UNRELENTING FOCUS ON OPERATIONAL
EXCELLENCE
While components like HR business partners, a common technology
platform, shared services, project management offices and
centres of excellence tend to be present in world-class organizations,
it’s the right leadership that sets the tone when it comes to
operational excellence.
“You have to have a leader who’s committed to proving to the
rest of the executive suite that HR is a critical enabler for everything
else in the organization,” said Osle.
Berend says that’s certainly her experience at Rogers. When
Guy Laurence joined as president and chief executive officer in
2013, a new energy was infused into the HR organization.
“He declared that every employee would have an accountability
template: one page that would capture the accountability of
each and every one of us. He did that thinking about operational
excellence to help call out what each person is responsible for to
avoid shadow organizations and duplication of effort and to ensure
that we had everything we needed to run the company and
win in the marketplace,” she said. “If we’re going to be nimble, agile
and efficient, we all need to understand what everybody does in
the organization.”
Operational excellence also includes discipline around process
design and optimization. World-class organizations typically feature
plans like benefits, compensation and training that are less
complex than the average organization.
“They don’t just take on work for the sake of doing it. They only do
it if it fits with what they’re trying to address strategically,” said Osle.
World-class models also have fewer people, with a ratio of
1:100 HR professionals to associates. Rogers employs a workforce
of 29,000. The HR team makes up 260 of them.
World-class HR organizations also focus on operational excellence
using things like employee and manager self-service and HR
business partners to drive the more strategic aspects of the work.
A telecommunications company like Rogers has no trouble using
smart technology to get the job done, but Berend says it’s the
fact that HR is embedded in the business.
“In addition to having a full suite of enabled self-service technology,
we’ve got more than 100 HR business partners who aren’t
sitting in a cordoned-off HR area and are with the lines of business,”
she said. This combination is an effective way of supporting
a fast paced business environment.
Another hallmark of the world-class HR organization is constant
evolution, which includes consistently reviewing processes
and eliminating activities they don’t need and don’t add to the
work included in their strategic plans. They’re always looking at
integrating technology.
“They don’t bring up systems management without integrating
it with HRMS,” said Osle.
MANAGING TALENT STRATEGICALLY
Strategic workforce planning is critical to launching the HR organization
up to the next level, says Osle. It involves things like
solid recruiting processes, defining competencies and developing
skill sets, but it’s nothing without a robust measurement
system.
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24 ❚ MARCH/APRIL 2015 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL