The essential guide to change management

The role of HR in change

One of the essential skills for any HR practitioner to master is the successful management of change. An HR Leader, Business Partner or Specialist may be called upon to play one or more of four primary roles in change:

• Change Leader/Owner, taking full responsibility for the planning and implementation of their own change project. The most obvious of these would be an HR Director transforming all or part of the HR function, but it could also be on a smaller scale, for example a restructuring of a team or the introduction of a new intranet-based service.
• Change Educator, bringing specialist knowledge and expertise to help clients understand more about the structure and process of successfully managing change. This will often fall to the Centre of
• Expertise specialists and may involve running workshops, designing practical tools or making available other resources, such as reading materials or theoretical models.
• Change Advisor, working with clients directly through the process of designing and implementing change, challenging and guiding them to get it right. This role will often be the remit of the HR Business Partner, for example in the restructuring of the sales function, or could also be played by the HR Director in the case of wholesale organisational change
• Change Participant, being part of a change that affects them personally. In this role any HR practitioner can use their knowledge of change to set their expectations of the process, troubleshoot problems and understand and manage their own and others’ reactions to events.

Achieving mastery involves first understanding the architecture of successful change: having a clear picture of all the elements necessary for a sound process, built on a solid foundation. HR practitioners can add huge value in change situations by guiding the organisation to pay attention to all the important aspects, even when it is unpopular and may seem unnecessary to those eager for swift action.
There will also be skills, tools, methodologies and interventions they can use as the change progresses, but their greatest value can be in the quiet insistence that sufficient time is spent on laying the foundations.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT CHANGE MANAGEMENT CONTACT
info@orion-partners.com
or visit our website at www.orion-partners.com