Abstract
With an end goal to build and maintain a new workplace culture to support workplace performance, the central human resources shared services group for a large university initiated a pilot project to improve the performance of their processes, systems, and its human resources. Through the guidance of a performance improvement professional facilitator, the central group consulted various cultural models and change management methods to identify a pilot project. The implementation of a multilevel change methodology for performance improvement was applied to the work performed by the human resources information services (HRIS) group. Using their newly defined mission, vision, and values statements as a guide, the central human resources shared services group piloted one project with the subgroup then moved onto others. This case study focuses on the pilot project within the human resources information services (HRIS) group, the work of the performance improvement facilitator and the group's members, and the outcomes of their efforts.
TopOrganization Background
Big Name University (pseudonym) has a central human resources shared services group to support the work of the university’s geographically distributed campuses. Together, the campuses and the centralized services make up the university system. The number of employees within the university system is nearly 15,000. The central human resources shared services group helps all individuals interacting with the university system. In-person and virtual support are offered to job applicants, faculty, and staff. Departments within the shared services include benefits; compensation; equity, diversity, and inclusion; talent acquisition; talent management; and records. The human resources shared services group is responsible for maintaining and reporting the data for each of the employees as requested or required. The data include elements such as payroll, health insurance, employment duration, sick and vacation leave, unit assignments, performance plans, performance reviews, and retirement system decisions.
Over the last few years, the growth of the university campuses and changes in technology have resulted in the desire to adopt new processes for using the human resources information system. New administrators within the central human resources shared services group have encouraged the central human resources employees to develop more creative ways to use the data for analysis and decision making. The central human resources shared services group administrators decided to have a pilot project within its central services group to explore how to better serve their customers, the employees within the university system. The central human resources shared services group selected the human resources information services (HRIS) group from within the shared services to apply the Six Boxes® Performance Thinking® process to analyze their performance and service processes for the university system and adopt a new way of serving their customers. This human resources information services (HRIS) group coordinates requests for employment information system payroll security, state and federal data management requirements, state and federal reports, and employee data requests and reports.
To achieve the performance improvement goals for the pilot project, the administrators within the central human resources shared services group realized they required assistance to pilot a project that would ultimately lead to a change in the organizational culture. The administrators searched for a facilitator who could help them with their performance improvement challenges. They hired a performance improvement professional to join the team and help the human resources information services (HRIS) group to pilot a project that would integrate organizational values and improve workplace performance. Bishop (pseudonym), an experienced performance improvement professional, had worked with teams in a number of organizations to apply performance improvement interventions to help optimize the organizations’ results, analyze processes, and improve performance.
The human resources information services (HRIS) group would work on this project with Bishop, the performance improvement facilitator, and the administrators for the central human resources shared services group. The first step would be to use the refined mission, visions, and value statements for the central human resources shared services group as a lens to analyze the human resources information services (HRIS) group’s work related to performance expectations, feedback, tools, resources, consequences, incentives, skills, knowledge, employee selection and assignments, motives, and preferences. The second step would be to analyze the initial state and desired performance levels for the organization, process, and performers of the human resources information services (HRIS) group. This second step is supported by assessing the organization’s cultural priorities, values, and goals. The third step would be to map processes, work outputs, and identified criteria and to develop scorecards and reports for measuring business results at the organization, process, and performer levels. The theoretical foundations of these steps are detailed in Setting the Stage and are explained for the case study in the Case Description.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Engineering: The use of scientific principles to design and build something of interest or to solve technical problems.
Business Results: The macro-level indicators of a business’s progress toward achieving its mission.
Culture: How things are produced and what the requirements are of that product. Culture is manifested in a variety of ways in an organization through its communication styles, leadership behaviors, and reinforcement or punishment of performance.
Social Science Cultural Models: A mental structure and patterns of behavior that are used by social scientists to represent a culture and to distinguish one culture from another.
Work Output: The products of behavior that are a valuable contribution to an organization.
Feedback: Information delivered to the performer after the performance has taken place.
Capacity: Ability to meet the requirements.
Metacontingency: A contingency relationship between a set of interlocking behavioral contingencies, its aggregate product, and the consequences of selection.
Interlocking Behavioral Contingencies: At least two operant reinforcement contingencies that are related such that the stimuli and/or responses of one contingency function as an environment for events in the other.