Services

Assessment and Development
Once you really understand your people you will have discovered the most elusive source of competitive advantage available. We work with our clients to understand how success is defined and measured in different environments. Our standards are exceptionally high, and our approach pragmatic. We do not slavishly follow a single approach to assessment or publish our own tools – we simply design the best approach for each assignment:

• Creating assessment approaches – designing and implementing reliable and objective assessment and development events
• Getting the most from psychometrics – providing expert, independent psychometric guidance and interpretation
• Making better selection decisions – upskilling of HR professionals and line managers in objective assessment to ensure fairness and efficacy
• Understanding role demands – putting together robust and objective job descriptions and competency frameworks for the purposes of recruitment, retention, performance management & development
• Creating a better people strategy – auditing, creating and implementing attraction, resourcing and talent strategies that align and enhance the client’s employer reputation
• Modernising policy – formulating clear and up-to-date assessment and selection policies

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Executive Profiling
We predict how board members and senior executives will perform in different roles, teams, organisations and cultures. We go beyond the surface manifestations of behaviour and ability, and we also look at what lies beneath: Motivation and beliefs as well as reputation - is the person seen as someone who can rise to the challenge?

Typical issues include:

• Managing risk – understanding senior managers’ capabilities in relation to critical business demands
• Developing leadership capability – developing the critical capabilities required in senior positions
• Planning for succession – informing judgments about likely successors to key posts
• Retaining the best – retaining and motivating the people who will keep your clients in business
• Maximising top team performance – ensuring that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Penna uses a range of approaches in profiling individuals: Business thinking exercises, In-depth interviews, Psychometrics, Self-assessments and High quality 360 feedback.

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Talent Strategy
Finding and keeping the people who will keep you in business always requires a systematic examination of the whole people proposition. Small or isolated changes in one area are rarely enough and Talent strategy is never just the concern of HR. Penna can add value in the following areas:

• Making a new strategy real – moving off the drawing board and into execution
• Taking stock of current capabilities – understanding what you have and what your competitors would like to take from you
• Determining new capabilities – understanding what you need to ensure success
• Spotting and developing people with high potential and then releasing that potential
• Creating the conditions in which innovation happens
• Rewarding high performance and dealing with under-performance
• Brokering a new deal with employees
• Determining the best way of securing the skills and knowledge needed
• Revamping policies and procedures
• Building a high performance culture
• Creating competent teams

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HR Diagnostics
In today’s knowledge based economy the HR function needs to play a pivotal role in improving a company’s competitive position. This typically requires a continual process of transformation to ensure the function remains relevant and fit for purpose. The first step in this is diagnostics – the vision for HR and its current state of readiness for the journey.

Penna’s approach is to truly partner with our clients, working with key HR and business stakeholders to ensure the benefits of change are realised. It is not only to provide leading knowledge and advise but also accountability for service delivery.

Our service portfolio includes:

• A structured HR health check
• Developing an HR roadmap and scorecard
• Technology evaluation and selection
• Evaluation of shared services and outsourcing models and effectiveness
• Review of all people processes

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HR Solutions
In today’s knowledge based economy the HR function needs to play a pivotal role in improving a company’s competitive position. This requires the real added value from HR services in addition to the prerequisites of quality and cost effectiveness in the delivery of traditional transactional tasks.

Our approach is to truly partner with our clients, working with key HR and business stakeholders to ensure the benefits of change are realised. It is not only to provide leading knowledge and advise but also accountability for service delivery.

Our service portfolio includes:

• HR strategy and organisational design
• Syndicated and bespoke research
• Performance management systems
• Job family and competency framework development
• Recruitment process outsourcing
• Learning & development solutions
• HR process advice and design e.g. diversity
• Outsourced intelligent HR support
• HR systems evaluation and implementation

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HR Competence
In today’s knowledge based economy the HR function needs to play a pivotal role in improving a company’s competitive position. This not only requires organisational and technology transformation, but critically the skills and competencies of the HR professionals will require evaluation, development and support.

Typical client issues Penna can assist with include:

• What are the defined roles, responsibilities and accountabilities in the new model?
• Does the HR team possess the necessary skills required in the future?
• Who has the potential to develop in the new organisational model?
• HR staff have under-development skills outside traditional HR functional core skills set
• What tools can I use to develop these new capabilities and how I can I ensure their continued evolution?
• How can I acquire these new skills from the marketplace – Where do these talent pools exist?

