TAQA

Introduction

At well renowned company in the Middle East with significant obligations and contribution to the country, Company Y had consistently performed in-depth reviews to ensure its strategic direction is in alignment with its national obligations particularly as it relates to Human Capital.

Since its inception, the company has advocated its human capital as its greatest asset. Accordingly, the company spared no effort in the pursuit of excellence when it came to managing its human capital!

This was often achieved through the identification of key focus areas that would drive its future investments and operations for years to come, allowing it to grow its total contribution to the national interest. Managing its Human Capital has always been at the top of these key focus areas and was always considered key in achieving maximum benefits to the company and the country..

As a result, the company formed a Team of senior leaders and subject matter experts to identify the characteristics of the future workforce. Through internal and external data collection, the Team started by looking at the company’s outlook with today’s realities, then developed a set of recommendations to address the gaps between them.

Findings

The Team soon recognized that the company is doing very well by most meaningful business measures. Nevertheless, the company realized that it also operates in an ever-changing global economic environment.  As the company’s role continues to mature and grow, it must take greater account of the national interest.

The Team built on work that has gone before and reviewed the status of some 42 HR-related initiatives to take note of achievements and/or to recognize problems encountered in their implementation.

"Managing human capital is a big task that will require the efforts of thousands of company employees and the attention of all levels of management for years to come."

Internal sources and analysis showed that most company HR systems and procedures are carry-overs from a simpler past. This mindset limits the options available in an era of vastly expanded operations and increasing competitive challenges. The need for change becomes acutely compelling as the company’s strategic direction expands to take more account of national initiatives.

The team  also looked at the global business environment through interviews. These included executives and experts in 47 leading global companies and universities.

The team synthesized this external data and conducted a comprehensive review of the professional literature to identify the key focus areas receiving most attention worldwide.

The five key focus areas identified as likely to drive the need for change going forward are:

• Changes in the global business environment

• The impact of technology

• Changes in organizational structure

• Changes in strategic focus

• Changes in the workplace environment and work execution

Recommendations

As a result, the following were the team’s recommendations:

1. Optimize Total workforce

• Manage workforce and expand options for employable candidates by working with local technical colleges and universities

• Establish an Outplacement Center to manage the exit process for excess and low performing employees

2. Identify, develop, and strategically deploy tomorrow’s leaders

• Identify leaders earlier through assessment centers and accelerate their development.

• Provide coaching and mentoring to facilitate “Leadership Track” employees in their transition to the next level up.

• Establish a Corporate Learning Center with programs taught by company leaders.

3. Practice consequence management

• Establish a viable exit process for low performing employees who do not respond to coaching and counseling

• Identify and remove position blockers, starting with the front-line leaders

• Clarify the HR role of front-line leaders and ensure they practice it effectively to increase workforce performance and productivity

4. Communicate for results

• The team conducted a communications survey and developed a business communications strategy and plan to implement.

5. Form A Corporate Human Resources Committee

• Oversees implementation of recommendations, ensures HR strategy is current and implemented with results that support corporate strategic directions and business objectives

The team went on to provide a set of seven implantation milestones to start moving their recommendations into reality!

Implementation Milestones

The Team has identified the following seven critical implementation milestones to provide a path moving forward:

1. Establish Corporate HR Committee

The team developed the committee charter and presented it to Corporate Management for approval.

2. Finalize Corporate HR Strategies

The HR organization developed an excellent framework for a Corporate HR Strategy and this was incorporated in the Business Plan. The Team recommended that this HR Strategy review be linked to the company Strategic Direction.

3. Assign clear HR roles and responsibilities

The HR Committee will define the roles necessary to execute the HR Strategy and then assign those roles to the appropriate member(s) of the HR community. The Committee would also ensure that the various roles are coordinated and aligned with the HR Strategy.

4. Refine, prioritize and assign implementation

The Team identified more than 40 current or recent initiatives and projects across the company that would significantly impact HR. The HR Committee will begin playing a key role in making sure these initiatives are conceived, planned and implemented in alignment with overall Corporate HR Strategies and with due consideration to their impact on each other.

5. Implement communications strategy with success metrics

The objective is to finalize the communications strategy and identification of roles for various levels of management, and the specification of associated skills and competencies for those roles. This strategy will be ready for company review prior to year-end. The Team suggests that the HR Committee assign a proponent for monitoring the implementation and progress of the communications strategy.

6. Create and implement HR-related success metrics

The HR organization has already implemented metrics for their HR objectives through the Scorecard process. The Team recommends that by the year end each member of the HR community develop metrics based on the role clarification and alignment recommendation described above to measure progress of their HR outcomes.

7. Establish a change-management process

The HR Committee will launch a change-management process whereby the company can have confidence that the vast scope of the recommendations can be implemented. Analysis of past initiatives has revealed that the existence of a change-management process is often the critical factor in achieving results.

Change Management

The inescapable need is for the HR community to have a change-management process that incorporates the following proven best practices: (1) quality planning time; (2) clear boundaries; (3) strong facilitation; (4) strong team training and roles; (5) sponsorship commitment; (6) implementation expectations; (6) accountability of all participants (including sponsors) for execution; and (6) have trained, coaches and certified sponsors, change agents, team leaders and facilitators.

Facilitated Handoff

The Team prepared a facilitated handoff with organizations. Specifically, project scoping documents and thorough discussion of each initiative with the implementation team to ensure that they had a full understanding of the recommendation and its benefits.

Conclusion

Managing human capital is a big task that will require the efforts of thousands of company employees and the attention of all levels of management for years to come.

Everything else highlighted here flows from this simple but effective mechanism of having a functioning HR Committee. They perform a crucial role as they evaluate an array of projects and programs that will be considered. Their efforts should help bring the type of workforce of the future needed to sustain company operations and to expand the benefits to strengthen the national economy.