As head of HR services you have received the following e-mail from your boss, the group head of HR: ‘I note that one of the findings of the CIPD 2007 report on the changing HR function was that: “Three-quarters of survey respondents would like to go further in the transfer of people management responsibilities to the line. It seems obstacles to progress appear to be line manager priorities, their skills, the time available to them for people management tasks and poor manager self service.” I believe that we have all these problems: line managers go through the motions as far as their people management responsibilities are concerned and are too busy anyhow to pay proper attention to them. Even if they are interested and have the time, they lack the skills, for example in interviewing and conducting performance reviews and we are woefully slow in extending our HR information system to provide for self-service. What should we do about these problems?’ Reply to this e-mail.