Dealing with organisational change is now a regular part of the HR remit, which means that HR professionals need to be equipped with practical skills and capabilities to manage change and reorganisation effectively. Lucie Benson looks at what can be done to ensure the change management process is a successful one.

There are many factors that can lead to change within an organisation, including competitive pressure, shifting markets, mergers, changes in strategy or technology and government legislation. Change is continuous and occurring at an ever-increasing pace, therefore is always going to be a major objective for any organisation and HR has a key part to play in this. So what can you do to ensure that the whole process is managed smoothly?

Well, I’d love to tell you that there is just one simple answer, but I’m afraid it isn’t as easy as that. Indeed, CIPD research found that only around half of reorganisations met their stated objectives, which are usually bottom-line improvement.

Vanessa Robinson, manager of organisation and resourcing at the CIPD, says: “Organisations need to instil the capability within the company to manage repeated change. Common issues that the CIPD research identified from successful reorganisations included sustained support from senior management; looking at all possible implications of a particular change on the organisation and not just considering it in isolation; ensuring effective communication and engaging with all employees.”

Sally Ollett, senior consultant at HR consultancy Mercer, advises on managing the change programme as a formal, ongoing project. “The more formally you can set it up as a project, the better,” she says. “Many organisations enforce a mighty push at the beginning and then there is a wall of resistance and it all filters away and evaporates. You have got to think about the long term and think about not just the first batch of communication, but what the follow up will be too, so that you have got a campaign of change-related interventions over the long term.”

HR involvement

Considering that change management predominantly involves the ‘people’ in organisations, HR can be ideally placed to ensure change issues are appropriately addressed. “Our research identified that active HR involvement in the change programme was one of the key factors in successful reorganisations,” remarks Robinson. “This involvement needs to be pro-active, with HR professionals being seen as ‘shapers of change’. HR is well placed to address all of the people management aspects required in a change, but need to be involved early enough in a change programme to have maximum effect.”

CIPD research has identified seven areas of activity that make successful change happen, entitled ‘the seven C’s of change’:

• Choosing a team




• Crafting the vision and the path




• Connecting organisation-wide change




• Consulting stakeholders




• Communicating




• Coping with change




• Capturing learning

The London Borough of Newham implemented a significant change management programme in 2005/2006 in order to create a new organisational structure that would increase public accessibility to council services. The new structure aimed to replace the existing six departments with 25 revised service areas, due to the fact that the previous departmental approach didn’t properly reflect the way the council wanted to deliver services.

With 11,000 employees, this was no easy task and it was down to the council’s HR manager of information systems, Paul Doree, to provide all the necessary information to senior managers, enabling them to plan and implement the changes.

“We have gone from six departments, containing many people in each one, to 25 different service areas containing far fewer people but targeted towards specific service delivery objectives,” explains Doree.

The first hurdle to overcome was to try to get some sort of overview of how the proposed structure would look and how it would pan out. The council therefore decided to use a software package, OrgPlus, to help with this.

Doree was able to configure OrgPlus to the council’s HR system, which was done easily with no training required. Once configured, the software automatically generated organisational charts containing an overview of services, the teams within them and detailed data about each staff member. The charts were automatically updated with the correct information from HR and payroll system data feeds.

“OrgPlus has proved extremely useful,” comments Doree. “What we were able to do in our HR and payroll system was build the new structures and move the people around, which was a major undertaking in itself. Once we were happy that they were all within their new, correct service areas, we were able to then chart it and feed those charts back to senior management, so that they could have a better strategic overview of the new structure, how it would function, and how the new services would relate to one another.”

Through presenting this information in a simple format to senior managers, it helped to speed up their decision-making process during the programme because it was in the form of visual charts rather than reams of data contained in spreadsheets. “We have about 600 to 700 teams within the service areas and the charts showed how all the teams linked to one another and it was presented in an extremely visual way,” says Doree.

Skilled change team

When managing change in a large organisation, the CIPD’s Robinson says that it is crucial to ensure there is an appropriately skilled change team in place, who have the full and active support from senior leadership. “Communication is also key, particularly in larger organisations which are possibly more geographically dispersed,” she remarks. “In the absence of effective communication, it is very easy for uncertainties to arise with potentially damaging consequences to employee morale and engagement.”

Ollett agrees that it is imperative that there is leadership from senior management and adds that everyone must be involved in the change if you want them to buy into it. “HR must be seen to be taking comments on board,” she remarks. “Also remember to expect, manage and plan for resistance. Think about how you are going to respond, and what the likely reactions are going to be.”

Robinson concurs and says that change involves a lot of insecurity and individuals will potentially feel threatened. “Change brings the risk that the psychological contract between employer and employee can be damaged. Where change is frequent employees may start to question whether management knows what it is doing.”

Finally, Ollett advises: “People can get stuck in a low morale so you have to pick them up and move it on and get back to business as usual.”