STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCES

Change Management

A constant in all organisations is the need to manage change – whether it be incremental change as services naturally evolve over time or on a large scale when many parts of an organisation amalgamate or cease to operate – especially during private sector mergers or when there are Machinery of Government changes in the public sector.

Central to delivering the best possible outcome from any change process is ensuring that all proposed changes are carefully, holistically identified and considered before beginning any implementation process.

A ‘current state’ and ‘future state’ assessment focusing on the following critical elements of change will provide a good starting point for implementing a successful transition:

• Organisation – structurally and functionally, what remains the same and what will change/cease to operate?
• People – who are impacted in the organisation, what is the nature of the change, and what are the employment and industrial obligations underpinning any change?
• Processes – what impacts will the proposed changes have on how work and services are structured and delivered?
• Technology – does the change impact how existing business technology will operate, and will the change involve introducing new technology or systems?

Years of practical experience in designing and leading complex and sensitive change processes means that HBA consultants can provide advice and assistance that maximises the likelihood of implementing a successful change while managing the risks and complexities that are almost inevitably associated with the uncertainties related to organisational change.

Organisational Reviews

HBA Consulting has been engaged by a wide range of public, private and not-for-profit organisations to review critical aspects of their operations.

Typically, clients seek us out for assistance when:

• Functions are being brought together via a merger or amalgamation process, including commonwealth machinery of government changes,
• Assisting in budget-driven resource allocation arrangements,
• Board/CEO initiated reviews,
• disputation about classification, functions and remuneration etc.

Our Senior Consultants have decades of classification, organisational review and design, industrial relations and change management experience, which means that we can undertake these types of processes using a holistic approach that considers all of the critical factors that can ‘make or break’ any change process.

Fundamentally, our approach centres on a ‘structure follows strategy’ methodology that focuses on:

• understanding the desired outcome of the proposed change to the structure
• analysis of how the organisation is currently structured to identify what can stay the same and what needs to change to deliver efficiently and effectively against the desired outcome
• the industrial obligations, practical implementation issues, and associated risk analysis.

A perfect design that can’t be readily implemented (especially regarding required change timeframes and budget savings imperatives) isn’t a viable option or solution. Early identification and consideration of issues like this is a significant benefit to using the highly experienced HBA Consulting team when reviewing how your organisation works and what needs to change to meet future challenges.

Workforce Restructuring

Workforce restructuring is a normal part of the cycle of business operations. Restructuring can be associated with growth or reductions in the size and shape of the workforce. It can also be driven by technological changes in how work is done or via acquisition and merger processes. In the public sector, restructuring can also be caused by machinery of government changes, elections and policy changes.

In our experience, many organisations start restructuring by taking their current organisational chart and looking at where things need to change. This is like ‘putting the cart before the horse’. Like HBA’s approach to organisational reviews, we focus first on the business strategy to inform the structure (‘structure follows strategy’ / ‘form follows function’).

Changes to the workforce structure must be aligned to future corporate objectives – not just a ‘bottom line’ budget figure. For a successful workforce transition, restructuring needs to be underpinned by a clear and well-communicated business rationale.

The transitional process from current to future structures need to consider critical issues such as:

• Corporate objectives
• Industrial and employment obligations
• Areas of no change – not just focusing on what is changing
• A focus on people and helping them through the change process
• Post restructure care - bedding in the new arrangements

Our consulting team has extensive hands-on experience working with organisations designing and implementing complex workforce restructures.

Job Design

The requirement to create or review Job Design within a workforce can occur for a range of reasons, including:

• The creation of a new function
• The abolishment of an existing function
• The amalgamation of functions or services
• Changes to technology and systems

The need to review Job Design can occur at all levels – from Senior Management to line employees.

HBA Consulting has extensive experience in developing and reviewing Job Design. Some of the critical reference points when undertaking this type of work include:

• The underpinning industrial obligations concerning role classifications
• Any industrial requirements for employee consultation
• The overarching strategic plan for the organisation
• Contemporary and relevant job ‘benchmarks’ within the industry or functions for the roles under development (understanding the design characteristics for similar roles in similar industries at present)
• The specific needs of the senior management team that will lead and manage the work outputs of the area where the role/s will be located.

Our consultants have decades of senior management and executive experience in undertaking job design processes and implementing workplace changes that result from any job design adjustments. Our unique combination of HR and IR-related capabilities means that the finished product will be robust, implementable and consistent with workplace policy and industrial frameworks.

Work Level Standards

Work Level Standards (WLS) can be explicitly designed for an organisation, referenced via a relevant Award, or are a generic set of standards applying across multiple organisations.

WLS is an essential consideration across several components of the HR framework, including:

• Establishing new positions
• Accurately aligning roles to governing classifications (and wages)
• Reviewing existing positions, including requests for re-classification
• Assessing individual work performance
• Organisational restructuring
• Broadband advancement criteria
• Job design

Job Classification

HBA Consulting provides expert, independent advice on the classification of roles, including broadband classification strategies. Our extensive HR and IR experience enables our senior consultants to provide high-quality, practical expertise and advice with all classification review and assessment needs.

