A global manufacturing company was on a mission to create ONE HR. The goal was to centralize its HR unit with 300 employees, because at the time of the Organizational Network Diagnsotic the company was organized as separate regional organizations each owning all parts of the HR value chain.

The objective of the ONE HR organization was to secure efficiency and alignment. Innovisor was brought in to provide insight into the connectivity of the HR organization within and across regions, and – more importantly – to identify the  right people that could help drive the transformation. 

Insights

The Organizational Network Diagnostic resulted in five key findings which helped the HR organization to become ONE

1. THE COLLABORATION NETWORK WAS FRAGMENTED
The collaboration network was 28% slower than the Innovisor benchmark, measured by the average distance between all employees in the network. This indicated that the transition to ONE HR only made sense if it could strengthen more collaboration across. Seven employees were identified as the key people to strengthen this collaboration. They were the HR organization’s connectors. They were highly connected inside their own region – not outside. Simulations showed that if only the seven connectors could be connected, the HR organizations would beat the benchmark. These seven connectors were therefore brought together on cross-regional projects to improve agility

2. MANAGERS FELT MORE INFORMED THAN EMPLOYEES
The managers  scored much higher on the questions whether they felt informed about the strategic direction than employees. This indicated a need for better communication to all levels of the organization. The HR organization needed to identify the right people to help the communication getting to all the corners of the world. The solution was the identification and leveraging of the HR organization’s key influencers, also know as the #ThreePercentRule. These people can play a powerful role as a bottom-up communication channel.

More information on the #ThreePercentRule, read the article How To Rethink Change With The Three Percent Rule

3. THE KEY INFLUENCERS HAD A STRONG REACH IN THE HR ORGANIZATION
With only 10 key influencers, or only 3,6%, 88% of the HR organization could be is reached. By combining different data, it turned out that these key influencers were even less informed on the strategic direction than it peers. Now that the key influencer were identified, the HR organization had a powerful way to communicate through all layer. But first they needed to be onboard. As a result, the key influencers were activated as the change ambassadors through the following activities:

• to make sure they were well-informed about the direction of the organization
• to listen to their input on any potential skepticism towards the transformation
• to let them know that are key influencers and induce them to embrace the role and responsibility to implies

4. THE HR PROCESSES ARE UNFOCUSED
More than half of the respondents felt affiliated with three or more processes part of the HR value chain. This was in line with the expectation that HR employees tend to be generalists rather than specialists. Leadership decided to build Center of Excellence around the top expert appointed for each HR topic. They were center in the collaboration around the HR topic. That’s why they were allocated time to strengthen the expertise to the HR organization. This made the HR organization more focused on each of the HR topics part of the HR value chain.

COLLABORATION WAS DENSE WITHIN REGIONS – BUT ALMOST NON-EXISTING BETWEEN