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HR transformation: Are we there yet?
17 July 2008:
Go into many large organisations and speak to the HR team and ask them who manages change the best and the chances are they will foist that accolade on their own team. 'HR is a people activity. Change is a people activity. Therefore HR manages change well.' Sounds logical – until you peel it back a bit. The ultimate test is how HR manage change within their own function.
Change in HR takes a number of guises. It may be a reorganisation to reflect business changes, often going down the route of centralising, decentralising and then centralising again – often following on from the appointment of new chief executives. Sometimes change is in the form of rebranding, becoming 'people-centred' or perhaps 'business partners' or even 'change agents' – nice one that! On other occasions change takes place to fundamentally shift the way an HR service is provided, perhaps outsourcing support, giving responsibility back to line management or shifting to e-HR.
Whatever the reason for change you can be pretty sure that there will be a fair degree of anguish in the decision-making process. I have worked in teams where long days have been spent identifying what type of function we want to be, often with irreconcilable differences between competing workgroups – often with strong personal loyalties. The one thing HR teams lack, at least in my experience, is a strong change manger from outside the function. Propose an external change manager and in many teams there will be shock and anguish – 'they can't possibly understand what goes on in HR' will be the cry. Instantly ignoring the fact that good change managers, like project managers, don't have to be an expert in the subject matter. To my mind much better that they are from outside the function, that way you can have a dispassionate view of what goes on in the function. Of course outsiders don't know the technical detail of how to structure an interview, an employment contract or an appraisal scheme, but they don't need to! If we insist we can transform our function by solely relying on those within the HR team we stand to loose a lot – as well as our credibility.
Source: HRZone