Why HR personnel fail as change managers?

In any organization, there are lots of expectations from HR personnel to be key agents for enabling change. Sudipta Dev tries to understand the reasons why they fail in their efforts to be good change managers

Change management issues have become critical for most organizations as they continue to grow fast in a dynamic business scenario. They have to grapple with key issues like cross-cultural complexities, mergers and acquisitions, necessitating restructuring the organization, work allocation, team synergies, remuneration policies, and many such issues. HR personnel are expected to be the key change agents, as they are closest to the globally dispersed workforce across all hierarchical levels. The only problem is the fact that HR managers are not known to be the best change managers. They more often than not fail in their efforts to enable change positively and effectively. The causes require a deeper understanding of their mindset and evident handicaps.

Reasons for failure

There are many reasons why HR people are rarely seen as good change managers despite expected to be so. They are so caught up in their HR function that they are unable to get the big business picture, which is so essential for effective change management. Sharad Heda, COO, Microland stated, “HR should be able to recognize change, be able to consider the change important enough (appreciate it adequately), have the willingness to respond to that change and have the personal ability to carry forward that change. In reality, HR departments—or the HR community as a whole—are implementers of policy at an operational level. They are rarely initiators of change or approvers of change. This is a major hurdle.” Evidently, being operational in nature, HR managers rarely tend to look in places where change is being initiated.

Ullhas Pagey, a well-known HR and organizational development expert, and a visiting faculty at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute Management Studies, Mumbai, is quick to point out that the competencies required to handle the change management issues though they may fall into HR domain, are entirely different which run of the mill HR managers with generalist profile are not equipped with. “To be specific, it requires more of organizational development competencies than HR competencies. Though many HR guys would like to believe that they are good at it, the fact is something different,” added Pagey. Most organizations also fail to realize that neither the top management nor the HR personnel are equipped to handle these changes, particularly in mid-sized companies.

What goes wrong?

The company is not ready for the change and it gets ‘forced’ instead of being ‘facilitated’. Sometimes managers try to bring ‘too big a change’ too fast. Like everything else, it has to be done in phases. Change is a process, not an event. It does not happen overnight by releasing a memo. It has to be lived each day and enforced. Source: Cincom Systems

Matter of acceptability

"When HR is aligned in the very beginning, they can contribute as well as become better aware of the need and impact. In the absence of this, HR managers as change agents are destined to fail" - Arun D Rao Vice-President, Human Resources, AppLabs

It is partly a competence and partly an acceptance issue. Arun D Rao, Vice-President, Human Resources, AppLabs, felt that the HR function faces the threat of marginalization because too much emphasis is being placed on tactical accomplishments, “In spite of all the talk of working towards boardroom acceptance, HR managers of today are busier than ever in managing output at a very transactional level. As a result, the HR gets aligned to change management processes as implementers.”

Often the conventional mindset of initiators do not expect any value add by involving the HR, given the internal interfaces. By not involving the HR from the initial stages itself, their capability to be a positive catalyst in the change management process is severely handicapped. “When HR is aligned in the very beginning, they can contribute and become better aware of the need and impact. In the absence of this, HR managers as change agents are destined to fail,” asserted Rao.

The top management should realize that decisions like mergers, demergers or alliances, apart from having financial angle, also has an HR angle. “Having realized this, ignoring such issues or not taking external help if the internal HR is not competent enough to handle this at an early stage can spell disaster,” stated Pagey.

Impact on the organization

Failure in ensuring effective change management leads to widespread dissatisfaction in the organization. Employees get demotivated and disillusioned, and finally lose faith in the company. “HR managers begin to find it frustrating that despite adopting best practices (which is what their training tells them to do), they are not harvesting results,” stated Heda, pointing out that obviously, the lack of results is hinged to the fact that the best practice is being implemented out of context, without seeing the actual needs of an organization. This outcome of implementing best practices can often lead to devastating the confidence of an HR manager.

Mona Gupta, Senior Manager-HR, Cincom Systems, India felt that a well-facilitated change does wonders—organizations can benefit by synergizing and collaborating. At the same time, a badly handled change leads to bad-alignment, loss of trust and could lead to collapse of the entire operation.

Change management skills

The important question is: can HR managers sharpen their change management skills? While it is true that the impact of training is useful in this context, but it is also limited. It is important for them to have a macro level involvement of the organizational business and strategy to be truly effective as change agents. This is much more than what any training can provide.

“Change management is a highly specialized skill, it needs altogether a different mindset and orientation. HR managers must be very conversant with the change management models and be adept with diagnostic and intervention technology,” warns Pagey. The only practical and effective way for HR managers is to be involved with things beyond the HR function. They themselves need to be more open-minded. “Fundamentally, HR managers need to stay less insulated in order to sharpen their change management skills,” insisted Heda. Rao lists a few factors that can help HR people to be better change managers:

• Continuous communications with stakeholders.
• Proactive indulgence with internal customers
• Seen as being an accessible unit by the impacted population.
• Extensive reading on change management.
• Practicing the theory even in every small instances of change management.

As the roadblocks are mostly internal (people being resistant to change, lack of communication between the management and employees, etc.) Gupta outlined the best solutions:

• Make sure everyone understands how the change will benefit them and why it’s important.
• Be firm yet sensitive to people’s concerns.

What HR personnel have to do is to first bring about a change in their mindset, attitude, vision and learning focus, before they can be change agents who can transform an organization.

sudipta.dev@expressindia.com