THE CASE STUDY: You have been retained as a consultant by Gloria Barker, the newly appointed Human Resources Director for the Northampton Insurance Company (NIC). Gloria has been appointed to the NIC business as part of a change management team nominated by the retail bank that is NIC’s ultimate owner, because of the bank’s concern about the growing discrepancy between its own emergent culture and the more insular approach which continues to be displayed by NIC. Whereas the bank is people focused and customer driven, with a flat structure and an empowered workforce, NIC is technically focused and process driven, run by actuaries who have been promoted from within according to the length of service. Overall the culture is very traditional, male dominated, hierarchical and status oriented; the prevailing management style has been described (in corporate focus groups) as bullying, coercive and dominated by a cult of personality. In one of your early briefings from Gloria she has revealed that men have to wear jackets when they move between floors in the NIC head office. ‘I’ve been told that I mustn’t wear high heels in the boardroom as they might damage the carpet, ‘she added. ‘And instead of using first names, everyone refers to each other as ‘Mr’ or, very occasionally, ‘Mrs’. Chairs with arms, different coloured furniture, metal bins, the quality of the floor covering, and the number of windows in an office all denote status, and NIC executives have their own suite and dining facilities on one of the upper floors of the NIC offices. Yet the NIC group is one of the largest financial services organisations in the UK, with 7 million customers and 12,000 staff. Its income in 2006 was & amp;amp;#163;3.73 billion, with assets under management of & amp;amp;#163;32 billion. At the same time, NIC has begun to face difficulties that can only grow more pronounced in the foreseeable future. It is proving harder to attract and retain staff; its customer profile is almost exclusively concentrated among low-income households; and it has not yet managed to make any inroads into those market segments with larger amounts of disposable earnings. A modernisation programme for NIC has already been announced by the change management team, working in collaboration with NIC’s own executive group. As part of ‘Building the New NIC’, the company has proposed to shed around 2,500 people, though some of these will be redeployed in call centres, and it will close more than 100 district sales and claims offices. The most important part of the programme, however, is the need to change the culture of the company in order to empower employees to deliver the kind of performance that the new NIC management requires. This is Gloria’s principal task, and explains your own involvement. Gloria has asked you to produce A REPORT for her in which you address each of the following issues; 1.Outline and explain the cultural vision which, in your view, should be adopted at NIC, using evidence from relevant academic research and organisational examples to justify your views. 2.Identify the key features of an HR strategy for NIC which contributes to the realisation of the cultural vision that you have outlined in your response to question 1. Again your arguments should be supported with relevant academic research evidence and organisational examples. 3.Explain how you would evaluate the effectiveness of the HR strategy proposed both in the short and long term. The assignment should take the form of an individual, written report in which you devote equal coverage to each of the 3 questions. The report should not exceed 2,500 words in length. Harvard system of referencing and a full bibliography. Assessment criteria: Business awarness - appreciation of the organisational context, the environment within which the business operates and the nature and scope of the HR strategy in supporting business goals and priorities Demonstration of the ability to analyse and evaluate both theory and research and corporate policy and practice and to make objectives and impartial judgments about the real effectiveness of the HR strategy and related policies and practices. The systematic organisation and presentation of the report so that it is coherent, convincing, accurate, reader-friendly and businesslike.