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Managing Change in Your HR Staff – Part 1

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We ended last week’s PMO discussion with change management. As a program manager, a high level understanding of change management may be all that you need – you’d have change management professionals working in the organization to get down to details.Unfortunately, change management is all too often a training program that is implemented with new process and technology. True change management has little to do with such tactical training. True change management is about modifying people’s behaviors and attitudes to provide real alignment with the new strategy.

One of the ‘sad’ parts about change is that often it means change for people – staff reductions, alignment that cause people to lose their jobs and be replaced by people with the requisite skills, or someone’s inability to adjust to the changes. All of these are realities of change which are inhibited by the old HR culture: “HR is a people function, not a business function.” I have seen far too many senior HR practitioners align against change because they wanted to nurture their people, even in the face of empirical evidence that change was necessary for the business. In today’s HRO world, HR staffs get slashed and roles redefined.

As the HR organization goes through change, here are a few components to think about:

  • Redefine roles to better align with new processes
  • Bolster the employer brand and mitigate uncertainty
  • Identify staff members with high growth potential

As long as we’re using HRO as an example, I’ll stick with it. When HRO vendors implementcall centers, technology and rather rigid process in an organization, the immediate affect is often on the HR generalist. This critical role was once a facilitator of forms, the answerer of manager questions, and the mediator of employee concerns. All of these functions suddenly dissapear and reappear in the hands of the HRO vendor. But you simply can’t remove the HR generalists – they have a truly strategic opportunity and role in the organization. Rather than being a facilitator of data, they have to be a diagnoser of data and a true strategic business partner of management. Whether it’s talent management, recruiting woes, turnover, or declining productivity, HR generalists should be at the forefront of diagnosing human capital issues rather than employee issues.

Same goes for HR specialists. That person who used to coordinate training programs may need to gain new skills now that learning management has been completely automated. The performance manager is in the same boat. Instead, these individuals should be looking at proactively optimizing the workforce in an integrated HR framework. The question is if they’ll be able to find the skills to work in a different way towards a different end state.

What this means for HR practitioners is that you might have to replace the whole lot of them. Someone who is excellent at answering employee questions may not have the right competencies for strategic analytics. Those who can be trained may not be immediately able. This brings us to our second bullet: bolster the employer brand. Whatever your employer value proposition is, make sure it’s strong at this particular moment. A strong sense of the employer vision and value proposition must override any fear and uncertainty if you expect to transition to a strategic HR organization.

More tomorrow…

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3 responses to “Managing Change in Your HR Staff – Part 1”

  1. Managing Change in Your HR Staff – Part 1 June 28, 2006 on 2:00 am | by Systematic HR We ended last week’s PMO discussion with change management. As a program manager, a high level understanding of change management may be all that you need – you

  2. Ajit Chouhan Avatar

    I’ve posted my response on my blog.

  3. […] You simply can’t remove the HR generalists – they have a truly strategic opportunity and role in the organization. Rather than being a facilitator of data, they have to be a diagnoser of data and a true strategic business partner of management.Whether its talent management, recruiting woes, turnover, or declining productivity, HR generalists should be at the forefront of diagnosing human capital issues rather than employee issues .Same goes for HR specialists. That person who used to coordinate training programs may need to gain new skills now that learning management has been completely automated. The performance manager is in the same boat. Instead, these individuals should be looking at proactively optimizing the workforce in an integrated HR framework. The question is if they’ll be able to find the skills to work in a different way towards a different end state says SytematicHR.I think sometime the roles of HR generalist and Specialists are highly misinterpreted. As a HR generalist one also perform the role of specialist for most of the areas of HR. To assume that Generalists simply act as frontline implementation agents for Corporate HR strategies is a gross misconception.To some extent this has also got to do with the organizational matrix and decentralization .Organizations which have delegated HRfunctions at Unit level are also ensuring that generalist perform the role of Specialists. […]