Change and HR's Role

As a HR professional change can seem overwhelming, especially if you aren’t comfortable with change or haven’t been involved in a change programme before. 

Change will impact people, which means that we, as HR professionals will encounter it a lot, whether it be positive or negative.  Our leaders need us to help determine the impact of change, how we will equip them to manage it, and our employees count on us to ensure any impact of change is managed and communicated. 

It can be challenging when the word ‘change’ is used in an organisation.  Naturally people jump to a negative emotion and particularly when HR are seen to be involved.  How do we equip ourselves to manage change successfully and shift that perception?

Let's take a look at some of the change that can happen in our organisation and what we, as HR professionals can do to add value and support the change.

·       Restructuring

·       Growth

·       Downsizing

·       Leadership/People Change

·       Policy and Compliance Change

·       System/Technology Change

What does that mean for HR?  Take a restructure for example, this requires partnering with leaders to understand the drivers for the restructure, coaching managers through organisational design, managing any people impacts ethically and legally, supporting employees through the change and particularly where employees are likely to be placed at risk of redundancy or require consultation due to the changes to their role.  You might be involved in activity such as, internal communications, document development or designing a selection process for any at risk situations.  Or, from an operational perspective you’ll most certainly need to be ready to implement changes, prepare all documentation and update records and systems. As with many changes this reaches all of our HR areas.

What about in a growing organisation? HR professionals should be involved with designing the future model that the business is working towards, we aren't solely responsible for this in any way, our leaders and managers know the skills required to meet their objectives and we can help coach them through this with 1:2:1 coaching or facilitated workshops. If you’re not involved then it’s really hard for to ensure you are providing the right advice and guidance or getting visibility of any potential impacts on your own team whether that be right sizing to deliver the growth and setting expectations with the business on what you need to be able to deliver this increase in headcount. You’ll need to be ready to attract the skills required to meet the headcount demand, but before that you'll need a recruitment strategy, do you have internal resource to do this, do you need to consider buying in the services and once you have that you need to look at how to attract, select and retain.

If your organisation is downsizing, HR are again key and involvement from the start is imperative to stay abreast of change impact and assess any legal requirements the organisation needs to comply with as well as being sensitive to the impact that this has on people. It's an unsettling time and people just want to know what is happening.  If you’re personally impacted by the change this can be tough and building resilience can help, remember we are human so if we are impacted we too will go through the same emotions as others are going through if the downsize impacts them personally. It can be difficult dealing with the personal impact whilst continuing to deliver a change that impacts others.  There are a lot of things for us to do in a downsizing project, from designing any required selection process, ensuing compliance with legislation and supporting consultation meetings if they're required. We also signpost employees to resources that can provide them with support during this period.

If we see our leadership changing, we can as people become unsettled, what will the new leader be like, what will they want to change, why is the leader leaving the team and so on.  Whether leadership moves are happening internally, or there is a change over in leadership and welcome new leaders into the organisation HR is critical. New leaders need to land well in the organisation and with those that will report to them. Helping new leaders get assimilated helps in their journey which we can help facilitate through new leader workshops or leadership coaching.  The onboarding for our employees is important, and we should keep a close eye on what is happening in our automated world to ensure that our new joiners are receiving what they need at the basic level so that they don’t become distracted from what they've been hired to do.  Also, it's a change for the incoming leader so you'll be supporting across the board here.

Policy and compliance change is part of what many HR generalist will do as part of their every day role. We ensure that we are keeping our policies current both from a realistic perspective and legal for both the employer and employee.   By realistic I mean that we are reviewing how the policies are implemented, whether they are effective and whether they need changing to reflect the business and our people strategy.  We know that there are key dates in the year that the government implement change, we also know what's coming so we can start to prepare for change. Having a cadence around communicating policy change can make this less dauting for employees and managers, as can having briefing sessions or training where appropriate. Ensure everyone knows what's changing and what that means for them, if it means anything at all.

