• Significantly increased labor productivity;
• Simplify the work;
• Reduced cost;
• Rapidly reduced cycle time;
• Greater accuracy and management of information;
• Reduce non value-added activity in the organization;
• Create internal customer and end-user awareness;
• Increased internal customer satisfaction.
  

HR Optimization is an important Service Quality management philosophy. It aims to achieve significant and sustainable improvements in performance by re-engineering and co-designing the processes through which an organization operates, maximizing their value-added content and minimizing everything else. This approach can be applied at an individual process level or to the whole organization.

What HR Process Re-engineering is not?

There are many widespread misconceptions about the nature of HR Process Re-Engineering.

• HR process re-engineering is not down sizing
• HR process re-engineering eliminates work, not jobs
• HR process re-engineering is not “restructuring” – moving boxes around an organizational chart;
• HR process re-engineering is not automation
• HR process re-engineering is not reengineering a department but rather a process in an organization
• HR Optimization and HR process re-engineering is about re-thinking work from the ground up in order to eliminate work that is not necessary and to find better ways of doing work that is. HR process Re-engineering eliminates work, not jobs or people.
  

In your experience, what are some of the critical problems faced by HR managers when developing HR processes today?

In world of rapid flux, organizations must change their traditional priorities from a traditional focus on planning and control to emphasize speed, innovation, flexibility, quality, service and cost. The HR team has to demonstrate their commitment to meet these key business drivers.

A major problem confronting HR managers today is to increase line manager and employee productivity, provide higher more value-adding levels of HR service and internal customer responsiveness and at the same time reduce costs. What is needed is a HR team that is customer focused and market driven in its external relations with customers and process-focused and team-oriented in its internal operations. Only such a HR team can look at the way work is performed across the organization and seek to make those HR processes more logical, effective and efficient. Such an effort is at the heart of HR Optimization and process re-engineering.

When is HR Optimization the Answer?

For the past 50 years, theorists and practitioners from many different disciplines have been working to improve service quality and business processes and we’re learning what efforts yield the most benefit. There are many warning signs that indicate the need for HR Optimization:

• Explosion of chaos and bureaucracy – in most organizations HR processes were not designed – they evolved out of the chaos of business – as successful organizations grew informal work patterns begin to break under stress;
• Thinking for the internal customers and end users – Too many HR teams design processes based on the assumption that they know what’s best for the customer
• Automation of existing bureaucracy – the automation of existing processes and procedures reinforces bureaucracy rather than break through it
• Bottlenecks and disconnects in organization wide HR Processes – results in costly and cumbersome processing creating duplicate and inaccurate work
• Elusiveness of accountability – most organizations are structured by function – this makes it difficult, if not impossible, to establish accountability for a complete business process.
• Chaos of Downsizing – tasks cannot be processed within their current configuration
• Turmoil of merger and acquisition – creating a newly merged entity work processes can often duplicate or conflict with each other

To overcome these issues you can use HR Optimization and process analysis to systematically capture the problems and their root causes. In doing so, build a compelling business case that challenges the status quo and sells the value of process re-engineering.

Is benchmarking useful in HR process redesign?

Benchmarking promotes a climate for change by allowing HR staff and employees to gain an understanding of their performance – what their HR processes and practices are achieving now and how they compare to others – within and beyond their organization – in order that they become aware of what they could achieve. There are four types of benchmarking that can be undertaken by an organization: internal company data; direct competitors; non-competitive benchmarking and best practice world class comparison. Leading companies are conducting benchmarking on a regular basis as it is used as a stimulus to help transform HR and business performance.

It has been said that up to 70% of process improvement or process re-engineering projects fail*. In your experience working with clients, can you identify some of the possible causes for these failures and what can be done to overcome it?

The most common reasons for failure are:

• lack of focus and priority – trying to do too much;
• lack of strategic relevance;
• lack of leadership;
• don’t focus on processes
• lack of perseverance;
• placing some aspects of HR activity off – limits;
• lack of planning;
• lack of effective project risk management;
• lack of effective change management
• ignoring the concerns of your people.

