The HRC was brought into a Fortune 500 utility to transform the performance of two dozen business line-supportive HR professionals and managers, most of whom were operating as transactional service providers. We conducted individual interviews with HR and non-HR executives to understand the organization’s needs and resistance to gains through HR. In partnership with the HR leader, we designed a multi-phase project that combined expert design, five (5) days of interactive and action-learning work sessions over a span of six (6) months with the whole group, interim assignments and coaching.

Our partnered charge?

  • Analyze the business and industry climate and needs, as well as the priorities of top business leaders;
  • Assess the current capability of the function to support leaders’ priorities as well as against HR best practices and competencies;
  • Create the right charter, vision, and customized business partner competencies with this group for this culture;
  • Design and facilitate a series of action-learning workshops on the topics of HR consulting skills, unit level business planning, individual goal-setting and unit-level development planning;
  • Create “Individual Career Guides” for the function – based on their new competencies, to be used with their leader to set development goals, assess progress, and build targeted competencies;
  • Facilitate a mutually agreed upon set of next steps by the HR leader and his team; and
  • Coach the HR leader to position these changes in the broader HR organization and with company leadership.

Our work enabled changes in mindset, behavior, and competence to take hold with the effective partnership of the HR leader who was instrumental in the success of this project. His compassion for each individual on the team, standards of excellence, willingness to take risks in a risk-averse environment and solid leadership skills laid the groundwork for success. The higher level of performance that this HR group developed through the HR as Business AcceleratorSM approach:

  • Earned HR greater appreciation by, and involvement with, business leaders and their staff;
  • Built greater insight and skills within HR to more successfully achieve organizational and functional goals and contribute to the development of organizational value;
  • Sent a clear signal to HR and non-HR management staff that the organization was committed to the HR function and believed greater value would ensue, contributing to greater employee loyalty and engagement;
  • Minimized external consulting expense which otherwise would have been spent to undertake higher level HR needs;
  • Saved significant organizational resources (expense and time) which alternatively could have been spent in search fees and higher salaries in an HR re-staffing initiative;
  • Enabled business leaders to make different kinds of decisions based on the data, alternate viewpoint, and informed judgment of HR business partners; and
  • Bottom line, escalated the value / cost factor for HR in the organization.