Finally, a big one for me is the change of systems / technology. These projects can be huge. There are lots of stakeholders that you'll need to bring in to make the project a success. For example if you are implementing a new HRIS system you'll need leadership buy-in, budget holder engagement, IT, communications, Finance, HR, Governance, Cyber Security, Benefits and Reward to mention a few! Implementing or changing a system is huge for employees and managers particularly if you introduce something that changes how they work, for example, self-service. Having a clear plan, be open and transparent, communicating regularly and providing briefings are all important.

We’ve explored a few change areas, and there will be many more that as HR professionals you will have encountered.  In general, what can we do, as HR professionals:

·       Be involved as early as possible

o   Either directly or through your senior HR leader ensure that you have being given information about the change well in advance.  If you are in a role that can influence the change this will be critical and hopefully part of your role. 

·       Partner with our leaders to assess the impact of change

o   If you’re a business partner with a specific business area, work closely with that leader to understand the impact of the change and then what you need to do to lead or support the change.

·       Have a theoretical understanding of change models

o   Take time to do a little research to refresh or learn change models that might provide helpful insights and strategies as to how you can successfully manage change. You're organisation might have a preferred change model, be sure to check before proceeding as you'll need to follow that if they do.  

·       Have a project plan

o   Project plans help keep you on track, demonstrate progress to leadership and key stakeholders, ensure everyone knows what they are responsible for and when it needs to be delivered; they're also great for quick snapshot status updates in leadership meetings

·       Get the right team together to manage change

o   If you’re leading the change from HR, ensure you have the right people working on this from your team and outside your team; be sure to brief everyone in the same way with the same information about the change, where you are in the process and what your expectations are. Check in too to make sure everyone is ok as they navigate the change, whether positive or negative because change often increases our workload where it's initiative driven.

·       Manage your stakeholders

o   Keep them up to date and ensure that if there are slips in your project timeline or anything that you think they should know, such as something not going well, an unexpected risk, make sure that they get this information as soon as possible so that they aren’t blindsided or being placed in a position to make a quick decision if you leave it too late

·       Consider Change Champions

o   Identify and empower change champions within the organisation who can advocate for the change, inspire others, and provide peer support through the transition period. 

·       Be transparent

o   As far as you possibly can, be transparent about what is going on, this helps build trust

·       Step up communications

o   Communication is probably the top most important thing to get right.  If you have an internal communications team work closely with them to ensure communications will land well or if you are leading this ensure it’s incorporated into your plan. Whilst I say step up communication, be careful not to over complicate this and think about what communication is needed at what point and which communication channels work in your organisation.

·       Coach leadership

o   There’s an opportunity to support leaders and managers through change, not only by ensuring that they have everything they need but also by coaching them.  For example, if they are having difficult conversations, help coach them through managing this authentically. 

·       Build resilience and be adaptable

o   Change can create uncertainty and resistance.  As HR professionals we need to promote a culture of resilience, adaptability for ourselves and so that we can support employees through transitions effectively.  

·       Measure success

o   We can learn from every change activity we encounter so take time to reflect on what went well and what didn’t go well so it can inform future change and also ensure that you measure the success of the change, both from an immediate process perspective but also from a longer term impact perspective – was the change worth it?  Define clear metrics and indicators to measure the success of the change initiative.  Regularly assess progress against any set metrics and make data-driven decisions to adjust strategies as needed.  Remember to stay close to your project plan. 

Navigating or managing organisational change can be challenging, requiring a delicate balance of strategic foresight, empathy and adaptability.  As HR professionals, we have the unique opportunity to shape the narrative of change, guiding our organisations and employees towards a future of growth, resilience and success, it might not always be easy or in a positive situation but partnering with our leaders, being involved early on, organising the change steps and having an understanding of change models that can help inform how we manage the change can help us lead the change successfully.  Remember too that the leaders / managers are responsible for executing a lot of what I've included in this blog and HR should not do their job for them but work out how we add value for the organisation, it's important to know our role in the change and for managers/leaders to be clear on what their role is too.

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