Case Study: Organization Effectiveness

Establishing a High-Performing Human Resources Function

Situation: A large healthcare system with over 9000 employees hired a new Senior Vice President to manage their Human Resources function. The new SVP has taken over a function that has a poor internal reputation for service delivery and for partnering with the multiple service lines. The CEO charged her with increasing the effectiveness of Human Resources.

Process: The new HR SVP engaged Myron Beard Executive Consulting (MBEC) to assist in both understanding the underlying problems and creating a strategy for the future. This included the following multi-step process:

The MBEC Difference

Through MBEC’s organization effectiveness work, the new HR SVP delivered and maintained a significantly higher level of performance.

1. Plotting a Roadmap: Following a discussion with the CEO, the HR SVP and the MBEC consultant developed a comprehensive plan for identifying root issues, creating a strategy to address and rectify them, and ensuring that the right people were in the right positions for strategy implementation.
2. Discovery of Current State: The HR SVP interviewed all internal key management and executives to get their view of what HR was doing well and what HR could improve to be a more effective business partner. The MBEC consultant interviewed all senior HR staff to get their understanding of HR service performance and what barriers and/or obstacles were in the way of a higher level of service delivery. By comparing themes from the two sets of interviews, a picture emerged that would assist HR in developing a comprehensive strategy to become both a better internal business partner with service lines and deliver services that would be high quality and on time.
3. Strategy Development: The MBEC consultant facilitated meetings with the HR SVP and top HR managers to review themes that emerged in both sets of interviews and to understand the gap between current state and desired state. By having both large and small group analysis meetings, the HR team was able to develop a new HR strategy for becoming a strong internal business partner to service lines and delivering services in a manner that was on time and high quality.
4. Structure Development: In order for the new HR strategy to work, it became obvious that a new HR structure was required. This structure required a higher level of both HR services and a higher level professional that would interact with business partners. A new Service Center approach was developed where HR services resided (compensation, benefits, HRIS, etc.). In addition, new HR Generalist positions were created to interact with service lines and act as a liaison between the service lines and the HR Service Center.
5. Team Development: The new strategy and structure could only be effectively implemented if the right people were in the right position. To ensure this alignment, the MBEC consultant evaluated key internal HR employees to determine individual strengths, weaknesses and appropriateness to fit for new positions. Individuals were either kept in their positions or redeployed to positions that better fit their personality and skill set. In some cases, external hires were made to fill key positions.
6. Strategy Implementation: Once the selection of the HR team was finalized, the newly formed team reconvened to create a plan for the implementing the newly formed HR strategy. This included clarity with regard to roles, responsibilities and accountabilities. The final plan also included milestones and timelines. Regular updates were held to ensure that service delivery was, as promised, on time and high quality. Service line executives were regularly polled regarding their feedback to the new HR organization and changes were made accordingly.
7. Annual Review of Strategy: Following the initial strategy development, surveys to Service Line executives confirmed that the new HR strategy, structure and team had been highly successful in creating high-level service delivery. The HR management reconvened to review these survey results and make changes as required. To their surprise and delight, the original strategy was robust enough to not require changes to the major strategic initiatives.

Outcome: Following completion of the organization effectiveness work, the changes the HR function made in strategy, structure and people resulted in significantly higher level of service delivery that was maintained consistently for three years. By partnering with Beard Executive Consulting, the new HR SVP was able to accelerate and maintain these important changes.