People Not Paperclips

Putting the human back into Human Resources

Kath Howard

• Publisher: Practical Inspiration Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781788601337
• eBook ISBN: 9781788601320
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

The way HR is working isn't working. A global epidemic of workplace unhappiness, poor engagement and high churn shows that our well-intended HR interventions just aren't cutting it.

So, how can we put the 'human' back into Human Resources? Combining her own research with 20 years' experience of leading OD and cultural change, Kath Howard encourages HR leaders to think big and to think personal. Accessible and compelling, People Not Paperclips is a refreshing blend of practical insights, stories, and tools that will help you create an environment in which your people can do their best work. It explores how we can attract, recruit, develop and support our people with heart, and why this really matters.

People Not Paperclips positions HR professionals at the forefront of cultural change bringing humanity back into the workplace.

· Combines expertise in OD and Psychology with interviews with business and HR leaders

· An accessible and practical guide for HR leaders to build a workable OD plan for their business

A practical toolkit for creating people-centred HR services, processes, and practices, with accompanying online materials

SECTION TWO

CREATING A PEOPLE-FOCUSED CULTURE

Chapter 4

Can Organisation Development put the human back into Human Resources?

Introduction

This is the section when we really start looking into the worlds of Organisation Development and occupational psychology to understand how we can create person-focused cultures that care. This chapter will ask what Organisation Development as a skill set and a broader profession can bring to the discussion. This is a huge topic to cover in a single chapter, and I won’t even set myself the high bar of ‘doing it justice’. I will instead refer you at key points to incredible further reading in the area from some true Organisation Development gurus (who, I have no doubt, despise the word ‘guru’).

I will deep-dive into the topic of ‘curiosity’ as a skill set that I think could add great value in any team, and which I would suggest sets good OD practitioners apart from great OD practitioners in our profession. Working without judgement, with positive intent and with true curiosity are the true strengths or qualities of great OD practitioners, and certainly embody the fabulous practitioners I will quote in this book. I’ll provide you with some tips and techniques for applying these skills in your own HR practice, and the toolkit at the end of the chapter will explore how you can draw on OD practice within your own HR team to create greater impact.

Applying OD to the field of HR

What is ‘Organisation Development’? OD is a profession based on humanistic principles, which strives to develop our understanding of human dynamics at work and how we can apply this knowledge to create ‘healthy’ organisations. Whilst we often draw on OD interventions within teams or perhaps with a group of leaders, the intent is always to impact on the organisation as a system. OD practitioners seek to diagnose issues within organisations, involving leaders and employees in responding to people challenges, and supporting the organisation to be fit for purpose for the future. Part of the core skill set of an OD practitioner is therefore to hold a mirror up to the organisation and to challenge unhealthy aspects of the system. I’ve often been told that I’m ‘too nice to work in HR’ (I hope this isn’t too unbelievable for those who have actually worked with me) and a recent social media post on this topic really resonated with me. The post noted that there is a difference between being ‘nice’ and being ‘kind’ and that the latter requires a certain candour, or honesty, that can mean being uncomfortable to support the awareness or learning of others. This, for me, is OD in practice. This is the humanistic element in play. With positive intent and with the humility that we don’t need or want to ‘be right’, we hold a mirror up to support and challenge another person’s thinking, as we hope they would for us. The opportunities to apply the principles, knowledge and skills from OD within the HR profession are huge, and I would argue this is still relatively untapped within many organisations.

There has been much debate about whether OD is a field of practice and a profession in its own right. There has long been a blurred line between OD and HR. This blurred line has threatened to place Organisation Development in the same camp as ‘employee engagement’; little more than a transient job title that gets changed quicker than the hemlines at London Fashion Week. In fact, in many organisations, OD is singled out as a skill set or sub-team within the Human Resource function. OD is also mapped as one of the core skills areas of an HR Leader in the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development’s HR Professions Career Map. I’m quite clear where I sit on this one, and it isn’t on a fence. OD is a profession in its own right, and not a tool or skill set that can be absorbed into another profession, or a new term for a learning function, dependent on what the person with the title ‘OD Consultant’ has in their skill set. I make this point as a self-confessed career hybrid. I identify as an Occupational Psychologist over being an OD practitioner, and have no great yearning to be seen as an HR expert at all. In truth, I’d like to be known as someone who is curious about the application of behavioural science to how we work, but that doesn’t make for a snappy title on social media. I used to think, ‘Who cares where OD sits anyway?’ But on reflection, how OD relates to the Human Resources function really does matter. For if we package OD up as an HR skill, it risks losing some of its independence, and therein loses some of its potential to make a difference. OD really needs to sit across the business, taking a helicopter view of the organisation in order to have optimal impact. We need to be mindful about not losing the importance of OD as a profession that comes with deep expertise in systems theory, and a multitude of tools and models that can bring impact to the world of work. I share this here because in gaining an awareness of OD theories and knowledge, we should also gain an awareness of the limitations of our own practice and when we would benefit from developing our knowledge or seeking the technical expertise of someone more learned in the field. I hope this chapter will help you to achieve just that.

