The central role of your people function for a successful people transformational initiative.

Since the pandemic, there has been a high focus on transformational people initiatives across organizations in the world. Employees, Staff or now referred as People, have gained more value for organizations than in the past, as employers started to recognize the critical importance of being more human towards the people who make the business what it is. Companies have also realized the critical need to fundamentally change their trajectory, their corporate culture, or the way they conduct business. As such, here and there companies have started to recognize the need for transformation and in numerous organizations, plenty of transformational people initiatives have emerged, designed to reach strategic business objectives while strengthening, protecting, engaging and retaining their workforce.

Companies’ experiences investigated in studies have shown that succeeding in transforming an organization is far from being a given. John Kotter emphasized this difficulty when he reported in 1995 in his well-known study that 70% of corporate transformation programs fail. Nearly thirty years later, this assertion unfortunately still stands as demonstrated in a Harvard Business Review Research article published in 2021. Using a meta-analysis, the research found that only 22 % of companies in the analysis successfully transformed themselves which suggested a 78 % failure rate: Corporate Transformation is an extremely hard task.

This article is not a recipe for successful transformation. There are many good recipes out there on successful corporate transformations that we encourgae you to read about. Hard tasks are not made easy by only following a recipe, but most of all by selecting the right people in the kitchen, with the right knowledge, flair, experience, skills, and attitude, who can improvise on the recipe with great results, even when challenges appear along the way, while cooking. Hence, I would like to introduce to you the central role of your people function in a people transformational initiative at every stage of a transformative people program.

Why put your people function at the center of a transformative program?

In nearly 25 years of professional experience in the corporate world, be it private, public, or nonprofit, small, medium, or multinational, the same fact always comes clear: HR is one of the only technical functions that almost every experienced leader in the organization claims or thinks to be an expert of. And more and more organizations have started to appoint non-HR executives at HR leadership roles. You would rarely see this when it comes to other corporate functions such as Finance, IT, Communication etc… It is quite understandable given that the HR function deals with People and most of the time experienced Leaders have accumulated substantial experience working with people over the years and we know for sure that knowing an organization culture in addition to its people provides a huge edge when it comes to people matters. Having said that, let’s always remember that the people function is a technical function first and foremost. Just like every other technical function, it has specific techniques, models, strategies, formulas, .. and requires holding a range of technical skills, knowledge and experience which are to be learnt, acquired, and built over years of experience working specifically in the HR field, to be effective. So no, not every experience leader is a HR expert, though they may have valuable insight given their sound experience in dealing with people matters.

To lead a people transformational initiative, organizations need a core People team that is technically savvy, knowledgeable, and experienced in HR, particularly in change and project management, and familiar with your organization culture. This refers to HR executives who have behind them a sound experience in conducting HR initiatives, deep knowledge and experience of HR techniques including newer models on the market, and most of all, an astute capacity to connect with people in the organization and influence them at all levels. This is the right team to put at the center of a people transformational program as they will have the capacity to act as Catalysts for buy-in, sound Advisers, influential sounding boards, and connectors of people and functions around the new initiative. If you don’t have that SWAT team, make sure you put one together. Organizations who have a non-HR executive at the most senior HR leadership position must ensure that management levels executives who will form part of the core team to lead the transformational initiative, are strong technically and are experienced HR professionals in leading Change Management. You must ensure that they can recognize within their teams those who have the required technical skills and experience to lead the change, they must own the new initiative and vision and they must have the leadership, boldness and influential capacity to convince and influence others. In many cases prior launching a new transformational initiative, senior management needs to be bold in appointing members of the core team to lead the program. Otherwise, you may be setting your initiative for failure from the get-go.

Once you have the right team, they will be able to act as catalysts and fuel collaboration and ownership from business management, employees, and stakeholders to make the change happen through each stage of the transformational initiative.

(i) Identification of program objectives linked to business strategy

During this phase, members of your core team will act as strategic partners to business leaders to ensure the business strategy is reflected in the program objectives. This is a critical step to get a clear understanding of what a successful transformational initiative will look like from a business perspective post implementation.