Before an organization undertakes a HR Optimization project it is important to recognize the most typical obstacles preventing the smooth completion of the project for instance:

• Management not buying into the idea;
• No clear owner of the program;
• Failure to consider end user and internal customer requirements;
• Change of project sponsor before completion of the program;
• Program taking too long; loss of interest;
• Not involving the right staff in the HR process re-engineering;
• Conflicting objectives of the organization;
• Project Team not measuring issues it agreed to address;
• Program causes too much disruption of work; not seen as relevant work.
  

Process optimization or integration is a major undertaking. How should an organization go about structuring this initiative? Can you outline some of the key strategic and technical requirements for a successful project?

There are a number of critical success factors that have been identified by leading HR practitioners:

• Listen to the voice of the internal customer and end user
• Introduce Service Quality Values and Behaviors;
• Recognize and Articulate an extremely compelling need to change;
• Start with and maintain Executive level support;
• Understand the organizations readiness to change;
• Communicate effectively to create buy-in – then communicate more
• Create a powerful project and internal customer team;
• Used a structured HR re-engineering framework;
• Use consultants effectively – access essential skills;
• Select the right processes for re-engineering;
• Maintain focus on the issues that matter most to internal customers and end; users – don’t try to re-engineer too many processes;
• Maintain teams as the key vehicle for change;
• Quickly come to an ‘As-Is’ understanding of the HR processes to be re-engineered;
• Position Information Technology as an enabler, even if the extent of the IT change is great;
• Choose and use the right HR process and people outcome metrics;
• Understand the project/program risks and develop contingency plans;
• Be willing to change - based on customer needs and ongoing feedback;
• Be prepared to learn and continuously improve.
  
  

Business processes are as important as the data in IT driven applications. What is the role technology plays in bringing these two elements together?

HR process re-engineering is much more complex than continuous IT improvement. Process re-engineering results in drastic improvements because it affects change in more than these two areas. To achieve breakthrough HR performance, process re-engineering usually drives change in three different areas. These areas are: organizational structure, work-redesign - people/jobs and technology. HR process re-engineering does more than look into improvement concerns.
It attempts radical change through:

• Organizational restructuring through: re-aligning functional work groups around the customer and driving new levels of accountability;
• Work Re-design through: conducting customer value added process analysis of job tasks; expanding job scope and ownership and building cross-functional teams;
• Technology Re-tooling through increasing the emphasis on process tasks that happen in parallel; gathering and communicating customer related data; expediting access to information and data for line managers and staff.
• What is the key benefit that HR Executives have realized as an outcome of HR process optimization?

As one HR Executive recently mentioned to me that after optimizing their HR processes they had demonstrated to their business their commitment to customer-driven continuous improvement. That this success had given their HR team the confidence to stretch further. The HR team had developed new skills in using multi-disciplinary teams, working with a rigorous process and measuring performance to create a lasting capacity for positive change.

Are HR Process mapping methods a complex activity?

Organizations with complex HR processes that cross many functions may find it necessary to plan far more thoroughly than organizations with simpler processes. The HR Process Mapping model utilized is practical, easy to learn and structured around three key phases:

Phase #1: Plan
Uncover Breakthrough Opportunities
Analyze ‘As-Is’
Envision the desired state
Identify Process performance gaps

Phase #2: Co-Design
Map the ‘To Be’ Process
Complete Preliminary work
Set new goals and establish measures
Create a new process flowchart
Redefine HR Process support requirements
Develop Change Management Plan

Phase #3: Implement
Implement a pilot or on a trial-run basis
Analyze the results and customer /end user feedback
Standardize the Re-Engineered Process
Evaluate the Process Performance on an ongoing Basis

The three phases – planning, co-designing and implementing – will transform your organization and place your team in a position of optimal performance. As your HR and customer team works through these phases they will be working toward promoting an atmosphere of continuous improvement in which each team member strive to make enhancements that make a difference to internal customers.