Context

A South African university’s HR Department had identified several audit issues in key HR processes that their Audit Committee requested be resolved. In addition, the manual nature of the transactional HR processes, impacting the team’s capacity to focus on the more strategic HR work as required.

The HR operating model and supporting organisational structure were also identified as requiring review in line with the vision for the HR function, which was more client centric, with a better balance between strategic and transactional HR.

Approach

A Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) exercise was conducted to identify risks within the processes and to propose processes changes to ensure that these risks were mitigated.  The initial investigation identified process-related issues, such as a lack of awareness of individual responsibilities, a lack of focus on quality of output, inadequate training of staff and a siloed way of working. Opportunities for improvement and possible automation were identified together with staff to ensure buy in.

A revised organisational structure was proposed to ensure the appropriate grouping of skills, responsibilities and accountabilities and to support the need for a greater focus on strategic HR.

A change management and communication plan were proposed to engender confidence that the proposed changes were achievable.