Changing with the changing times

The tri­als and tribu­la­tions of the last four years have led many organ­i­sa­tions to re-eval­u­ate both their busi­ness strat­e­gy and oper­at­ing mod­el.

Whether down­siz­ing to reduce bot­tom-line costs, find­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties through merg­ers and acqui­si­tions or invest­ing in new mar­kets, hard­ly any organ­i­sa­tion has escaped a large degree of tur­moil.

Under­stand­ing the peo­ple side is essen­tial for any organ­i­sa­tion going through a peri­od of tran­si­tion. “Projects often die because employ­ees aren’t trained to under­stand how the change will impact them and affect their dai­ly role,” says Tony Mau­rice, a part­ner in Deloitte’s change man­age­ment prac­tice.

“For a change man­age­ment pro­gramme to be suc­cess­ful, the lead­er­ship team needs to demon­strate the ben­e­fits of the change by lead­ing their peo­ple, gain­ing their trust and engag­ing them in the process from day one. If peo­ple don’t under­stand their role in the process, they won’t take part.”

For many com­pa­nies, the empha­sis is on keep­ing head­count low, mean­ing change man­age­ment pro­grammes have often been accom­pa­nied by out­sourc­ing, where staff may be trans­ferred to a ded­i­cat­ed provider of non-spe­cial­ist ser­vices, and a greater use of con­tract labour.

“Organ­i­sa­tions are being forced to think about the way in which they oper­ate,” says Richard Goold, exec­u­tive direc­tor at Moor­house Con­sult­ing. “This includes the need to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between what is core and non-core in terms of what they do and to engage with out­sourc­ing providers which can take on the non-core com­po­nents and deliv­er them at a cheap­er cost with no degra­da­tion of ser­vice.”

The lead­er­ship team needs to demon­strate the ben­e­fits of change

Paul Lam­bert, asso­ciate direc­tor at man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy Hay Group, says com­pa­nies look­ing to go down this route need to ensure they iden­ti­fy the right blend of core and con­tract­ed work­force for their par­tic­u­lar busi­ness strat­e­gy, and then con­trast that against the like­ly future shape of the busi­ness, tak­ing into account antic­i­pat­ed require­ments and both reten­tion and retire­ment trends.

Such out­sourced rela­tion­ships can offer both risk and oppor­tu­ni­ties to employ­ers and employ­ees, he adds. “For employ­ers, care needs to be tak­en to iden­ti­fy what is core, high val­ueadding work and to make sure the skills are not lost to the core busi­ness,” he says. “For the employ­ee, there is a dan­ger of being trapped in “com­modi­tised work” that has been out­sourced, such as in call cen­tres, with lim­it­ed career devel­op­ment prospects.”

Susy Roberts, direc­tor at Hunter Roberts, a change man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy, points out the oppor­tu­ni­ties that can also arise for those staff being trans­ferred to new providers and it is this aspect that employ­ers will need to stress to ensure they get the buy-in that is required.

“It can mean more career oppor­tu­ni­ties, more devel­op­ment and more sta­tus,” she says. “If you’re work­ing with­in a small inter­nal team in HR or pay­roll in a large organ­i­sa­tion, you might feel detached and unin­volved. Work­ing for an out­sourced oper­a­tion where HR and pay­roll is the core busi­ness, your work takes on more val­ue and sig­nif­i­cance.”

Tech­nol­o­gy also has a piv­otal part to play in shap­ing the work­place of the future, with flex­i­ble and remote work­ing allow­ing organ­i­sa­tions to imple­ment new mod­els that will keep over­heads down. The deploy­ment of cor­po­rate tools based on social net­work­ing tech­nolo­gies is also help­ing both organ­i­sa­tions and out­sourced providers oper­ate more effi­cient­ly.

This is some­thing with which the “mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion” is entire­ly com­fort­able, says San­jiv Gos­sain, senior vice pres­i­dent and head of UK and Ire­land oper­a­tions at IT out­sourcer Cog­nizant. “The onus is on cor­po­ra­tions to bring con­sumer IT to cor­po­rate IT to attract and retain employ­ees,” he says. “Being a part of this glob­al ecosys­tem invig­o­rates employ­ees and makes busi­ness­es stronger.”

The trials and tribulations of the last four years have led many organisations to re-evaluate both their business strategy and operating model.