Human Resources Issues for Senior Management
Issue link: https://digital.hrreporter.com/i/343811
27 "We basically made an assessment of where they were," said Edmond Mellina, president of Orchango. at initial assessment ranked TSSA at a lower starting point than anyone expected, said Beard. "So what was needed was obviously a significant ramp-up, which we saw mate- rialize in the next survey… it was a bit of a tough start for us, but I think by being committed and dedicated, it paid off." e assessment also identified some initial challenges TSSA faced in terms of managing change. One of those challenges was with the natural resistance to the people side of change that can be somewhat stron- ger in very technically oriented organiza- tions, said Mellina. "e folks working in the organization, they are engineers, inspectors — so it's a highly technical organization. So coming in, we expected that these would probably be folks that will be challenged with the people side of change." As expected, many in the organization were very good with the technical side of things, but cultural change was the real chal- lenge, said Beard. Breaking down silos One of the key challenges TSSA faced was a silo mentality, said Beard. "ese silos materialize through the manifestation of management structure, et cetera," he said. "What's been very, very sat- isfying to see within our culture is a break- ing down of those silos." Initially, there had been a very strong "us versus them" mindset, said Mellina — par- ticularly from employees in the field (who are spread across Ontario) toward head of- fice in Toronto. "So the first us versus them mindset that we found was 'us, the field' and 'them, head office,'" he said. "e other aspect of the us versus them mindset was 'us, employees' and front-line management, versus 'them, management.'" is kind of culture is a significant prob- lem when it comes to change management because it does not promote the kind of partnership necessary to promote change, said Mellina. "We need to turn this us versus them mindset into 'us, all together, versus the challenge of change,'" he said. Another challenge TSSA had to overcome was the "ghosts from the past" — past change initiatives that had not gone that smoothly. "When we started to ask people, employ- ees, leaders at different levels to tell us about past change initiatives, it was very emo- tional. And they had a lot of examples of changes that were not properly done from a change management standpoint… this had le a huge bitter taste in peoples' mouths," said Mellina. "So you start with a very big bed of resistance right away." Building up the toolkit Addressing this initial resistance took more than just a couple of training sessions, said Beard. "e actual change itself… really needs some solid and measurable activities. You can put everybody in a room for a day, you can put lots of PowerPoints up, lots of fun ex- ercises, and everyone goes back the next day, back to their old jobs, and it doesn't change anything in the way that they work," he said. So Orchango suggested TSSA take an ex- isting change project — in this case, the Field Support Service (FSS) initiative — and use it to apply and demonstrate the change man- agement principles and tools, said Beard. e FSS initiative meant centralizing some services, like dispatch, which many inspectors had originally managed indepen- dently, said Mellina. "You can imagine the kind of resistance that they were getting from the field," he said. "So what we did is, we put a very strong focus on this initiative… we rolled out an advanced action learning (program) for the project team in charge of the Field Support Services. And because we wanted to break down the us versus them mentality… we put change agents in the program." ese change agents included inspectors from the field who were respected and influ- ential among their peers. As the learning program progressed, the employees really began to work as a team, said Beard. "As folks are exposed to the various change management tools, a lot of it starts making sense to them because they and management are talking the same language, they have the same key words, they have the same sort of vocabulary that completely synthesizes what we're trying to do," he said. "We were demonstrating very clearly… there were practical benefits that were being derived from this." Culture shift At the heart of TSSA's success was the shi that took place in the culture, said Beard. "Culture is so much a part of change management. Change management is not a discipline learnt — it's absolutely a cultural component in an organization," he said. "When you're implementing change, very oen mistakes can be made. e culture in the organization has to permit those mis- takes to be made, it has to not punish people for making mistakes — otherwise they're not going to try the things that they need to." Buy-in from the senior leadership team is the key to success, said Mellina — but change management can't be limited to the C-suite or a centralized change manage- ment function. "e only way you can succeed with change management and overcome these challenges is if effective change management becomes everyone's responsibility," he said. "An organization becomes good at managing change when everybody is re- ally working actively as partners in change. And we've seen that happening over the past three years when we've trained all the man- agers, all the leaders, the project teams, the change agents — we could see that now they are using the same tools, the same vocabu- lary, the same frame of reference." Another key consideration for TSSA was around making employees feel a sense of empowerment, said Beard. "One of the things that culturally we wanted to change was the whole concept of empowering folks to do more. But putting the right little decisions in the right place, people obviously feel more empowered, it's good for employee engagement, it's good for (achieving) success — it's good for every- thing," he said. For TSSA, there's still work to be done — they've currently completed three of four stages in the change management capability building, said Mellina. "We are getting better," he said. "But you need to keep raising the bar — that is really the next chapter in the journey."