Annual turnover: 800 million
HR director: Paul Pagliari
Some English people struggle to grasp the fact that Scotland really is another country: they do things differently there. Devolution has brought about dramatic changes, a good example of which is the Scottish Water company, brought into existence last April by the merging of the three existing Scottish water providers serving the east, west and north of Scotland respectively. But this was no privatisation bandwagon. There were no ad campaigns inviting customers to join Scottish Water, as there were when the supply of English and Welsh water was privatised. Scottish Water remains resolutely in public ownership, answerable to the Scottish parliament and executive.
Four major unions had to be consulted on the redundancies
This public status naturally affected how the merger was handled. Four major unions, Unison, GMB, Amicus and T&G all had to be consulted on the changes and inevitable redundancies as three companies became one. It takes longer that way, says HR director Paul Pagliari, but you proceed on an agreed basis and you have much better quality decisions at the end of it.
That consultative approach led to a successful voluntary redundancy programme, and also to the reasonably smooth introduction of a new management team, selecting 180 people from a pool of 300, without a single complaint or tribunal, as Pagliari points out with obvious pride.
Scottish Water is a bright example of change management, Scottish style. There were 12 months of preparatory work in advance of the April launch Pagliari himself came over from ScottishPower and even now work on transformation continues, with a massive communications effort being made to involve staff.
Every aspect of the original three companies had to be brought together into the one new organisation. Call centres, IT, a complete revamping of health and safety policies, and maintenance of the existing assets all this had to be managed. Big savings, too, have to be made: 200 million of operational expenses have to be cut over the next four years. Meanwhile a massive 2 billion will be invested in the infrastructure over the same period.
HR team that gets out and about
Pagliari has been working with a consultancy called Root Learning in the effort to communicate the need for change to the workforce. They use a very effective model that worked very well with East of Scotland Water, he says. It really helps connect the individual to the organisation, explaining the relative impact that each colleague has on another through the work they do. It helps people see where their work fits in and why it is important, Pagliari adds.
The communication effort continues, with Pagliari and his small team (five direct reports) getting out and about the whole organisation. We have tried to be innovative in the way we look at things, Pagliari says. In an HR sense we are creating a new model here. We have to be out there explaining what this new business means for everyone as an individual.
If you are serving five million customers, managing 46,000 miles of water mains and sewers, handling 2.5 billion litres of water a day enough to fill 1,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools for a country as geographically diverse as Scotland, you had better get your human resources strategy right.
