
managerial people five, 10 and even 15 years
down the road. To achieve that, you have to
put in place a structure that extends right
through the organization. What we're saying is
that career - I use the word advisedly, we're not
talking jobs here, but careers - or managemen^k
development is a line responsibility.Our aim i^W
to organize management in such a fashion
that everyone in the organization will have
their own structure for development.
Essentially, it comes down to offering people a