8 minute read
Behind the scenes of change
Kathy Catton, Human Resources magazine editor, spoke with three companies that have recently been through a change process. Here she shares their insights.
Managing change is a delicate balance of strategic vision, employee engagement and consistent communication. And there’s plenty to learn from those who have gone before us. Here we delve into two successful change initiatives and one emerging change process. The hope is that HR professionals can steer their own change initiatives towards flourishing outcomes and hence drive their organisations and their people forward productively.
MY FOOD BAG
This nine-year-old meal kit and meal solutions business has been through various stages of business ownership in its first decade, from entrepreneur to NZX listing. The company has ambitions to continue this growth. With this, comes a need to get clear on how they do business.
“We had a clear strategy for growth, and we wanted to get clarity and consistency on ‘how’ we do business,” says Cassie Ormand, Head of People and Culture at My Food Bag. “We had a good foundation to our culture; wanted to augment this. We wanted to get clear on our values and embed this into all our people processes.”
Critical to the success of the initiative was involving employees as early as possible in the process.
“We wanted to understand what our people love about our culture and what we could leave behind,” says Kalleigh Mikkelson, People and Culture Manager at My Food Bag. “So we identified individuals who could become advocates for the organisation and help lead and drive this change process.”
The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) nominated these ‘Culture Chefs’ from across all functions, levels and sites. They were trained in facilitation skills and then led workshops, open to all employees, to help My Food Bag understand the gems of culture that were meaningful to their people.
“‘Growth’, ‘customer’ and ‘team’ came back as the key themes from the 17 workshops,” says Cassie. “This sums up the essence of ‘us’ and what’s important about working with My Food Bag.”
From there, a three-step ‘recipe’ for the ‘Secret Sauce’ took shape, which encapsulated the values of working at My Food Bag:
a full cup of ambition
turn customer love on high
top off with a dollop of teamwork.
Encapsulating the values, the Culture Chefs created a recognition programme – aptly named ‘The Saucies’ – to ensure people started using the new values and began recognising the behaviours they are looking to foster and celebrate.
“Each month people can nominate their colleagues for behaviours they have observed, and the SLT then evaluates these, and a winner for each value is announced,” says Kalleigh.
Building on the success of the initiative, six leadership competencies have since been created and eight cohorts of managers and leaders have gone through a newly designed leadership development programme.
And the proof is in the pudding, as they say, with latest employee engagement scores sitting at 4.25 out of 5 in response to the statement, “My Food Bay is somewhere I feel supported to do my very best work”. Turnover rates are down and employees comment that the workplace is friendly, collaborative and high-performing.
The care taken to foster a great culture has clearly paid off.
CASSIE AND KALLEIGH’S TIPS TO TRANSFORMATIONAL SUCCESS
Make sure your employees are at the heart of any change.
There’s no such thing as over-communication!
Don’t underestimate the power of your employees’ energy and passion.
Engage with as many people as possible.
Make change fun, memorable, relatable and engaging.
Z ENERGY
With the closure of New Zealand’s Marsden Point oil refinery in 2022, there was an immediate need for Z Energy Ltd (Z) to find an alternative source of fuel from offshore. This led to a significant and complex change to Z’s supply chain. A change programme, Pae Tawhiti, focused on managing Z’s exit from the crude oil supply chain.
Most crucial to the set-up of this change initiative was the use of a human-centred design way of thinking, putting the end user in the centre of the design.
“The change programme focused on the building of capability (competencies, governance, process, systems) to manage the responsibilities of this change in-house,” says Diana McAlpine, who was Head of Organisational Development with Z at the time of this change. “The role of our OD team was to design and implement the business change management and capability development to ensure Z was ready and able to safely transition to an import terminal model from Day One.”
Most crucial to the set-up of this change initiative was the application of human-centred design methodology, putting the end user in the centre of the design. This led to the creation of three phases: transition (ie, day one), stabilisation and optimisation (long-term).
“Our engagement plan and approach was also anchored to this methodology, putting the stakeholders at the centre of the plan,” says Elicia Hill, Enterprise Change Lead.
An agile change management approach was used, with teams in squads operating in two-week sprints. “This approach meant we could identify any blockages early on, pivot as needed and regularly assess the effect of the delivery and celebrate what was going well,” says Elicia. Impact workshops were also held, allowing people to be across the change and to allow gaps to be spotted and taken into consideration.
Their learning needs assessment informed a phased approach to the capability build across the users, and a self-paced learning pathway was introduced. This included gamification to simulate the supply chain and reinforce cross-functional teams.
“Gamification of our supply chain reinforced the crossfunctional teams’ understanding on how their role contributes to the overall effectiveness of the supply chain,” says Di.
“We also took the opportunity to utilise a Service Design Blueprint to visualise the change,” says Elicia. “This was a way of helping people understand what the change meant at an individual and team level and how their role contributes to our overall supply chain.”
The transition (from April to August 2022) happened without safety incidents or unplanned events occurring. There was no discernible change to the experience of everyday motorists refuelling their vehicles and little social media activity from customer groups. Crucially, internal capability has been built, through upskilling in fuel procurement, contract and supplier management, data and analytics, commercial acumen and fleet management.
ELICIA AND DI’S TIPS TO TRANSFORMATIONAL SUCCESS
Put the user at the centre of the change, to better enable business ownership.
Agile change management provides great flexibility to right-size the change approach on what really matters.
Coach leaders to create a positive culture, which will ultimately drive delivery.
ALLIED PRESS
For this 150-year-old media business to survive the next 150 years, a large-scale systems upgrade is needed. To be viable in the print and digital market, and to leverage AI, security and business continuity, Allied Press recently identified the need to transition its long-standing traditional operations into the digital arena.
With that, comes an inevitable impact on the people.
“We recognised the need for this systems upgrade, but equally knew that there were going to be impacts on all levels of the business,” says Christine Theissen, HR and Health and Safety Manager at Allied Press. “We have an ageing workforce at Allied Press, and a long length of service, in general. In the past, we’ve been vulnerable when people left, as we lost a lot of institutional knowledge. That means we need to build confidence and assurance within our teams that the new system is going to work and actually provide more opportunities for them.”
This reassurance and capability building also extends to managers, with frameworks in place to provide tools and communications for the upcoming change.
“We anticipate this change will take us 18 months to two years to complete,” says Eleanor Eraković, Chief Information Technology Officer at Allied Press. “Our current main challenge is working with the fact that the digital maturity of our workforce is quite low. We need to build assurance and confidence so that people enjoy working with the new technology. That’s critical to the success of this change.”
Also to consider is how the transformation committee can support people to break some ingrained habits. “It’s normal for all of us to stay in our comfort zone and not try out new systems,” says Christine. “But we’ve been able to plan for this and have a trial run with the implementation of the Office 365 suite, for instance.”
We need to build assurance and confidence so that people enjoy working with the new technology. That’s critical to the success of this change.
Christine says herself that, although this change process is nothing world-shattering, it’s been a great example of how to get people on the journey and start to look at the bigger picture. “A select group of staff have been trained in the new systems and are now subject matter experts. Their role will be crucial in the transition as they test the system and get comfortable with it, before we go out to the business with it.”
CHRISTINE AND ELEANOR’S TIPS FOR TRANSFORMATIONAL SUCCESS
Engage with all levels in the business so that everyone feels they’re part of the journey.
Make sure your leaders are setting the example and working with the business.
Demonstrate high levels of integrity and transparency. “If decisions are political, tell people!”
Carry out a people risk assessment and identify the benefits to people.
Be prepared for everyone to debate decisions and be part of the decision-making process, it will help to make everyone feel comfortable with the process if they are involved.
