Recently I had a conversation with another client where, in order to create the culture change they need across the organisation, their HR Business Partner, HRBP team need to be much more confident in challenging, pushing back and shifting mindsets rather than just saying ‘yes’ to their business colleagues’ demands.
It’s a conversation that comes up a lot.
Easier said than done
Overcoming this predicament may sound straightforward on paper but is harder to achieve than it sounds. These are the underlying reasons I come across most often.
1. Unclear what the culture change means in practice
When embarking on culture change, leadership teams often stop when they have chosen a set of values, maybe with some behaviours that bring them to life.
But defining them is only the first step. If there hasn’t been sufficient conversation and exploration to translate this high-level view into what it really means in practice, for business areas and teams within them, HRBPs don’t have a blueprint to work with.
2. Business areas don’t recognise they need to change
‘Working in siloes’ is one of the most common cultural challenges we come across. It remains a barrier when trying to evolve an organisation’s culture.
Often, business leaders can see how and why other divisions need to do things differently, but can be defensive when it comes to their own area.
3. Relationships have been built on co-operation (not collaboration)
It’s human nature to want to get along with our key stakeholders, building trust and credibility so we can influence more effectively.
This is especially true for any business partnering roles, where you often have to ‘hold the line’ on adherence to corporate policies and processes that managers may prefer to short-cut.
But co-operative relationships can become too comfortable, condoning a status quo that needs to change.
4. Changing culture is seen as HR’s job
This often underlies every other reason. That any kind of people change is seen as HR’s job and not that of the business leaders. Whilst this can feel frustrating, irresponsible even, it is often born out of a lack of know-how rather than a lack of appetite.
Leaders and managers can usually see strengths and weaknesses in the culture and the impact it’s having, but don’t know what to do about it so they pass the problem to HR to solve.
Business leaders can see how and why other divisions need to do things differently, but can be defensive when it comes to their own area
What does it take to accelerate culture change?
People used to talk about it taking 10 years to change an organisation’s culture. But think about how quickly a team’s behaviour can change when a new leader arrives. An initial shift in behaviour can happen within weeks.
Of course, the larger the organisation and the more dispersed people are across locations, the harder it can be. But behaviour change can still happen fast when the right levers are pulled and the system is designed to make the new norms stick.
HRBPs are brilliantly placed to help their stakeholders pull these levers successfully.
Key levers to accelerate culture change include:
- A transparent, easy to understand narrative about which specific behaviours need to change and why
- Role modelling the desired behaviours by leaders and key influencers
- Encouragement to experiment and investing in new knowledge and skills where needed
- People policies and processes deliberately designed to motivate and reward the desired behaviour
- Insightful measurement and accountability.
How can HRBPs shift from ‘tolerator’ to ‘accelerator’?
‘The way things are done around here’ or the ‘unwritten rules’, are quite easy to spot when you first join an organisation, or a new business area.
You see how open people are in meetings; whether senior people listen to junior people; how decisions get made; whether poor behaviour or performance is called out or not.
Once you’ve worked in an organisation for six months or so, it’s difficult not to become part of the culture. You start to conform to the norms and lose any imagination for how things can be done differently, and this can extend to HRBPs.
Embarking on a culture change brings an opportunity to reset, step back and notice the strengths and weaknesses in the business area’s culture.
The tricky reality is that this might mean re-setting an established relationship, to influence your division to change the way they work, in the interest of the greater good.
Embarking on a culture change brings an opportunity to reset, step back and notice the strengths and weaknesses in the business area’s culture
Five steps for HRBPs
Step one: Deliberately reset your role
Have an explicit conversation with the leadership team about how your role can add maximum value as they embark on the culture change:
- (Re) clarify their accountability for culture change
- Outline how you can support them to accelerate it
- Give examples of how this will look the same or different to the way you’ve worked together in the past
- Gain agreement to you acting as an ‘accountability partner’ – holding up the mirror and calling out where behaviour is or isn’t shifting (including theirs).
Step two: Go where the energy is first
Typically, some leaders have greater appetite for culture change than others, and some teams’ behaviour is more business critical than others. If necessary:
- Agree a couple of teams to work with first as ‘proof of concept’
- Help them recognise the behaviours that are already working, to continue
- Help them agree one to three specific behaviours that need to shift
- Support managers with the tools and skills to bring about the change.
Step three: Catch people ‘getting it right’
All people processes and policies ultimately need to be designed to deliberately motivate and reward the desired behaviours.
However, this is typically done at an enterprise level and can take time. In the meantime, work with leaders to:
- Give positive feedback to people ‘in the moment’ when you spot people behaving in the new way – make it specific and explain the impact
- Introduce informal ‘shout outs’ to celebrate people who are trying new ways of working
- Use your business area communication channels – videos, podcasts, blogs, town halls – to share stories of positive change.
Step four: Help leaders have difficult conversations
Your culture is only as good as the behaviour you tolerate. Watching leaders turn a blind eye to unhelpful behaviour will quickly undermine your change efforts. As an HRBP you will be seen as part of the problem. Instead:
- Give leaders and managers space to voice where they are having difficulty
- Run regular skills practice sessions to build confidence in straight talking
- Help leaders work through the consequences of letting poor behaviour continue
- Get involved in the recruitment of key hires to ensure they are aligned to the future culture.
Step five: Measure the impact and multiply
There should be an enterprise-wide dashboard of measures to demonstrate any shift in culture and its impact, so definitely tap into those and use them to build a further case for change. In addition:
- Use pulse checks to test whether specific behaviours are becoming more prevalent
- Use focus groups and employee forums to get a real sense whether the culture is shifting, what’s causing any change and what’s getting in the way
- Collect anecdotes that can be peppered into day-to-day conversations, to illustrate that change is happening.
There is usually a wealth of examples that go unnoticed, yet these small, incremental changes are golden nuggets that people can relate to and help them realise they can make a shift too.
They all add to the ‘fly wheel’ effect and build momentum across the wider business.
If you need help developing your HRBP team into culture change accelerators, get in touch with me at [email protected].
Did you enjoy this article? Read another by Ella Overshott: AI won’t take accountability, will you?
