A client of ours had to retrench their entire HR department. The collective experience they let go was in the hundreds of years. And when these centuries of experience walked out they took their knowledge with them. The most important knowledge was how that department worked within the business. An employee provides much more than its labour, it contributes to the knowledge of how an organisation operates. Employees have to learn to navigate their way around an organisation, how to work with the systems and processes in that organisation. This takes a long time to master.
If our companies were only dependent on academic knowledge and work experience then replacing people and expecting them to run with the job at the outset would be easy. It’s not, it takes months for a new hire to get to the point where they are able to understand the culture and perform their task.
The client is a large company with a multitude of divisions and departments. When we started out with their INTRATERNSHIP programme in the business our advice was that people from complimentary departments should form part of the INTRATERNSHIP programme. HR is pivotal to all organisations, it touches every department. We helped the client institute a programme that included, HR, finance, training and legal. The INTRATERNSHIP was a sharing of knowledge between these four departments. The focus was on processes and how to get the most of out of each department. On top of this each person on the programme was given an opportunity to explain how they go about doing their jobs. It was a bit of journey of discovery when finance would explain to HR that there were certain regulatory rules in terms of remuneration that the HR department was not aware of. Processes were then modified to accommodate this.
It is in this non-threatening process that people were able to offer advice and receive advice freely.
When the unfortunate retrenchment process was concluded the company knew that the supporting divisions could assist any person who may be tasked with taking over this department. For the first time we didn’t hear “Poor X is completely out of his depth”.
We all know that change is the only certainty we can depend on. We can’t stop change but we can mitigate against it. The RISE INTRATERNSHIPS are a very effective vehicle in preventing complete fall out.
Change is the only certainty that we can count on. The capability lies in your organisation, we will help you identify and preserve that capability. Talk to us about navigating change and ensuring that your business is able to survive these stormy times.