Wearing the hat of strategic facilitators, the core team together with leaders of all business functions will be able to translate success into program objectives, eventually leading to anticipated metrics and Key Performance indicators of a successful change process.

(ii) Diagnosis/Research/ Data Analytics/Surveys/Consultations (Internal & External)

This is the phase during which information will have to be gathered within the organization as well as externally to get an accurate picture of the status of things related to the expected change: needs, causes, contributions from the business and views of staff, etc… During this phase, members of your people function, namely data experts, survey specialists, and HR Business Partners coordinated by your core team, will be the main engineers behind gathering and analyzing data and getting an accurate picture and contributions within the organization. Your core team will act as coordinators and consolidators of the information gathered to make sense of it, review external information and market practices from similar organizations, and report back to senior management in order to connect all dots and inform the design of the new program. Your core team would also organize a series of consultations with staff representatives, attend townhalls, leadership meetings on the topic of interest, meet with key stakeholders, and influential leaders in the organization to seek their partnership for the program and get their input. This is a time of deep listening for your core team, acute observation and establishing true human connections within the organization.

During this phase, potential challenges and possible bottlenecks should be anticipated from the information gathered and a strategy for buy-in in the organization should be established from this point.

(iii) Program design and partnership/collaboration to elaborate an implementation plan

Once strategic objectives are clear, current picture within the organization is established and critical information internally and externally has been gathered, it is time to design the program. That is where the technical skills of your core team will be the most leveraged as no one is more qualified to design HR initiatives than your core HR team, carefully selected for the task. This is the time for review of all consolidated information gathered, calling on HR methods, techniques and models that worked in similar contexts, a time to recall strategies that have helped tackled challenges in similar contexts, and a time to revisit what worked and what did not work in previous people initiatives implemented in the organization.

Most of the time during this phase your core team will act asbrainstorming agents and technical experts in the HR field to come up with a model personalized for your organization, that incorporates needs, format, stakeholders and staff key contributions, and strategic objectives. Most importantly, the proposed model must incorporate aspects that should be able to tackle anticipated bottlenecks and must include concrete indicators and metrics that will help track success. It always advisable that the proposed programs presents a couple of alternative options as part of its design, with pros and cons and a final proposed option. This will later help for buy-in when presenting why one facet of the design has been preferred against another.

At this point, the proposed model should be the result of a collaborative journey within the organization. At this point, if all has been followed as recommended, the proposed model should be the result of a collaborative journey within the organization. The core team and the entire people function should now been seen as trustworthy partners to inteernal business leaders and staff representatives. Therefore, going back to key stakeholders and business leaders with the proposed model for buy-in and to co-elaborate an implementation plan and secure partnership and collaboration should not be too much of a challenging task.

(iv) Communication/Getting Buy-in/ownership and Engagement from staff.

This is the time for very close partnership with the internal Communications department and with Business Leaders on Communication and getting staff and the organization engaged around the program initiative an implementation. Depending on the type and scale of the people initiative being implemented, a mix of a cascading approach from Leaders and Managers to staff through departmental townhalls, meetings, and written communication together with corporate-wide face to face and written communication will be necessary.

(v) Collaborative Implementation, Monitoring/Reporting and Course Correction

Implementation is a core phase of any transformational program. It is the beginning and not the end. An implementation that is improvised or not well planned may ruin a very well-designed program. This is why it is very critical that in partnership with leaders of implementation departments, an implementation plan is drawn ahead of implementation time, with key milestones, checkpoints, monitoring and reporting methods and the list of people in charge and business leaders who will act as champions of the implementation.

During this phase, the core team will act as relays of communication regarding implementation and the effectiveness of the program to the highest HR Leader in the organisaton, to senior management and eventually to the Board. They will also be critical advisers in case there is a need for course corrective actions.

Your people function and core HR team leading any people transformational is the most critical instrument for a successful program. It is important for senior management to not underestimate, undervalue or under-use the technical skills of the experienced and savvy HR professionals’ part of your organization.

By Dorcas Manou-Assoko