The rate of change that organisations face appears to be increasing on a daily basis.
At the end of 2011, Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, pronounced: “Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone next month?”
And just to confirm the situation, Harvard Business School professor, John Kotter also wrote: “The current rate of change within businesses is faster than the rate at which organisations are improving…many organisations just can’t keep up with the rate of change.”
A recent study of ours showed that business leaders agree: just over two-thirds believe that their organisations are failing to keep up. But this scenario is placing businesses at risk of everything from reduced turnover to hostile takeover.
Just what is it that makes an organisation “fit to change” though? And how big a role do HR directors have to play in ensuring that the business is able to do so effectively?
After a close analysis of our recent survey findings, I have, in my role as HR director, put a lot of time into ensuring that we take them on board as a company ourselves as well as find ways to respond to changing external dynamics.
The study, which was based on the views of 250 C-level executives from both the private and public sectors, revealed that 95% think strong leadership is very important if an organisation is to respond to external requirements effectively.
Just over four out of five believed that the right organisational culture, a capacity to change (80%) and the right people (76%) also enabled them to introduce change more quickly too.
But it’s striking just how many of these ‘ingredients’ are the product of HR strategy and practice. By implication, HR has an absolutely vital role to play in helping their employers tackle shifting circumstances and ensure that they are “fit to change”.
Let’s look at each of the above criteria in turn:
1. Strong leadership
Strong leadership is a vital ingredient in ensuring that businesses are able to respond to constant change. But it isn’t just about ensuring that such leadership is provided at a certain point in time. It is about future leadership capabilities too.
HR has a role to play in identifying and nurturing tomorrow’s leaders, ensuring that they build up the right skills and are able to foster vital employee engagement and buy-in across the business.
But such individuals also need support. We offer this through a dedicated head of talent management, who is responsible for providing opportunities for employees who show leadership potential to work directly with the current executive leadership team on special projects.
As for today’s leaders, it is crucial that they engage with everyone in the organisation in order to ensure that they understand the rationale behind making the necessary organisational transformation to help the business keep up.
2. The right organisational culture
Just as people need to understand the reasons for change, they must also be given enough of a mandate to help effect it. To this end, we’ve adopted ‘lean’ principles, which are based on a ‘bottom-up’ approach.
This means that the people doing a given job take responsibility for making small modifications to their ways of working in order to have beneficial impact on the wider business.
People don’t have to ask permission to introduce improvements or have them assessed to understand possible impacts. Instead any tweaks are implemented and judged based on their immediate effects. The upshot of this approach is that people are empowered to change the business in real-time.
A good real-life example of this is our HR helpdesk. The company employs more than 11,000 workers and the department deals with an average of 300 calls per day.
Instead of the team having to field and deal with calls as they come in as was previously the case, our helpdesk now provides frontline support for most queries, which means that 90% are resolved within 24 hours.
3. The capacity to change
Too respond to external change, you have to get your own house in order first. For the HR department, this means ensuring that the team structure is flexible and can adapt and respond to requirements.
Last year, I realised that my function wasn’t equipped to cope with either market or customer demands. I also recognised that I had to tackle our cost base, the department’s structure, how we captured and shared knowledge and, most importantly of all, how to improve career progression opportunities.
In order to address these issues and transform the function, I knew that I had to have the whole team behind me.
As a result, I personally ran a series of roundtable discussions and focus groups to ensure that everyone understood the need for change – and that they were involved in the process right from the very start.
4. The right people
Ensuring that the right employees are in appropriate roles is vital to enable change to take place swiftly. It is the HR function’s responsibility to ensure that the right people are doing the right things – and to understand that ‘right’ changes over time.
Therefore, it is crucial that HR looks not only within the organisation to identify who the right people are, but also outside in order to understand what is required from them as a result of external dynamics.
Being able to make decisions locally also help, however. Too many companies, especially in the technology sector, are forced to refer strategic decisions to executive teams on a different continent.
We’re lucky here in that our colleagues in Tokyo trust us enough to take those decisions ourselves. This situation enables us to react quickly and support our workforce in adapting to the changing needs of the business as a whole.
As HR functions continue to become more strategic, chief executives across both the private and public sector will inevitably look to their HR leaders to play an ever greater role in facilitating change in response to market needs.
Although a cliché, it is true that people are an organisation’s best asset and, as we all fight to remain competitive and relevant, it is this very asset that will enable us to thrive.
A business that is fit to change has to shift focus quickly and as a single unit. But it also needs to have enough confidence to know when not to change and instead stay true to the company’s long-term vision – a vision that must be understood by everyone from the boardroom to the mailroom.
If such considerations are not at the top of the HR agenda, any attempt to stay ahead of the pack will result in you stumbling at the first hurdle.
Ella Bennett is HR director at IT services provider, Fujitsu UK & Ireland.
One Response
Nice post Ella
It’s good to hear something practical, focused, determined and upbeat.
You’ve been doing some sterling work over there on the employee brand engagement front as well, which I’ve recently written about.
Fujitsu’s certainly a brand to watch!
http://tbtbrandtrilogy.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/brand-watch-fujitsu-the-blossoming-of-a-supercomputer-brand/