-
- OUR APPROACH
- Our extensive experience in both the private and public sectors allows us to share best practice across our client base.
-
-
- "It was a pleasure to work with Aquarius again. They proved very flexible in meeting our timescales and developed practical results which are proving very popular and productive in meeting our needs. Overall the project represented excellent value for money."
Alan Bentley, Managing Director IPM
-
- Aquarius’ client base is continually growing and diversifying. We work in the private sector (banking, insurance, manufacturing, retail and distribution) and in the public sector (local authorities, healthcare providers and central government organisations.)
- We are most often engaged at Director level. However, the nature of our work requires engagement with people at all levels and across all functions. This gives us an appreciation and a detailed understanding of a client’s organisation, and allows us to deliver practical, integrated and cost-effective solutions.
-
- CASE STUDIES
- Global Capability Framework : RSA click to expand
-
-
- RSA is a FTSE 100 company listed in London, one of the world’s largest and most successful insurance groups, insuring over 20 million customers and employing 22,000 people worldwide. Aquarius was appointed to develop a global capability framework to support career development, performance, retention and cultural alignment.
- We worked closely with RSA to design and develop a single, global framework that provides a consistent method of describing and measuring people capabilities across every function in RSA. This Global Capability Framework has been successfully implemented across the organisation and has been translated into 14 different languages. It supports and enables capability development activities of all kinds. This provides substantial benefits to employees, managers and the organisation as a whole.
- "It has been a pleasure to work in partnership with Aquarius to develop and implement the Global Capability Framework in RSA. Their knowledge and experience provided a great platform for the development of RSA's framework and its flexible approach enabled us to adapt to the different needs and timescales of the regions and countries across the globe. As implementation transitions into 'business as usual' Aquarius has continued to support RSA as we refine and refresh the framework, reacting promptly to our needs and always with a professional approach combined with a sense of humour."
- Sam Healey, Group Organisation Development Leader - Organisational EffectivenessClick here to view full case study (pdf)
- Flexible Working: Professional Services click to expand
-
-
- As interest in flexible working has grown through social, regulatory and latterly economic pressures, we have developed and translated our personal experience into professional expertise, using our skills as people focused management consultants. We have enabled flexibility in both place and hours of work in our own organisation since 1997 and have learned a lot over the years about what works and what does not.
- Today, we export that expertise and understanding into a range of flexible working ideas, from feasibility workshops to web-enabled solutions. Our most recent assignment involved working with our partner Capability Jane, to help a global professional services organisation assess flexible working opportunities in its business, as a basis for initiating a successful pilot programme.
- Click here to view full case study (pdf)
- Capabilities/Competencies: Professional Services click to expand
-
-
- International Personnel Management (IPM) is a niche business that has been helping companies successfully mobilise their employees on work assignments around the globe since 1995. With plans for business expansion and the need to source the right people with the right skills, IPM wanted to develop a structured approach to develop these specialised skills and knowledge in-house.
- IPM appointed Aquarius to work with them to accurately define the requirements for career development through the organisation, which could also be used for recruitment and performance management purposes.
- Our approach was to spend time with the Managing Director and his senior team, establishing current and future business needs; evaluating the structure of the organisation and understanding the skills, knowledge and behaviours required for the successful delivery of each defined role. The two principal outputs of the project were an agreed behavioural framework and the definition of generic roles profiles.
- Click here to view full case study (pdf)
- Careers & Capabilities: High Street Bank click to expand
-
-
- We were engaged to define and communicate the career paths within and between the Bank’s front-line and back-office Customer Service related jobs. The business driver for this was to improve attraction and retention across these key areas. We worked with business representatives and HR Business Partners to identify, understand and document all the relevant jobs and plot the career steps between them using our Careers Matrix tool. We then worked closely with their internal IT team to develop an intranet site to present the career steps, and more general career planning guidelines, to relevant individuals and their managers.
- We were invited back in 2010 to help them to develop and implement an organisation-wide Knowledge & Skills framework. We worked with HR Business Partners, HR specialists and business representatives to:
- Develop the content of the framework
- Allocate the relevant knowledge and skill sets, and capability level expectations, to jobs
- Group jobs from across different teams together into capability-based Career Families and more generic ‘roles’
- Update the existing Careers Matrix based on the capability allocations
- Working with our partner Xactium, we also created and implemented a cloud-based Role Manager system to manage their knowledge & skill sets and role, job and career information, and present it dynamically to users via the intranet. We supported the launch of the Knowledge & Skills framework and associated tools to users; initially to assess individual and organisation-wide capability gaps and target appropriate recruitment and development solutions to address them.
- "Our Knowledge and Skills framework has created a ‘paradigm shift’ in the development aspects of our Performance Development process, how existing Learning and Development solutions are targeted and the way the need and requirements for new solutions will be identified. It has created significant HR and business benefit. We could not have achieved this without Aquarius’s expertise and support."
Bridget Kearns, Head of Leadership Development and Training
- Click here to view full case study (pdf)
- Reward & Change: International Food & Drink click to expand
-
-
- Our client is a leading international player in the drinks market. As part of the preparation for flotation, the Group CEO and HR Director were leading a business transformation programme. A key challenge was to help to balance the need to retain the distinctive competitive characteristics of different brands and operating companies, with the obvious benefits to be gained from leveraging Group size and consistency.
- Key elements of the transformation included new strategies for Reward, Banding, Talent and Performance Management. For example, each company had their own approach to job banding. The resulting lack of clarity about role size relativity was a serious inhibitor to the movement of management staff between Group companies; with consequences for talent management, career development and retention. Addressing this required not only technical expertise, but also understanding of the inherent sensitivities and the ability to help keep the operating company leadership team on board throughout a potentially destabilising time.
- Our approach was based on building understanding of the need for some level of consistency and gaining acceptance of Group policies, across Group and operating company leadership, before moving into implementation. We worked with our client to:
- Profile key roles across the organisation, to clarify accountabilities and model new organisation structures to achieve the desired transformation
- Build a new single banding structure for the entire management population, to drive consistency and support improved career, talent and reward management
- Construct appropriate reward strategies for each band, reflecting an appropriate balance of basic pay, variable pay and benefits
- Retain and engage their key people during the transformation process through our consultative approach and the opening up of group-wide career paths
- Click here to view full case study (pdf)