Despite being a critical part of any business, HR departments are notoriously stretched pretty thin.  And with a raft of changes to the Fair Work Act over the past year, the workload continues to grow.

This is why standardising repeatable HR frameworks, processes and procedures is more important than ever before. Not only will you create more efficiencies for your team, but you’ll reduce risk by ensuring compliance, and deliver an improved and consistent experience for your company’s employees.

But if you’re already busy, how do you spare the time to undertake such a significant project? That’s a problem a lot of companies share, which is why many turn to specialist HR consultancies to assist.

HR/ER Framework Overhaul Project: A recent case study

A well-known ASX-listed Australian company with various services across Australia recently engaged Common Goal Consulting to undertake a large-scale project to completely overhaul their HR/ER Framework and provide the national HR team with up-to-date, practical, and compliant resources.

To understand the problem, Common Goal Consulting:

• Conducted a number of briefings with senior HR team members to understand company needs and current challenges/risks;
• Facilitated detailed process mapping sessions with key project teams internally to unpack the strengths and weaknesses of the current state, as well as the desired future state; and
• Undertook a thorough desktop review of existing resources and materials, including policies, guidebooks, and templates from across the business. These were inconsistent and varied not only from state to state but also within departments and at an individual HR Business Partner level.

 

Once the initial data-gathering phase was completed, the Common Goal Consulting team set about to start the standardisation of resources and templates. This involved:

• Mapping new processes and procedures for the HR team to follow across a range of situations;
• Designing and developing a new standardised HR/ER framework for the HR team across Australia to support the company’s Respect@Work focus, including toolkits, resources, fact sheets, and templates;
• Supporting the implementation of a new online complaint management system nationally, directly aligned to the process mapping and resources within the new HR/ER Framework; and
• Training for the national HR team on the new resources found within the new HR/ER Framework, including new processes or procedures, and the new templates available for them to use.

 

 

The HR team were incredibly grateful and happy with the project output.

The project delivered desired consistency and fairness across the HR team, ensuring they all use the same processes, templates, and procedures, regardless of where they are located or which part of the business they are working in. We were able to include a clear focus on Respect@Work across the entire HR/ER Framework, capturing consistent messaging about the company’s absolute focus on fairness, equality as well as employee wellbeing and support.

By standardising their entire HR/ER framework, it ensured that everyone in the HR team was using compliant and approved guidelines or templates, minimising the risk of incorrect documentation or missed steps. It also allowed the team to increase their efficiency and productivity, by focusing on the task at hand rather than creating or finding the template.

The bottom line

Standardised HR frameworks, processes and procedures deliver a range of benefits to not only the HR department, but also to the whole business. While a project of this scale may seem an overwhelming task from an internal perspective when managing many other conflicting priorities, the Common Goal Consulting team can bring a level of focus, expertise and high-level thinking to such a project, offering insights from other companies, legal trends and best practice concepts.

Get in touch with Director Nikki Jenkinson on 0472 545 584 or email projects@commongoalconsulting.com.au to discuss your requirements and explore how we can assist.