Brief

Following a period of considerable acquisition activity the change environment was one of many brands co-existing with little or no integration particularly with respect to people frameworks (e.g. HR policies, REM, Super, Benefits, Performance Management). The current performance management landscape consisted of numerous approaches and technologies that were primarily linked to heritage employing entity, brand, and/ or agreement. There were major inconsistencies in their approach, application, supporting technology and language, driving different behaviours with varying levels of performance, and subsequent rewards.

These variations created considerable complexity for leaders managing mixed-entity teams, reinforcing existing cultural silos, and impacting the comparability and recognition of team and individual performance across the Group. The heritage approaches were also misaligned to the one agreement and single remuneration strategy that was in the process of being introduced.

Solution

The One Team Program (OTP) was created to harmonise these disparities and deliver consistent HR practices and frameworks across the Group. Blue Seed was engaged to lead the change stream for the Performance Management Project which involved the implementation of a single enterprise wise performance management system and framework that addressed both what and how of performance dimensions. Blue Seed lead an initial diagnostic phase, culminating in the delivery of a change strategy, to assess impact, identify stakeholders and their needs and design a fit for purpose roadmap for change. Throughout the diagnostic phase, key learnings emerged to guide the approach to HR engagement, training design and post implementation support considerations for key stakeholder groups. The complexity of the change included the process, behaviour and cultural shifts required to make the new way of measuring performance sustainable. The following recommendations were made as part of the change strategy:

• Develop a HR roadmap to be used to provide visibility and enable packaging of like changes to ensure change was delivered in the most streamlined and cost effective manner.
• Integrate the change management design and delivery with the REM and Performance management streams.
• Facilitate a working group that encompasses REM/Culture and PM to ensure a holistic view is achieved.
• Facilitate the tracking of readiness at business unit level to enable targeted remediation.
• Deliver change in tranches in line with the annual cycle of events.
• Core changes to be developed and designed within the project but that business unit specific impacts and change plans to be owned by the HR Advisory communities in the field.

Results

Blue Seed was asked to remain on the project to operationalize the strategy and lead the change stream through implementation and execution. As well as achieving successful delivery of the new technology and processes Blue Seed also contributed to the wider OTP program to align other streams, drive collaborative planning and design a truly integrated implementation plan that delivered a seamless experience for leaders and end users across the spectrum of HR frameworks:

• On time implementation in line with deployment schedule.
• Developed a single view of change for HR initiatives.
• Leaders were able to perform a translation between legacy and new PM ratings and correlate that to a REM outcome.
• Developed formal alignment with the Culture team.
• Delivered only relevant change at relevant times.
• Built change interventions that were end user designed and business specific.