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Dierk Russell | Senior Business Development Manager, CloudPay
How to Undertake a Meaningful HR Transformation Initiative
When you think about transformation, it shouldn’t just be about tweaking, but wholesale changes in those areas that are not working. Otherwise, you risk failure in the future.
We often ask ourselves why we are doing things a certain way without really taking a step back and understanding if nothing existed, how would we go about creating something new? We constrain ourselves based on experience, environment, and appetite for change.
Go Big
When thinking about change, we think about changes in isolation or through a narrow lens. What often starts as transformation becomes a smaller scope and often doesn’t yield the benefits or impacts cited as part of the business case for the transformation.
Often the mistake that is made in any transformation initiative is to define the scope before understanding the true objectives. What are the problems that you are trying to solve and what does great look like?
The internet is rich with case studies and examples of both good and average transformations; they may not apply to your business but understanding why transformation efforts fail will help you plan and launch a more successful transformation program.
Another common mistake in transformation is not understanding the handover activity in your process.
Be inclusive
Often Transformation is taken as part of a business function and therefore, HR Transformation, Digital Transformation, Finance Transformation or Payroll Transformation seem to be common initiatives we hear of.
If we take an often suboptimal, but nonetheless paramount process like onboarding, there are so many different areas of the business being involved in this piece, from HR, IT, Finance, Procurement, Facilities, etc. The most important element, often taken for granted in transformation efforts, is who your customers are and how they feel or will react to this transformation.
Never has the “What’s in it for me?” been more applicable. How are you measuring success? Starting with a solution before truly understanding the problem will never deliver the expected results.
Think about the longer term
Although transformation comes about with the need to solve current challenges, think about what challenges you will face in the future. How do you ensure your transformation is not just about today and you will avoid another transformation journey a few years from now.
This is always more challenging with organizations going through hyper-growth, both in existing markets and new markets.
The biggest challenge with any transformation outside of an organization of relatively stable size and predictable growth is understanding what the challenges might be in the future organization.
If the organization has already grown, which is likely if you are thinking of transformation, what challenges came with that growth? It is easier to predict some of those challenges when you draw on the experience of those who have already been through it once in your company.
Although we associate transformation with something large-scale, each transformation can be supported through continuous improvement activities that support the transformation objectives.
Transformation is not necessarily a one-time activity that when it is done it is done. It may also be something that as your business diversifies or even converges on a smaller set of activities,, then transformation may be required once more.
There are outliers that may mean transformation is more regular, but typically this is not just a regular “let’s shake things up a little”, but rather a considered objective based upon the changing business needs or even the market determining a new direction to follow or adopt.
Challenge everything
I have seen organizations deploying a new IT solution, describing it as transformation. This may be a partial transformation of sorts, but often organizations are trying to establish how existing processes will work inside of this new technology.
Surely if you repeat the same things, even with a new system in place, the results will still be the same?
Don’t be afraid to look into your whole ecosystem and existing ways of working. More and more organizations look at efficiency and the story the organizational data tells. Look at your organizational challenges in these areas and how you can positively impact the business with a more considered and holistic design.
User Experience
Design thinking is not a new concept, and more often we see human-centered design figuring in enterprise approaches, but not always on a large scale. This may be in isolation for a piece of the transformation, but rarely across the board. Think about the personas impacted by the change and whether these are internal customers or external, the input from these personas will be valid for your transformation process.
There are many articles that question the notion that any organization that is results-driven, often neglects its major assets which are, of course, its employees. Creating the right culture and environment for your employees will directly translate into tangible business results.
Your future workforce is not only looking at your ESG scores but also at how your organization accommodates their needs as individuals.
CloudPay’s expertise in global payroll can help you bring HR and payroll together like never before. Take a closer look at our technology here.
