Human Resources

The benefits of a positive workplace culture are significant: greater productivity, lower turnover, good communication, and employees who are satisfied and happy.

Through any transformation the core of your culture is tested, there are highs and lows, and it can be a long journey.

Within the public sector, creating a culture of innovation and transformation is critical to success.

It’s daunting and often impacts the daily lives of hundreds if not thousands of employees who have been doing things ‘a certain way’ for years.

Culture equals success, so ahead of the HR Transformation stream during Public Sector Innovation 2017, these are our four big areas not to be ignored:

TURN TO YOUR FRONT LINE

In large public sector organisations, goals are often set by the senior executive team. This top-down approach can be successful, but also runs the risk of being business centric, rather than customer centric.

One area pivotal to the success of a transformation project is engaging with the front line – your customer.

In this case, the customer is employees.  They are the people that use HR services day in, day out and are best placed to give you feedback. Engage with all areas of your business, and you’ll get not only new ideas but validation on the assumptions made at a senior exec level.

Speak with people across all departments, widen your engagement as much as possible - you may find that the issues in the business were not in the places you thought.

All of this information will provide hard evidence, and user tested results for your transformation initiatives – adding confidence to each objective you take on.

IDENTIFY YOUR ADVOCATES

It's also a great time to identify your HR Transformation advocates.

Speak with as many parts of the business as possible, from the call centre to IT. When you find individuals who are passionate about your project, keep them engaged. It keeps your project focused in the right area, but also drives a culture of change once the new processes start to kick in when you have people leading by example.

During any transformational process, people power change.  

When your workforce feels, and truly believes, they have a direct stake in the future of the company, that they are part of something bigger - they become invaluable assets toward you’re the goals of your cultural change.

CREATE A FEEDBACK LOOP

One of the biggest gaps in that process comes in building continuous feedback loops.

Put yourself in the employee's shoes:

You were a little hesitant to get involved in the first place because you know the red tape involved with government organisations. You hear about the initiative and have lots of ideas, so spend time outside of your normal day job trying to contribute. Then you hear nothing. Or you’re waiting six months before you hear something.

It's not a great experience.

One of the best things you can do is keep your ear to the ground. Instead of waiting for quarterly reports to shout about numbers, create a continuous feedback loop that allows for constant feedback, testing, tuning, and keeping the organisational vibe positive.

Instead of waiting for people to come, go to them. You can debunk the perception that transformation is slow by creating small victories along the way. Although transformation takes time, the smaller practices can be used to encourage creativity, involvement, motivation.

BE CLEAR WHY

Finally, If your transformation requires a lot of additional work for your employees, it’s going to be difficult to keep long term momentum. The aim of a transformation project should be to make like easier for employees in some way.

Make sure that message is clear in your vision and aim to be the person that takes work away.