ESQUEMA ESTRELLA

The first aspect of distinctiveness is visibility. The HR department operates from the headquarter, only the absenteeism coaches and HR professionals are regularly present in the field. They act as sparring partners of line managers by providing them with advice and support (Job description HR professional, 2010). HR professionals and line managers agree about the visibility of the HRM system. The HR department is not very visible in the organization. Both HR professionals and line managers see this as a logic consequence of the devolution of HR tasks to line management in the organization:

“We choose to devolve a lot of HR tasks to the line, so it is not very surprising that employees do not know HR. You could say that this is a good sign, because this means that zorgcoordinatoren take on their HR responsibilities as we want.” (HR professional 1)

All the stakeholders – HR professionals, line managers and employees – agree that it is not important to know the people of the HR department personally, but all highlighted the importance of clarity about who is responsible for which HR tasks. At the moment this is not clear, especially for zorgcoordinatoren and employees. People do not know who is responsible for which HR tasks and therefore do not know who to contact. Line managers state that more communication is needed to both line managers and employees about where to go with your HR related questions. All the stakeholders within the focus group believe that the professionalization of the HR department is a good step to improve this visibility. In the HR strategy (2013) the way HR will be organized is described. Both rayonmanagers and HR professionals believe that the communication between HR and zorgcoordinatoren will be easier when HR professionals are locally present in the field. The zorgcoordinatoren agree about this. Furthermore, line managers expect that it will be easier for

56 employees to call the information center of HR that will be set up. At the moment, both rayonmanagers and zorgcoordinatoren perceive a lack of feedback from the HR department. It is not clear what happens with your question, it looks like a black hole:

“The distance between HR and the work floor is too large. If you mail or call, it looks like a black hole. You don’t hear anything. This is slightly improved, but still you don’t receive a reaction on which actions are taken to answer your questioned. So you do not know what happened with your question and if you need to call or mail again.” (Zorgcoordinator 2)

The HR professionals agree that line managers and employees might expect that they always receive an answer from the HR department. The information center that is set up is expected to improve this; people will be informed about the progress of their question. Besides knowing where to ask your question, line managers stated the importance of informing employees about the main aspects of HR policies and practices of TSN Thuiszorg. From the document analysis, it became clear that there are documents about HR policies and HR practices like recruitment & selection, career planning and employees appraisal. No documents were found about the HR practices training and compensation. Only the site of TSN zorgcollege provides information about training. There are no policies or procedures about compensation, because people are rewarded based on the CAO. Furthermore, there are a lot of work instructions and procedures about different HR processes, for example about making contracts or mutations. All this information can be found on the intranet of TSN Thuiszorg, which is accessible for all the organizational members of TSN Thuiszorg. However, the information is provided in a very formal way in documents which are not very easy to understand for employees. The way information is communicated to employees is mostly via intranet or e-mail. Within the WMO business unit, only twice a year a ‘work meeting’ is organized. In this meeting, line managers inform employees about developments in the organization and changes in work. Important changes in policies and procedures of the organization are discussed as well. However, due to the length of the meeting it is not possible to discuss all the changes in depth. Furthermore, employees are not obliged to attend these meetings. So it is difficult to inform the employees of the WMO business unit. For the AWBZ business unit, work meetings are organized every six weeks. Line managers perceive that employees do not always read the information that is send to them via e-mail or intranet. The representatives of the work council know that employees have difficulties with the interpretation of information about HR that is provided to them and draw attention to the risk of information overload. HR professionals are aware of the need to improve communication about HR.

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“We need to be aware of an overkill of information, especially when you look to the target group of employees. We have different groups of employees with different backgrounds. People read and interpret the information in a wrong way or do not read the information at all. There are employees that read their e-mail, however if they see a list with information they do not know which information is of importance to them.” (Zorgcoordinator 1)

TSN Thuiszorg scores low on the relevance of the HRM system. Organizational members do not perceive a clear link between the goals of the organization and their own goals. Within the focus group, line managers perceive that a clear link between the goals of the organization and goals of HR policies and procedures is missing. In the HR strategy (2013) a clear link is made between the strategy of the organization and the HR strategy. However, this is focused more on how the HR department should be organized and which HR capabilities TSN Thuiszorg needed to achieve the goals of the organization, it contains not a link to concrete HR policies and instruments. While goals for recruitment & selection, career planning and employee appraisal are outlined in documents, these are not clearly aligned with the business strategy of TSN Thuiszorg. The interviews held by Hesselink (2013) and Oude Maatman (2013) revealed that a clear philosophy of the HRM system; underlying principles and goals, is missing. Rayonmanagers and the work council representatives highlighted the need for a translation of the organization strategy towards how employees are managed within TSN Thuiszorg. The organization strategy should be translated into clear goals for HR policies and practices. Input should be gathered from the work floor. Both HR professionals and line managers agree that clear goals help to create clarity and are furthermore needed to evaluate the performance of HR.

“HR is responsible for the translation of the vision of TSN Thuiszorg into a vision about HR. Where do we stand for? Where do we need to go to? How are we going there?” (Rayonmanager 2)

The HR department is in the middle of a transition towards a professional HR organization. The employees of the HR department experience that they do not have a lot of power within the organization. During the last years the work pressure increased, both HR professionals and line managers agree that HR is still working too reactive. This was a main finding of the interviews of Hesselink (2013) and Oude Maatman (2013) as well. In order to anticipate on future developments within the organization, both HR professionals and line managers highlighted the importance of a more pro-active role of the HR department instead of being reactive when a problem occurs:

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“We are always working re-active. At the end of the story they asked for support from HR, while as HR department you want to work pro-active and being supportive to the line beforehand.” (HR professional 5)

While the HR professionals believe that the re-active role is due to the high workload, line managers state that this could be partly explained by the self-resolving power of the organization as well. Due to the rapid growth of the organization people are used to solve their own problems. The organization is in a transition; all the staff departments are going to be professionalized. Line managers need to become aware that they do not need to solve problems on their own, but that they can ask for support:

“Zorgcoordinatoren in the field call HR when they have a problem, but that’s when the problem already occurred. The ideal situation is to signal problems beforehand and call HR to ask for support how to anticipate on developments.” (Rayonmanager 1)

Besides being more pro-active, the HR professionals highlighted the importance of being able to demonstrate how the HR department adds value to the organization. The HR department wants to deliver good professional support and good management information. This should be supported by solid processes and smart systems. In this way, the customers of HR can arrange their HR issues with the least effort.

Overall, it can be concluded that the distinctiveness of the HRM system within TSN Thuiszorg need to be improved. The HR department as well as HR policies and practices need to become more effective. Line managers highlighted the importance of clear communication about HR, especially about who is responsible for which HR tasks and how to contact these disciplines. Furthermore, line managers call for the need of a clear link between goals of the organization and HR policies and practices. Both HR professionals and line managers believe that HR should take up a more pro-active role in order to be better able to contribute to the goals of the organization, the HR department wants to demonstrate its added value more thereby showing the effectiveness of the HR department.