HR professionals are overwhelmed by the change they have to manage and seldom achieve the desired result, according to the Roffey Park institute. In its survey of more than 1,800 managers, seen exclusively by HR magazine, 77% of HR professionals said managing change was their top challenge, but 37% of HR managers said efforts to change their organisation’s culture were unsuccessful.
The latest Management Agenda report identified the attempted implementation of performance-driven cultures as a main theme. Head of research Dan Lucy said HR directors were trying to introduce a system that did not “fit” their organisation.
“There is a desire for a performance-driven culture and somehow that translates into the introduction of a new kind of performance management system that is box-ticky or bureaucratic,” he said. “It doesn’t adequately deal with management capabilities to manage performance effectively.”
Lucy added this was often not HR’s fault because change was driven by external factors, such as a new CEO or financial challenges. “It’s a constant need for change, which can be demoralising,” he said.
Senior consultant Alex Swarbrick said the pressures of constant change could account for 59% of HR professionals saying the function was “too reactive” to be effective. While 81% of managers regarded HR’s work as helpful, only 23% said they sought its support on strategic issues such as employee engagement, and only 28% believed HR added value to the business. “It’s a bit like a vicious circle,” Swarbrick said. “While HR is caught up in transactional work, it doesn’t have time for the wider, strategic bits. That’s all managers will base their views of HR on.”
Change management and leadership were cited as the most important areas of knowledge by 74% of HR professionals. “That is HR taking more of a change-architect than a change- implementer role,” Swarbrick said.
Another challenge, identified by 70% of HR managers , was for HR to establish links between people management and business results. HR managers said they wanted to develop greater analytical abilities and to better handle data and metrics to prove the case for change. Almost as many, 69%, said influencing senior managers was a key task. “They reported challenges in effecting change as senior managers can be quite ‘command and control’, undermining trust,” Swarbrick said.
Future priorities
The report also suggested some optimism.When asked to identify future priorities, the only area given a predicted increase in importance was that of recruiting and retaining talented HR professionals. “It may be that, after a number of years of drawn-out recession, HR professionals might be starting to look for opportunities if they feel they can’t progress in their own organisation,” Lucy said.
Thames Water HR director Janet Burr was unsurprised by the findings. “Businesses are being forced to constantly change,” she said. “Customers want everything to be very cheap. Everything is squeezed to the utmost, so we have to start changing what we do for every aspect of the business.”
Burr agreed HR professionals could struggle to do proactive work above “good old, traditional HR systems”, adding of her team at Thames Water: “We have a balance of proactive and reactive work in change, but we’re trying to do it on top of everything else.”
Burr said her main concern was whether HR has the ability and capacity to deliver the change organisations want: “We have lots of people with traditional skills, but those on the HR market don’t have all the skills we need today.”