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Organisation Design
We work with managers and leaders to design and structure their businesses in a way that is unique and enables them to achieve their organisation’s strategic priorities. Our highly structured and proven approach to designing/re-designing organisations and departments adds real value to client projects.

Typical client issues managed by Penna have included:

• Creating new or re-designing organisational structures
• Determining the resources needed to meet organisational requirements 
• Defining and articulating roles, responsibilities and relationships / interdependencies at all levels
• Identifying the job skills and competencies required to support the effective functioning of the organisation’s processes and leverages existing and new technologies
• Defining direct and indirect reporting lines, levels and spans of control
• Defining how to create synergies among business areas / units
• Defining how to measure the performance of people, groups, departments, and the overall business

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Leading Change
Penna specialises in the people aspects of managing organisations and managing change. We have deep expertise in many areas, including:

• Change programmes
• Leadership development
• Assessment
• Talent management
• Recruitment and Resourcing

We work with organisations to help them to build the capability of their managers and leaders to cope with and lead change effectively within their organisations.

We work with our clients to identify their development needs around managing and leading change:

• Design and run development programmes to develop change skills
• Build a common ‘toolkit’ and language for managing change
• Apply these new skills and tools in the workplace.

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Programme Management
Businesses recognise that effective and sustainable change often requires high quality external specialists. Penna can provide consultants with advisory and execution capability whilst keeping focus on timely delivery. Our talented ‘pool’ of accredited Change Associates have the expertise and experience to lead, plan, manage and deliver business change across all management disciplines, e.g. Programme Management, Finance, HR, Procurement, IT, Sales, Marketing, Process re-engineering.

By working closely with our clients, Penna adds real value by instilling new skills and confidence to the client team whilst executing programme delivery. Our tailored approach ensures that delivered change programmes offer:

• Advisory as well as execution work to deliver sustainable change
• Cost-effective and flexible resources, often working in teams
• Experts working within their capability and specialisation
• Penna’s management, support, and quality assurance of the project.

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Internal Communications
It is now accepted that to be truly effective, organisations require people willing to go the extra mile for them. For this to happen, good internal communication is a prerequisite – people need to know how they fit into the bigger picture, what’s going on around them and be able to have the conversations they need in order to give their best.

Penna can offer experienced consultants who will deliver an effective communication strategy that involves building the systems and process that connect people within organisations, and then delivering content in a compelling way. Typical issues may be:

• “They just don’t get it” – a new strategy, reorganisation or change that employees clearly do not understand or appreciate
• A change programme that requires people to be involved throughout its implementation
• Low morale that comes from a lack of belief in the business direction (attrition, poor customer service as indicators)
• Relocation / downsizing / outsourcing / offshoring – all of which need to be accompanied by a clear and compelling storyline for employees
• Bringing an employer brand to life for current and future employees

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Engagement
We believe that competitive differentiation in the business and talent marketplaces can be achieved through building a compelling place to work.  We investigate how employee audiences rate an organisation’s performance as an employer. Our insight helps senior teams to make decisions around their people strategy through the whole employment lifecycle.

We undertake qualitative and survey research to measure levels of engagement in organisations. The aim is to establish engagement as a key performance indicator about how good the organisation is as an employer. Penna can assist clients who may be seeking to become even better or resolve issues such as:

• Becoming a truly great place to work and so attract talent in a competitive market
• Need to improve performance such as customer service levels
• High turnover of employees
• Resistance to organisational change or merger
• Integrating a diverse workforce
• Engaging ‘survivor’ workforce following restructuring and/or redundancy

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Employer Brand
An employer brand is the articulation of what is unique and compelling about an organisation as an employer. Bringing this brand to life throughout the employee lifecycle enables organisations to proactively manage their reputation, driving greater organisational performance through the attraction, engagement and retention of key talent.

In our work with clients, Penna takes a holistic view – helping to articulate the true potential in the employer brand, open up dormant channels for tangible communication and focus energy so that candidate and employee engagement is simplified and becomes an ongoing part of working life.

Clients who should have an interest in improving their employer brand will have challenges such as:

• Trouble attracting (a certain group)
• Trouble retaining (a certain group)
• Big upheaval / change initiative
• Morale low
• Productivity down

They will want to address these while reducing cost – such as driving more direct recruitment and increase profit by driving engagement and productivity.

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