HR Capability Development

A government mail bureau faced considerable change when regulators stepped in to break the monopoly and grant licenses to competitors.  In the marketplace, the organization found itself facing rising consumer expectations for higher quality, more attractive retail outlets, and different product mixes while the bureau remained obliged to maintain uneconomic retail outlets. 

Internally, the organization’s traditional command and control management style combined with poor communication strategies and skills led to disengaged employees who resisted the changes that could enhance business performance and customer satisfaction. 

Recognizing this gap, the HR leadership team identified a need to develop a more robust “strategic HR” role for their HR business partners and specialists in order to build the organization’s capability to change.

The RBL Group collaborated with the bureau in using a data-driven approach to identify specific areas of competency weakness and to create a customized HR development program that included: 
      • A 2-week intensive training for top-level HR executives, with program
        cascaded through the organization to cover 180 business partners and
        specialists
      • Classroom experiences that included topics such as HR consulting and
        coaching skills, core business knowledge and strategy topics, the bureau’s
        value chains and stakeholders, HR’s role in strategy formulation and
        execution, organizational capabilities, managing culture change,
        measuring HR’s value, and driving employee engagement
      • Action learning projects that had tangible impact on business results, were
        strategically relevant, entailed a real-time HR challenge, and were
        actionable within five months
      • Elective offerings (coaching, detailed workshop on managing change,
        coaching, and action learning projects) for those with more interest or
        need

Satisfaction with service from HR business partners and specialists vastly improved by a minimum of 50% along several key dimensions: Timeliness, Quality, Business Focus, and “HR meets my needs.”