Integris Group Services has worked with several not-for-profits, one of which required assistance in realignment and capability development of the Human Resources (HR) function within the business.
The HR services function within one of our client had been compliance driven historically, coupled with the long tenure of employees and a high-risk operating environment (due to the service provided by the business) meant that the team were identified by the CEO to have a targeted improvement initiative to uplift capability and business service offerings.
Integris Group Services were invited to assist the business to better understand the best place to start, whilst reporting to the CEO any progress.
After initial interviews as well as feedback from HR “customers” within the business, it was identified that the capability within the team would not deliver the required outcomes, without additional external support.
We became a trusted extension of the HR team to support uplift in skills, capability and to develop standardised processes using a four-stage approach.
The Problem
The HR Team within our client had become heavily compliance-driven in its focus, supporting the reporting of statutory requirements instead of the HR Services focus the business was looking for.
Additionally, the HR team had commenced “injecting” themselves into processes for approvals and endorsement, which then led to the HR team being the administrators over processes and creating further bottlenecks in paper-based review and approval workflows.
Consequences
With the uplift in capabilities across the team being managed by the CEO, there was an identified need for the HR function, similar to other departments within the business, to operate at a more strategic level than it currently was.
However, the CEO also acknowledged that the “journey” for becoming a more strategic or mature function providing services within our client would take time; particularly to establish a clear understanding of the current state, and plan out the roadmap to become a strategic HR service within the organisation.
With longer-term journey and change management requirements it was agreed that a staged approach would best suit the needs of our client for this engagement.
Our Solution
Our four-stage approach included the following key activities and workstreams:
Stage 1
Integris Group Services conducted a tailored HR good-practice gap assessment, assessing over 400 risk-rated metrics portioned over 13 HR core activities performed by the HR team (eg recruitment, onboarding, etc.), including key safety risks.
This identified the “fundamental HR maturity” score, where the highest areas of risk are in the organisation, and a recommended roadmap for closing these gaps and improving HR maturity.
Stage 2
Integris Group Services then proceeded to revise existing policy and procedures, as well as develop new documents as needed to clearly define the current HR practices, incorporating “agreed opportunities for improvement” across processes in a prioritised order based on the findings from Stage 1.
Stage 3
A rapid review of the required capabilities based on processes to be managed by the HR team, as well as those being decentralised to operational staff (e.g. supervisors and team managers) was conducted to confirm the transition from the current HR team structure to the desired structure
Stage 4
This stage has lead to development of a digital transformation strategy/business case, coupled with the development of requirements for and procurement of a HRIS to streamline HR workflows, including further updates to procedures from Stage 2.
Benefits
As a result of our support, our client benefitted from:
- A prioritised action plan to mitigate risk based on agreed metrics
- Improved processes, increased service levels and removal of red tape
- Gradual progression of team capability, based on considered skillsets and team capacity requirements based on agreed processes and timeframes
- Decentralising the work activities with the HR function providing support, not “oversight
- A set of 8-10 HRIS vendors assessed against specifications and meeting all procurement and probity requirements.