Resourcing for change

Citation

Tulsiani, R.C. (2009), "Resourcing for change", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 8 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2009.37208dab.007

Resourcing for change

Article Type: HR at work From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 8, Issue 4

Short case studies that demonstrate best practice in HR

The current economic climate is, for want of a better word, scary. For professionals across all disciplines, the level of uncertainty is unprecedented. Among HR professionals, the challenges of restructuring and redundancies are either already a reality, or at very least a dark shadow on the horizon.

When times are this tough, it is extremely difficult to focus on driving a business forward – it is even more difficult to think about recruitment in an environment where thousands are losing their jobs. However, on the road to corporate recovery, it is unlikely that the answer will be found within existing teams and structures. In that way, downturns bring both challenge and opportunity as organizations look to swiftly import the skills and experience they need to reverse the slide. But with hiring freezes in effect across an enormous number of organizations, and expenditure on management consultancy under the microscope, how can you access the skills you need?

The answer to that question is the reason that the demand for interim executives is still as buoyant today as it was a year ago. Research from Ipsos Mori, commissioned by the Interim Management Association, indicated that the fourth quarter had seen a rise in the number of new interim assignments of 13 percent from the third quarter.

Organizations looking to initiate recovery, on team, functional or organizational fronts, can very quickly import specialist skills on an interim basis. It is not necessarily about patching over holes; it s about bringing in a highly specialized resource with the objectivity and focus to be accountable for tackling the company’s key challenges head on.

Interim team tackles strategic plan

The theory makes it sound simple – but how does it work in practice? Through December 2008 and January 2009, a large, complex organization with operating locations across the UK needed to develop and implement an IT strategy to streamline processes and realize cost savings as it looked to trim the bottom line. The IT strategy was to form a key component of the organization’s strategic business plan, aligning the organization’s technology platform to the objectives of the business as it sought to reverse three consecutive quarters of poor performance. One of the HRD’s key problems was that she had already been asked to reduce headcount across the IT function by 25 percent, so the department was in a poor position to deliver such an important strategy.

Her response was to hire a team of three interim professionals, which was tasked with working with management and incumbent staff to design the strategy and associated implementation plan. The proviso was that it needed to deliver the completed strategy within just six weeks. Each of the three interim executives had individually delivered on assignments of this magnitude a number of times, and their collective experience and knowledge gave the HRD confidence in the team’s ability to deliver the desired results.

The team of interims started by identifying the key business drivers and objectives and used this as the basis for developing a business operating model, covering the organization structure and processes. Concurrently, the team reviewed the existing IT infrastructure, applications and service delivery model. The strategy it put together set out a clear blueprint for implementing the strategy, and it also assessed the skills of incumbent employees and allocated them to the areas of implementation where they would be most effective.

The outcome was that an innovative and comprehensive IT strategy was delivered within just 6 weeks – a remarkable achievement. Following approval from the management team, the incumbent IT team immediately kicked-off the first phase of strategy implementation.

Bringing in the turnaround specialists

While this example focused on IT, the approach used is easily translated across functions. Although demand for interims is on the rise across disciplines, the economic climate has certainly shaped that demand in line with the requirements of struggling organizations looking to halt the slide. With companies fighting off the back foot, specialist “turnaround” interims with proven track records of success are hot property.

But what do senior turnaround interims bring to table? In essence, their key skills are based around their ability to swiftly and accurately answer a single key question that underpins corporate revival: “How can an organization, division or team already operating in the ‘turnaround corridor’, where time, resources and finance are already constrained to the point of breaking, take the action they need to take?”

That’s the true skill of genuine turnaround interims. They have the experience to know which parts of strategy and operations need changing, which need investment, and which need divestment. They can quickly assess the capabilities and failings within particular departments or teams, and provide a blueprint to initiate immediate change. Crucially, they also have the arms length objectivity to make brave decisions and tough recommendations and follow them through to completion. On the flip side, a key challenge of the interim path is to find a professional who not only has the skills and competencies, but also is a close cultural fit for the environment. They also need to have the necessary stakeholder management skills to transfer knowledge to the incumbent team.

Swift planning and implementation

Take the example of a failing HR department in a well known financial services organization. HR was “lopsided”, with approximately the right amount of staff, allocated inappropriately to handle the flow of work. The incorrect mix of resources was not only costing money, it was severely hampering the effectiveness of the department. During the economic boom, these inadequacies had not been particularly obvious, but as times grew tough, the problems were in sharp relief.

In June 2008, the HRD brought in an interim change and turnaround specialist with an excellent track record of designing and implementing HR transformation across complex departments. In the initial stages of her six-month assignment, she completed a comprehensive review of departmental capability and shortfall. Using this information, and working in close collaboration with the HRD, she designed a strategic streamlining and resource re-allocation plan, which included both re-allocations of existing staff to the areas that required additional resource, as well as redundancies and a map of the new talent that needed to be added to the team.

The executive board swiftly signed off the plan, and the interim began the implementation in just the second month of her assignment. A cornerstone of the plan was to establish key performance indicators and a measurement mechanism across the entire division, but also to establish the same indicators and measurements a level down, across units and teams.

To date, the department has reduced headcount by 10 employees, while registering a 52 percent improvement on effectiveness in achieving key performance indicators across the division. The final stage of the interim’s assignment will focus on embedding a robust resourcing methodology across the department, ensuring the department hires in alignment with the strategic direction and objectives of the business.

A results-driven approach

In the UK, there is only a very small group of senior turnaround professionals with the experience and track record to make a difference. The beauty of the true turnaround interim is that they are easy to judge on their successes or failures, because their assignments are so tightly focused and closely linked to the results they achieve. But the best are not easy to find – these individuals are always in demand, since there are always companies struggling, regardless of the state of the market.

So, while permanent recruitment has been reduced to a trickle across most sectors, interim managers have reason to feel optimistic – particularly if their CV demonstrates the ability to instil change or drive turnaround across teams, functions or even at board level. Recessions bring complex challenges, but they also provide a gilt-edged opportunity to make a real difference.

Raj C. TulsianiBased at Green Park Interim & Executive Resourcing, London, UK.

About the author

Raj Tulsiani has worked in the UK interim management industry for the last 12 years, including establishing successful interim divisions at Michael Page and Penna. As the co-founder of Green Park, one of the few black and minority ethnic owned recruitment companies in the market, Tulsiani’s perspectives provide a fresh look at a market that he believes is lacking innovation and in danger of complacency. Raj Tulsiani can be contacted at: email@green-park.co.uk