Friday, July 22, 2011

Who Should be Involved? | Fast Tracking the Envisioning Process


This will vary between organisations, but as a minimum we recommend that this initial phase includes:
  • the senior HR leadership team,
  • key people within the broader HR community,
  • critical business stakeholders,
  • a sample of line managers.
Most of these key stakeholders can be involved initially through one-to-one interviews, although in some instances we have used a short HR effectiveness questionnaire with line managers.
The outputs from these interviews will be used to prepare a number of inputs to the envisioning workshop (which should include the senior HR leadership team and, if possible, some senior business stakeholders). These inputs may include:
  • a summary of customer feedback,
  • a straw man 'as is — current HR' and 'to be — new world HR',
  • draft HR priorities,
  • draft governance process to oversee HR transformation.
Once there is broad agreement around the 'as is — current HR' and the 'to be — future world of HR', there are three final outputs that flow from this early envisioning work:
  1. Gap analysis
The 'gap' is the distance that needs to be travelled between where you are now and where you want to be.
Having established your 'as is' and 'to be', you are then able to do a reality check to test whether this gap can be closed within the time and resource constraints of your organisation. Part of this assessment will be your gut feeling about the readiness of the organisation to make the proposed change happen. Other tools that will support this assessment will be the change equation and a more structured look at business impact and change readiness.
The way in which you can use the change equation with your key stakeholders is as follows:
  • Ask your stakeholders to rate the elements of the change equation from their point of view (and how they might judge the reactions of key decision makers outside of HR). These reactions could be: dissatisfaction with the way we currently do HR; level of clarity about what HR should be; level of clarity about the next practical steps and their will to make the change happen (high, medium and low will be sufficient).
  • Then ask your stakeholders to identify the main costs, for example, financial, resources, time, etc.
  • Then ask them to weigh both sides — in their judgement, where is the balance? Is the new world of HR that they have envisioned likely to get the support needed to make it happen?
If the assessment is favourable, then moving to the next task is straightforward. If the assessment is not favourable, then you need to look at:
  • increasing levels of dissatisfaction with the way things are, that is, helping people to realise that the way HR is delivered into the organisation is not fit for purpose. Your 'as is' and 'to be' analysis will be a powerful aid in achieving this;
  • how you might modify your 'to be' vision so that the gap that needs to be closed is smaller;
  • how you might reduce the perceived costs of making the change — either through reworking what has to be done or by looking for greater organisational benefits.
  1. Building the case for change
Having completed your gap analysis, you are in a position to put together a compelling case for change. There is also another 'case for change' that needs to be made to a range of stakeholder groups. This case for change will be less detailed, broader brush. But it will incorporate all the key outputs that have been developed as part of the envisioning process. Figure 1 summarises its key elements.

 
Figure 1: Building the case for change—key elements.

  1. Planning and keeping on track
The final outputs from this envisioning process are the next practical steps; in other words, the pathway from where we are today to where we want to be.
 At this stage, the senior HR leadership group will be in a position to do the following things:
  • Set up a process of 90-day milestones to show how the function will bridge the gap from current to future HR.
  • Commission (or establish and commission) the HR transformation programme team to initiate work streams/projects around these key 90-day deliverables.
  • Establish appropriate levels of reporting between 90-day milestones.
Figure 2 shows an example of a high-level 90-day milestone developed by one organisation we have worked with. What this high-level plan does is to give the senior HR leadership group a sense of focus and enable issues around pacing and resource allocation to be aired in an environment where all have committed to delivery timescales.
 
Figure 2: Ninety-day milestones—key steps to HR transformation.

The final word in this section is that the most powerful way of ensuring senior HR leadership group focus on HR transformation is to organise 90-day workshops around milestones so that there is a strong focus on reviewing deliverables, assessing progress and mobilising for the next 90 days. 

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