Many OD professionals within HR departments focus on employee experience or employee engagement, whilst others are responsible for developing the capability of leaders and the broader employee group. Whilst this is all incredibly important work, it is focusing on a single component of the organisational system, and not looking systemically across the organisation to achieve impact. Whilst learning and development focuses on how individuals and teams can develop and grow their capability; on human potential, OD focuses on human dynamics. The tools and knowledge available to us from the field of OD help us to understand how people and organisations work, and to create the right environment across the organisational system for this to occur. As long as we support all practitioners to have a good understanding of how to use OD principles, tools, techniques, concepts and processes, then wherever it sits, it will make a difference, and that’s all that really matters. Which leads me onto how we can apply OD thinking within the field of HR. OD offers great potential for bringing greater humanity into Human Resources and the wider world of work. Instead of being based on processes and practices, and HR manuals and policies, it focuses on the more strategic side of people management and development, and on how we can ensure we are addressing cultural challenges and opportunities to build work environments where people can flourish. It promises to take HR from mitigating risks and enforcing policies to embedding the organisation’s values through its people’s behaviours and ways of working. OD brings core principles of trust in people, and a belief in the importance of employee empowerment, and places skills such as curiosity and self-awareness centre stage. OD is less about a toolkit that HR people can draw on, than a way of being we can adopt and practice through our work.

Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge, one of the Founders of the NTL Institute in the UK, describes OD practitioners as using their sense of ‘self as an instrument’¹⁴ in their work. They themselves are the tool that creates the difference in their work, and this creates high responsibility on the OD practitioner to operate in a way that is true to the principles of OD; in a human-centred, transparent, fair and open way. This way of being is central to holding positive power dynamics within the organisation, to creating client-helping relationships that empower rather than frustrate, and to being what is often termed a ‘humble enquirer’ in OD-speak. In this chapter, I will share more about each of these aspects of OD. Each of these skills or tools offer us the opportunity to put greater humanity and care into our work as HR professionals through considering the impact of our behaviours and interventions on people and their individual needs.

Learning from the consultancy phases of Organisation Development

There are some key phases of an Organisation Development consultancy cycle that will be important and useful to reflect on as HR professionals. Even when operating as an internal business partner, we are offering our internal consultancy skills to support the business. These OD ‘phases’ will be viewed and conceptualised differently dependent on the OD consultancy or consultant you speak with. As a general rule you would expect to find the following high-level activities occurring in an OD ‘project’. You might revisit certain stages repeatedly through the process, and start at various points of entry, but the key components required to facilitate a process, rather than to offer an intervention, are as follows:

• Entry and contracting

• Evidence and information gathering

• Diagnosis and prioritisation

• Implementation

• Feedback and evaluation

• Ending the relationship, or re-contracting.

I will explore these in a little more depth, so that you can consider how far you apply the given skills and activities in your organisational context. Each time a stakeholder comes to you with a problem, you should be able to apply the thinking from these OD phases to support them in finding a solution and putting this in place. For example, a stakeholder tells you, ‘My department are disengaged and productivity has fallen. I think it’s due to the top team, but I don’t know what to do.’ Instead of leaping into advice mode, you consider the support you could offer, enter into dialogue with them on the issue, and enter into the OD phases with the intention of supporting their solution, rather than giving them your solution to implement.

