The People Policies Audit - Maurice A. Phelps

This audit is designed to help you understand the full impact of your existing people policies (some of which may never have been formulated as actual policies) and to bring them into line with your overall business strategy. In this way, your people policies will reinforce rather than obstruct the strategic vision and changes that you are trying implement.

This process of policy alignment begins with a 30-point questionnaire to assess the level of HR best practice achieved by your organisation. (If you are using CSP's other HR audits, you could begin here and run this audit at regular intervals to measure the impact of the many changes you will be making to your systems and strategies as a result of using the other audits). The audit then takes you through the following 7 steps:

1.Clarify the strategic challenges now confronting your organisation

2.Establish your organisation's existing capabilities, strengths and weaknesses

3.Use the relevant audit matrix to calculate the people-related actions/policies needed to give maximum support to your strategic objectives

4.Analyse existing people policies and their relevance to your business needs

5.Establish new and amended policies to make the required actions happen

6.Establish processes to ensure suitable changes are continuously devised and implemented

7.Measure the impact of changes already made.

At each step, the audit includes checklists, assessments and sample questions. It also includes detailed guidelines to help you interpret the results. Finally, there is an extended people policies survey covering resourcing, learning and other key people issues.