Whether you are evolving into an HR Shared Services model, modernizing your core HR systems to the Cloud, or turning ordinary workdays into extraordinary experiences for your employees; change does not come easy. There will be many keys to your success, but one that is not discussed often enough is the organizational change that you must navigate. Driving change in a complex organization requires a multi-faceted approach and it depends as much on creativity as science.
Below I discuss approaches I’ve seen work wonders for our customers; turning HR into heroes. Several of our thought leaders, who have made this journey already, will also share their best advice with you.
What is organizational change management? Organizational change management means you identify the stakeholders who will be impacted by your transformation: employees, managers, your teams, and executives; then prepare them for a new way of working. To do this well, you must be able to communicate effectively, build political alignment, generate enthusiasm, and balance the needs of many. Sounds simple, right? Here is an observation from one of our HR Transformation leaders.
“Change management is a very critical component of any HR transformation initiative and yet, it is sometimes overlooked or not given enough focus. Many organizations are going through or contemplating significant shifts in how they provide services to their employees. While their goal may be to improve the employee service experience, they cannot assume that their employees will be immediately thrilled by the new way of engaging with HR.” - Jen Stroud, HR Transformation Consultant
Design Your Digital Brand
Many HR organizations take the opportunity to establish a new digital brand for themselves to generate excitement (and in some cases to distance themselves from the legacy impressions employees had of HR.) “AskHR”, “MyHR”, and “MyHRConnection” are just a few of the examples I’ve seen. You only get one chance to make a good first impression, so INCLUDE employees in the process and be CREATIVE. Conduct focus group sessions to understand what employees want most and socialize the findings. Patricia Tourigny is SVP, Human Resources Shared Services at Magellan Health advised her team to conduct a contest in which employees voted for the name of the new employee service center portal.
The HR team created a “name that tool” game for the solution. The one-week voting contest saw employees lobbying for their choice. After a two-way tie, employees settled on VERN, the Virtual Employee Resource Network. At the same time, select employees and managers were drafted to provide user testing, and feedback was incorporated on a rolling basis. The HR team did a two-week soft launch of VERN at the company’s St. Louis office. This location houses the largest employee base for Magellan and represents the widest cross-section of employees. HR team members kicked off the event with T-shirts, cake, and HR team members with laptops open, ready to show fellow employees how to use VERN. For more information on Magellan’s success story, download the case study written by Bersin, Deloitte Consulting here.
Market Your Digital Brand
I’ve witnessed creative HR leaders release videos, place table placards in the cafeterias, and affix posters to the walls to generate awareness. Magellan Health went so far as to create a mascot and make dolls to promote their transformation. Sometimes your MARKETING leader can be your best friend when you are brainstorming for creative ideas that will grab employees’ attention.
Develop a Network of Spies
I’m kidding. Spies keep secrets and you want these people to openly promote your new service. Jen Stroud developed and partnered with ambassadors in the business to help HR design, promote, and champion their transformation. Jen shared, “In my opinion, and based on my personal experience when I was the Executive Director of HR Services at TeleTech, the best way to gain support from employees is to involve them in the process from the very beginning. At TeleTech, we identified and engaged with employees across the organization throughout our journey to help ensure that we not only stayed on track but, more importantly, we ultimately delivered a solution that met the needs and expectations of our employee population. These employees became known as our ambassadors and they did an amazing job of communicating the value of our HR transformation to the entire organization and sustaining a high level of enthusiasm for change. We deliberately chose a diverse group of people to be our ambassadors including several people known to be a bit more pessimistic and harder to please than others. These employees ended up adding the most value because they helped us see roadblocks and challenges that we might not have paid attention to. If you’re serious about transforming how work gets done in HR and improving the employee service experience at your organization, the best thing you could do for your initiative is to establish your own ambassador program and don’t forget to have some fun with it.”
Remember these three key concepts to amplify your digital brand. Think MICrophone
- Marketing
- Inclusion
- Creativity
Want your executives to be onboard?
It’s important that executives align and promote the change in a positive light. Begin by developing metrics for success and high-level behaviors you want to change; then work with your communications team to align on messaging. Tying your metrics back to the goals of the business is a good place to begin. Understanding the needs of different parts of the organization and developing a long-term governance model with accountability is key.
Prepare Your Teams
Remember that fear of losing one’s job? It’s understandable, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve seen numerous customers use transformation to create career opportunities for HR business partners. Mia Isnardi-Shook, Senior Director of People Services & Enablement at Hitachi Vantara, recently spoke about the human benefits for her team. “We have a mix of early career and experienced people. We want to offer them job satisfaction and real career opportunities. By freeing up time, we’re able to take on more challenging and rewarding work. For example, we now have people learning to become lifecycle specialists, handling onboarding, transitions and offboarding. Others are becoming benefits experts. By carving out these areas, we’re creating fulfilling career paths for our team members. That also reduces team turnover – which is incredibly important since we operate in some highly competitive markets for HR shared services professionals.” To read more about Hitachi Vantara’s success, access the case study here.
Evolve your intake channels for requests and inquires to be more consumerized. Today people prefer mobile, websites, chat, and chat-bots for fast, personalized service. It’s important to communicate all the methods with which employees many engage with HR, especially if you are going to discontinue some channels… which brings me to email.
Pull the Plug on Email
Too many HR leaders make the mistake of equating email with “high-touch” support and are afraid employee will react negatively if HR doesn’t continue to accept email for inquiries.
The truth is that vast majority of employees dislike email as a support channel and are perfectly adept at using their mobile devices, laptops, and even kiosks; because this is what they use outside of work to access consumer services, from online banking to airline boarding passes, to Uber and Amazon. Email is 30 year old technology. Employees have to memorized various email alias, they have to wait longer for questions to route to the right resource, and they cannot see the status of their requests in real time. For simple inquiries, employees prefer to answer questions themselves like they do with Google or YouTube, right from their phone; 24x7, regardless if they are in the office or at home or on a plane. That is known as the Consumerization of HR Services.
I’ve seen this play out numerous times with our customers. Not once have I heard of any backlash when it comes to discontinuing email as a channel. As a matter of fact, the HR leaders I’ve interviewed were sometimes surprised to learn that employees never really liked email as a channel all that much. When it comes to pulling the plug, I recommend discontinuing it completely the day you go live with your new employee portal. Set up an auto-generated response to any emails that politely guide the employee to your new portal and promote the advantages of the new portal at the same time. One large bank in the Netherlands turned off 70 HR email boxes and achieved 100% employee portal adoption on the day they went live. Communication to change mindset and behavior was key.
Are you ready to be an Agent of Change?
ServiceNow makes work, work better for people.
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Eric Hemmer is a Principal HR Solution Consultant at ServiceNow who works with progressive customers to develop better employee experiences. @ehemmer99
Jen Stroud is an HR Transformation Consultant at ServiceNow, who successfully transformed HR at Teletech by shifting to an HR Shared Services model and implementing HR Service Delivery on the ServiceNow Platform. @stroud_jen
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