Building the Muscle of the Organisation
A Case Study on Organisation Development
Prelude
A leading organisation in the field of Money transfer and Payment solutions was seeking change and development. This is about a legacy corporation that has made a significant impact in their industry worldwide. With time, when progress seemed to plateau, they felt the need to evaluate and improve their people practices to maintain a competitive edge!
They ran an organisation-wide GPTW Assessment to learn about the trust and culture in the organisation.
By the end of the assessment, they had a comprehensive report in their hands. It was a long report which contained a section-wise summary of the data, but no deep analysis. The report showed low scores in certain parameters. It highlighted certain critical issues including moderate trust levels, high attrition risk, women experiencing inequality, and a felt need for clarity in their career path.
Now this comprehensive report would have just been another document if there wasn't any action taken on it. After all, a report is just a piece of paper unless you act on it!
The organisation approached ARC to make something out of the report and even act on it.
Knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing
The Challenge
In November 2021, the organisation approached ARC for further actions on GPTW and implement it in its ‘true spirit’, rather than preserving it like a ‘showcase certificate.’ We understood where they were coming from and what they needed. ARC first proposed to analyse the comprehensive data to distil the key insights in an easily comprehensible manner.
Secondly, we proposed an Organisation development project that works from top to bottom.
The broader questions that lay before us were:
How can we look at this as an opportunity to develop the organisation?
How can we co-create the journey with the leaders?
How can we build the organisation's capacity to take cultural initiatives by itself in the future, without needing any external intervention?
We further analysed the data that we had got from the report and took things forward accordingly. The analysis revealed certain underlying issues related to the employees’ perceptions of fairness and commitment in the organisation. The prior seemed strongly related to the low scores across various parameters in the pre-assessment survey. It was fair to consider that other reasons for the low scores were low participation in the survey, diverse opinions within the organisation, and a diminished sense of value and meaning in the employees' roles.
Sailing in Unknown Waters
In December 2021, we facilitated a Leader's Workshop. Being an OD project, we transferred the skill of creating hypotheses from the available data. The leadership team came up with 10 hypotheses and prioritised 4 out of them. Four teams were formed, who would further work on the hypotheses, one each. They were allowed to form their project teams to work on the hypothesis they had selected. This was a crucial lever to foster active participation and ownership among the leaders to make the intervention impactful. They acknowledged that culture is owned by the Leaders and not just the HR team.
To validate the hypotheses, ARC along with the leaders, conducted a targeted data collection process that involved surveys, focus group discussions (FGDs), and interviews on various topics covering over 200 employees who represented a diverse demographic. The collected data was then triangulated with inputs from the comprehensive report that they had, ensuring higher reliability. ARC analysed the data and refined the initial hypotheses, by delving deeper into the underlying causes.
In March 2022, we facilitated another leadership workshop focused on project planning. We identified the initiatives and transformed them into well-defined projects, with clear goals, timelines, and action teams.
The four projects were:
Awareness of the growth path and IJP policy
Inclusion of women employees in key decision-making
Clarity and Communication across the organisation
Fairness in decisions and people practices
Leaders took the entire ownership and accountability to execute these projects, with ARC just guiding from a distance. Regular pitstops were planned to review the progress, ensuring alignment with the project’s primary goal.
...with ARC just providing guidance from a distance.
Conclusion
In June 2022, ARC conducted a final closure workshop to conclude the project. During this workshop, the outcomes, achievements, and learnings from the collaboration were discussed. This journey between the organisation and ARC showcased how effectively organisational transformations can be carried out with a collaborative approach. In 2022, the organisation ranked in the top 20 for ‘Best Places to Work’ in GPTW Survey. But that was just one of the things they achieved. What also happened is that the organisation learned to design its own culture, its diverse leadership bonded with a common purpose and resultantly the company experienced an increase in performance.
If you create a great place to work, great work takes place.
We aimed to transfer the thinking cap from us to the organisation's leaders and employees, propelling them to take charge and bring about a change within the organisation with ownership. We believe we were just a lighthouse that provided directions to a huge ship that was struggling to find its way!
In this way, we built the muscle of the organisation...
