systematicHR

What to do now?

Some organizations are great at redefining roles. Others are terrible. Honestly, it’s part of the change management process, but again, some are great at change and others not. The big question in this series: What do I do now? Generically, that’s easy. Specifically, depends on your company.

In part 1, we defined the retained associates as hard working, analytical, growth oriented, understand the organization mission, and get the meaning of metrics and process. Regardless what your role is, the simple answer is that you are now going to look more deeply at process and data analytics. Rather than trying to get specific, which would be impossible without knowing the detailed situation of your organization, here are a couple examples.

The payroll director: as an organization generally preoccupied with processing a fairly tactical task every couple of weeks, it’s difficult for payroll practitioners to transition to a new model. Payroll is a prime example of how a role needs to be filled by practitioners who are collaborative and analytical. With payroll processing activities removed, a payroll director becomes a diagnoser of operational and market problems. Payroll is often the first to truly see certain trends in the organization. For example, commission payouts in the eastern region skyrocket while bonuses in the western region plummet. Working with compensation to understand incentive compensation plans in force at the time can help the organization implement the right mix of incentives to ensure steady sales growth.

The recruiting director: your entire staff of recruiters just got outsourced. You now have an RPO sourcing and qualifying candidates for you. The problem is that there is an absolute shortage of junior assemblers in XYZ city – something you never knew before, but now have visibility of through your partnership with the outsourcer. Rather than deploying more recruiters, you go to work with a program to increase training and bring positive awareness in the workforce, projecting a 15% increase in absolute candidates in 5 years.

It’s entirely true that some of the tasks you used to do will still exist in the organization. The payroll director probably has some staff to audit payroll results and ensure tax compliance. The recruiting director is still concerned about the flow of applicants through the organization. But in answering the question of “what do you do now?” the retained organization has the opportunity to truly affect the organization by being a strategic thought leader and diagnose and solve problems in a way not possible before.