Finding a ‘better way’ for change management

Australia’s HR landscape faces change management issues where leaders’ directions are “not working in most transformation efforts”, one HR director has said.

At the recent Gartner HR Symposium in Sydney, HR practice director Neal Woolrich (pictured) spoke to HR Leader about how practitioners can improve change management in their organisations and the key to a productive culture.

A ‘better way’ for change management

Woolrich found that the top-down approach for change management was not working for the transformation efforts of most organisations. He cited a major Gartner study conducted a decade ago, which found that most organisations were doing what they called “top-down management”. Younger employees coming into the workforce today may find this approach to change management “jarring”, as they are used to doing things differently at school and university, he highlighted.

In finding a “better way”, Woolrich unveiled what he called “open-source” change management. This approach involves leaders consulting with employees as early and transparently as possible, so that workers can “co-own” more of the process. Leaders not having the confidence, comfort, or time to let employees take ownership is a “constant challenge” that more HR departments face, “even more so today”, Woolrich said.

Implementing ‘adequacy’

To apply the “open-source” approach, Woolrich said that companies must establish an adequate governance and decision-making framework. This framework must identify high- and low-risk workflows and delegate projects accordingly, he said. Accordingly, a project that is “low risk” – with low financial or reputational impacts – is one that leaders should allow employees to be “close” to. On the other hand, Woolrich said that when a company identifies a high-risk project, leaders who are more knowledgeable about the involved processes should take ownership.

“It’s about trying to build that intuition rather than coming up with a list of things that employees can do, and a list of things that need to be escalated to somebody higher,” he said.

New generation, new standards

Inclusion has joined the suite of traditional desirable cultural attributes, such as performance, collaboration, and innovation, Woolrich found. “People want an inclusive and fair workplace,” along with one that is flexible, he said.

Since the pandemic began, he said, flexibility has had an increased importance. Based on Gartner’s findings, around 50 per cent of employees work in a hybrid arrangement, with most working between two and three days in the office.

Flexibility involves different aspects, Woolrich said – location, number of hours, the nature of the work, and the different opportunities employees can get in the organisation. He said that having a holistic view of this allows employees to have a “rounded experience”.

Getting that ‘productive culture’

Woolrich added that, along with an inclusive and fair culture, it must also be productive – emphasising that it is important that HR practitioners “get [their] efficiency right”.

To do this, leaders must look to make the most of their HR technologies while prioritising and scoping out low value. Once this has been dealt with, he said, then organisations can focus on their strategic impacts, while looking to fill gaps in processes in the present and in the future.

The recipe for a productive culture boils down to three considerations: skill, will and hill, Woolrich said.

Skill pertains to worker and leader abilities – first checking whether they possess the necessary skills, and where further development is required. Secondly, will refers to motivations, incentives, rewards, and recognition set for individuals within the organisation. “Will is all about our alignment of strategy,” he said.

Finally, tempering the hill, or organisational barriers that draw the company away from higher-value tasks, is crucial, Woolrich found. “Part of the work towards that drive to being more productive is getting rid of those hills or those organisational barriers that frustrate people,” he said.