Change is a common topic among the HR profession. It’s hardly surprising given the pace and magnitude of change continuously affecting the employment and business landscape.
But transformational change is something else. It represents an entire shift in the culture of an organisation. It often brings about new strategic direction. And it typically represents a company-wide shift to new ways of thinking.
The sheer significance of such change requires careful thought, planning and implementation. It needs the buy in of those involved, for a transformational project to be successful. It’s far from easy but, executed properly, it can generate tremendous morale, satisfaction, efficiency, customer service and bottom line benefits.
HR plays a defined role in transformational change delivery, as can HR software, providing it grows and adapts alongside the needs of the team concerned. Cascade’s clients have often commented, for example, that the tech is a reassuring constant during periods of uncertainty.
We were informed recently, of an incredibly interesting client story – an organisation who set out on a bold journey two years ago to achieve greater agility in their constantly growing business.
The business concerned was Melin Homes, a well-established housing association that celebrated its 10th anniversary at the start of Spring 2017. Melin Homes was formed following the merger of two housing associations that had previously existed as single entities for 30 years. The established brands therefore each had their own culture, identities and ways of working, not to mention talented and loyal employees.
That’s why change has always been carefully managed to protect the level of service delivered to customers and the degree of job satisfaction among the workforce. Feelings of disparity or a sense of ‘them and us’ could have been catastrophic when the merger first occurred.
But keen to constantly push forward Melin has continued to evolve. They recognised that to operate as a truly modern organisation, they needed to embrace agile principles. But they also acknowledged this would be a challenging venture with limited resources. What followed was therefore a meticulously planned project with HR technology a crucial enabler at the heart of it.
To ensure an effective transition to agility, Melin Homes prioritised employee dialogue and involvement. They thought carefully about what agility needed to ‘look like’ for them. They conducted extensive research. They championed successes throughout. They rolled new processes and systems out in a phased manner to encourage buy in rather than feelings of being overwhelmed. They harnessed the functionality that HR tech can bring to ease burdens that can otherwise be caused by restrictive ways of working.
And the associated stats make for interesting reading. 97% of staff love working for Melin and 100% of staff now welcome change. Melin even won The Chartered Institute for IT’s award for ‘Workplace Transformation Project of the Year’.
It’s a tremendous story that hopefully provides some reassurance for other organisations facing what they see as an uphill struggle during their own transformational change project.
To hear about the journey, in full, why not attend Melin Homes’ free seminar at the HR Software Show? ‘Using HR software to achieve award-winning transformational change’ will take place on Thursday 15 June, from 11:15-11:45 at Olympia London.