Typical scenarios where we have been engaged to provide classification advice include:

• Establishment of new functional areas within an organisation
• Comparative assessments of classification and roles when amalgamating organisations to ensure equity and consistency of classification and pay
• Requests for review of current classification under Federal Court Enterprise Agreement or employment contract/policy arrangements
• Restructuring/downsizing of organisations
• Broadband advancement requests.

Human Resource Strategy Development and Review

The highest operating cost for most organisations is associated with employing people. Yet one of the most common business strategy ‘gaps’ is a lack of a comprehensive Human Resource Strategy that enables vital components of the overall corporate strategy to be delivered.

HR Strategy development often is a low priority for a range of reasons, including:

• A focus on working ‘in the business’ – not ‘on the business’;
• A lack of experience in knowing what a good HR strategy looks like and what the benefits of one are to the efficient and effective Human Resources Management of a business;
• Lack of clarity about what data is required and how it needs to be interpreted to support and inform the operations of the plan and the business;
• A need to apply judgement and estimation to the planning process – which sometimes worries managers and executives ‘in case they get it wrong’.

Unless there is a clear line of sight between corporate and Human Resources strategy, it is more likely than not that the outcomes sought by the organisation through its people will be compromised and lacking in focus and consistency of application across business units.

HBA Consulting has assisted many organisations in developing and reviewing their HR strategy and improving the alignment between corporate and HR strategy.

Management Reporting

From our experience, most HR areas are ‘data rich and analysis poor’. Organisations have access to a lot of HR data, collected through recruitment and orientation and then via payroll, performance management, increment and pay adjustment and termination processes as they arise over time.

The challenge is to know how to use this data to add real value to how the executive and management team manage their workforce and make decisions on people matters, including:

• understand what is going on within teams,
• being able to forecast possible issues or risks to scenarios
• provide a consistent, meaningful baseline measure that links employee and business performance.

HBA has established a business partnership with CAMMS Group www.cammsgroup.com to provide organisations with access to a single source of advice and assistance with developing meaningful management metrics that link to existing data sources and produce a tailored, easy-to-understand Executive and management reporting in a ‘dashboard reporting’ format.

Our partnership with CAMMS means that we can provide our clients with an integrated ‘end-to-end’ solution – which maximises the likelihood of success by avoiding having separate HR and IT providers that need to be managed by the organisation to deliver a single outcome.

Workforce Planning

The highest operating cost for most organisations is associated with employing people. Yet one of the most common business planning ‘gaps’ is effective Workforce Planning.

Like HR Strategy, from our experience, this gap exists for one or more of a range of reasons, including:

• A focus on working ‘in the business’ – not ‘on the business’;
• A lack of experience in knowing what a good workforce plan looks like and what the benefits of one are to the efficient and effective Human Resource management of a business;
• Lack of clarity about what data is required and how it needs to be interpreted to support and inform the operations of the plan and the business;
• A need to apply judgement and estimation to the planning process – which sometimes worries managers and executives ‘in case they get it wrong’.

HBA Consulting has broad and deep experience developing and reviewing practical, tailored workforce planning solutions for our clients. We have also presented public programs on Workforce Planning in Australia and Singapore.

Succession Planning

Succession planning involves analysis of the organisation’s ‘current state’ against the future outlook. Scenarios are developed which begin to anticipate and plan for the future needs of the business and the capability and capacity of its people to deliver on these outcomes

The data needed to provide a solid basis for the development of a succession plan is often held in disconnected data sources, including:

• corporate and annual business plans
• recruitment documentation
• performance management assessments
• learning and development plans
• individual employee skills and capability profiles

HBA Consulting and its business partner, CAMMS Management Solutions, can provide the HR expertise and the Business Intelligence capability to bring disparate organisational data together and make sense of it in the context of succession planning. The approach can be used at a whole of organisation level or to target the needs of a specific work team or group.

Staff Surveys

HBA has partnered with Piazza Researchwww.piazzaresearch.com.auto design and implement Staff Surveys and Pulse Surveys to support the collection and analysis of meaningful information about crucial HR issues such as:

• Attraction
• Retention
• Workplace Culture

What makes our service offering unique is that with our combined expertise, we can, via our integrated partnership, develop survey content and process that draws on better practice market research and HR expertise to design, implement, analyse and identify the issues impacting an organisation and identify options for improvement. This approach means that, right from the initial concept stage, the research capability and the HR capability are working together to develop a suite of questions that are meaningful, measurable and presented in a way that can be reliably interpreted and then acted upon once the results are received.

Workplace Health and Safety

Workplace Health and Safety (WH&S) is a vital part of the employment framework, which focuses on ensuring that the employer meets its legislative obligations and provides all its employees with a safe and healthy environment to work in.

Several elements go to make up a robust workplace health and safety environment in the workplace. These include:

• The establishment and maintenance of compliant workplace policies and procedures that enable a safe and healthy workplace for all employees;
• An understanding of the individual and role-based obligations of key players in delivering a sustainable, safe and healthy workplace environment;
• Establishment of a program that ensures that new people understand WH&S and how the workplace operates in a health and safety sense, that existing employees are regularly and appropriately reminded of their obligations concerning WH&S, and that Executive teams have ongoing and relevant visibility of the WH&S environment and risks for the organisation and how these are being managed;
• Reporting and governance structures are designed and operated correctly.