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HR Rehab - Implementing the First Step
By Ron | December 15, 2008
Implementing Step One at HR Rehab…. last time I said that we were going to tackle #4 (main issues at “our” company) and prepare a plan per instruction #5. Let’s say that we identified “Poor Customer Service” as a major problem with our company. Now, my experience tells me that usually in organizations, they are in complete denial their problems. For example, I don’t think Home Depot thought that they had a customer service problem years ago or, if they did, they didn’t think it was necessary to do anything about it. Even now when they appear to be more customer-oriented, Lowes still greatly outshines them. I’ve also learned that it takes a lot more than just creating a Customer Service Workshop to fix the problem.
If I was going to prepare a plan on how I, in HR, can do something about this issue in our fictional company, it would include the following provisions:
- Customer survey: check with Marketing to see if they have done one and, if so, use the data.
- If no customer data is available, sponsor one through the right channels.
- Work with Marketing on what would need to be done to improve customer service.
- Co-produce a presentation with Marketing (includes the survey results from customers).
- Include the New Values (which includes Customer Service) Initiative and the New Internal Training Program as part of the presentation which I have created.
- Present to the Executive Staff and get blessing to move ahead with the New Program.
- Include Customer Service as a competency to be used in Talent Aquisition and in the Performance Management System.
If you think that some of this is outside the job parameters for HR, you could be right, but not in the new model that we came to Rehab to learn about. I used the above example to show how we in Human Resources can participate in virtually any part of the business and make a contribution.
In real life, I did pieces of the above plan and then some. Here are the upsides that I witnessed: I developed close relationships with Sales and Marketing - they were actually glad to see that they were getting help from another company function with the customers. And…the perception by everyone else about HR changed - we were now viewed as part of the business team.
Topics: HR |