What comes first? Staff or the frontline service?

摘要

It's an unenviable job being a human resources manager for a local authority. Those at the top, the corporate management team and the chief executive, regard him or her (increasingly her) as the keeper of the payroll and rations who lives in a cubbyhole somewhere along the corridor past the assistant head of environmental services. Those on the frontline see the HR manager as the wielder of the P45 whose task is to slash the workforce as cheaply as possible and avoid the cost of expensive compulsory redundancies. As if this is not enough, the Cabinet and leader have their own agendas which quite often run contrary to all that the HR manager is trying to achieve in pursuit of an efficient, transformed, flexible workforce.