1. Entry and contracting
We all ‘contract’ or set expectations with others – this is part of everyday human dynamics. We need to understand what is expected of us, what we can expect of others in any given human exchange, and how we might resolve conflict should it arise. Whilst formal contracts are typically drawn up in commercial consultancy arrangements, ‘contracting’ in its broadest sense is valuable in all your interactions with your client or customer. In this phase, you will explore the problem your client is experiencing, you will explore their motivations and what is important to them, and you will define who the client is. The latter might sound obvious, but often the person who first approaches us to share the problem is not our key stakeholder, and we need to determine who this person is.
Listening skills are imperative to successful contracting, as is a strong sense of self-awareness from you with regard to your own capabilities and how you can best support your client. During the contracting phase, you will be seeking to understand the part you can play in supporting the client, and this requires openness and honesty regarding your own limitations and where you can best add value. The reason the contracting phase is so often re-visited throughout the consulting cycle is that what is needed may change, you or your client might feel that some or all of your expectations aren’t being met as agreed at the outset, and you may wish to give each other feedback. Contracting is vital to supporting a continual feedback loop, and contracting skills should be a hugely valuable part of any HR Leader’s skill set.

2. Evidence and information gathering
We have explored the importance of evidence-based practice, so I won’t labour the point again here. A core component of practising OD is the collation of information or data that will test and support the interventions that follow. In fact, one of the key reasons for collating data at all is to test if any intervention at all is needed. This requires skills in data collection, including, potentially, survey administration and analysis, interview skills, action learning or focus group facilitation and a whole host of other potential OD tools and techniques. When one of your key stakeholders comes to you with an issue, you might say, ‘I’ll look into this for you’. Even if you don’t kick-start survey and interview research as a result, it’s important to know what’s available and to make an informed decision on just how much information gathering is required to inform your next steps.
When you are supporting a major change, for example leading an organisation design project to ensure your organisation is fit for purpose for the future, you will need to do extensive information gathering to support your perceptions of the current state and your judgement of what the future state should look like. There won’t necessarily be the skills and capabilities within your own team to achieve this. Having a high-level understanding of what good looks like, and the wealth of tools out there to support information gathering, will stand you in good stead as you procure external consultancy support for this. There are many OD workshops that focus on the evidence and information-gathering phase, and I would strongly recommend investing time in attending one if you don’t already hold strong skills in this area.

3. Diagnosis and prioritisation
Following information gathering is a key phase of synthesis and analysis of that information. You will find that many OD practitioners talk about a ‘diagnostic’ phase or a phase when they consider what the information is telling them, and what this means for next steps in resolving the issue posed by their stakeholder. There may be a great wealth of potential actions that could be taken, and it is here that these need to be considered and prioritised. One of the key pitfalls in any profession, and HR is no different, is that we are overly ambitious about what we can achieve. There is a saying that we overestimate what we can achieve in a year, and underestimate what we can achieve in ten years. If we’re in the business of cultural and behavioural change, we are playing the long game, and need to be mindful of over-burdening ourselves with a myriad of activities in the misplaced belief that this will result in success.

4. Implementation
The favourite OD phase of those people who just want to ‘get it done’ is the implementation phase. This is where, as an HR professional, you might plan out a series of interventions with your client group that will take place over a reasonable timescale, and will define criteria for success. Considering the change you want to create at the forefront of this phase is very important. Evaluation can often be seen as something that is ‘done’ at the end of a project or programme of work, whilst it should always be considered upfront.
The implementation phase is about more than just getting stuff done. The process you follow will always be just as important, if not more so, than the outcome you achieve at the end. How you approach implementation, the dialogue you create as you put the interventions in place, will all send key messages to your people. Conducting this phase successfully requires deep expertise in process consultation or how processes operate in groups. You can build this expertise through further development in OD or through working with someone who holds this expertise already – the key thing to remember here is that you can undo all your great work from effective contracting and information gathering if you just land solutions on people at this stage. Ensuring the process reflects a person-centred, inclusive approach is imperative in a context where we are seeking to create person-centred cultures.

5. Feedback and evaluation
As discussed, seeking feedback and evaluating progress within your work can easily end up in the ‘too hard box’. This need not be so. And it is never a waste of time if you seek to do it properly. The first step in seeking feedback and evaluating progress is to build a trusting rela...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Who took the human out of Human Resources?
• Section One: Shaping the future of Human Resources
• Section Two: Creating a people-focused culture
• Section Three: Leading an HR service with heart
• Section Four: Over to you
• Further reading/Helpful websites