Category Archives: Change Management

Who Has Time for Performance Reviews? [Especially When They Take 49 Clicks to Complete]

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In the legal industry, where billable hours are measured in 6-minute increments, efficiency is king. So when a performance review takes 49 clicks and more than 8 months to complete, it becomes apparent something needed to change. Enter Louise Ferris, Director of HR. Under her leadership, McCullough Robertson has overhauled their HR systems and processes. She shared her insights on their HR transformation journey at HR Innovation & Tech Fest 2017 – the challenges, successes and three key strategies of leading change in a traditional business. A Conservative Legal Landscape McCullough Robertson is a leading independent Australian law firm with offices in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Newcastle. Like many in the legal industry, they are operating within a conservative environment, with a 50-strong partner leadership. With close to 400 staff, the firm is big enough to have a level of technological sophistication, but small enough that everyone has an opinion. “We have 50 partners, which essentially means I have 50 bosses”, said Louise. An Onerous Performance Review System One of the biggest pain points was their performance review process. The system, which had been in place for 6 years, was based on a competency framework with a traditional reviewee/reviewer model. It was a cumbersome 8 month process from self review to REM sign off. For McCullough Robertson’s lawyers who record every 6 minutes of their time, the time spent doing a performance review was not considered well spent. On top of the time consideration, they were working with 5 different … Continue reading →

Navigating the HR Tech Landscape in Asia

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If your organisation has a presence or is considering ventures into Asia, you may face some uncertain times ahead. If the HR Tech landscape isn’t hard enough in your home country, imagine adding the complexities of languages, cultural differences and differing levels of organisational maturity to the mix. Susan Chen will be joining us at HR Tech Fest, 27-29 November 2016 to help navigate the multifaceted HR Tech landscape in Asia. We spoke to her about her session to find out what unique barriers are faced in this region. In your session at HR Tech Fest 2016, you’re looking at the ‘mature’ and ‘emerging’ HR landscapes – what is the main difference between the two? The biggest difference I see is the pace of change. In the emerging markets there is a need to make much faster and higher impact decisions in order to catch up with the rapid market development. But many emerging markets do not have the track record that allows executives to make decisions based on past analytics so there are more risks involved in making decisions. HR professionals in these emerging markets need to be much more agile in their decision making than their mature counterparts. You’ve got a pretty impressive resume (and a full passport I imagine!) – you’ve worked in Taiwan, NZ, UK, Norway, Singapore and Indonesia to name a few – what’s your take on the difference between the Asian market and the rest of the world when it comes to HR, technology … Continue reading →

The 5 Ps of Helping HR Tech Users Adopt Change With Confidence

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With only a small percentage of technology implementations being deemed successful, we’re often left scratching our heads about where it all went wrong. Greg Taylor, Change Management specialist, says it’s all about getting your users to embrace change. He shares with us his five Ps to help your users adopt change with confidence and give your HR technology implementation the best chance to succeed. 1. Purpose Start with trying to understand what’s the problem that needs to be solved? Don’t just use a tool because “it’s cool”, it’s available and you like it. When it comes to understanding the purpose for change you need to talk to real people and find where their real problems are – never assume you know! Get out and ask people questions: What’s the pain that you’re experiencing in the process? If there’s one thing that could be better in the process what would it be? What are things that we tend to “paper over” that makes us look foolish in front of our customers? If you better understand the real problems, you’ll better understand how a supportive solution can make people more productive, and you’ll have a real purpose for your change initiative. 2. Plan The plan is all about how you will solve the problem – not how you will implement the solution. Key to this is thinking about the path you will travel to help people adopt your HR technology; how you will help them grow in confidence with it and then … Continue reading →