It’s easy to know when a lawyer has to get involved with business decisions. Legal documents may need to be filed or a lawsuit may need to be addressed. In fact, you probably already have a set schedule with your accountant for periodic filings and quarterly reports. And it’s also pretty easy to know when you need to ask for help and advise from your banker or capital partners. But how about a human resource (HR) or organization development (OD) professional? How do you know when partnering with them can make a difference in performance and profitability?

If you can answer "yes" to any of these questions, seeking the advise and assistance of a professional, trained to manage planned system-wide change will most likely help improve morale, productivity, and/or performance, and ultimately, the bottom line.

• Key individuals in the organization cannot get along and this is preventing higher performance or even endangering the existence of the organization.
• Employees are unfocused and unclear about their personal and professional goals—causing waste and inefficiency.
• Teams are performing poorly as a result of not understanding goals, roles and norms.
• Employees are not effective in dealing with each other as a result of poor skills in the areas of problem-solving, decision-making and conflict negotiation.
• Quality is poor, customer service is lousy, turnover is high, complaints are up, employee trust is low and so is morale, and/or your organization is out of touch with clients, customers and suppliers.

HR/OD professionals are skilled to use behavioral science and humanistic values, principles and practices to achieve greater organizational performance and effectiveness. First they diagnose the current situation and provide management with an analysis of the gaps between the organization’s current position and where they want to be. Next, the OD professional guides the organization through the three phases of planned change. 1) Unfreeze the current way of performing. 2) introduce the required Change to the organization. 3) Refreeze the organization when the change has been successfully implemented.

As with any business initiative, for success it is critical for executive management to lead and motivate their employees. The decision to add the services of an OD professional to complement the team brings valuable experience in developing the change processes, maintaining an ongoing level of change to strengthen and grow the organization, and ingraining the change into the systems until the change becomes the standard operating practice.

Interventions, at any level of the organization, can be designed to improve effectiveness and efficiencies. Some examples might include:

• Individual level interventions: development of managerial/supervisory skills, career/life planning, stress/time management.
• Group level interventions: group team building, consultation on work-flow processes, conflict-management techniques, group decision-making and problem-solving, re-engineering, and/or job redesign.
• Organization level interventions: surveys and feedback of employees and/or customers, diagnostic reflection of organizational interactions and performance, survey of the climate and culture of the work environment and its impact on performance, performance management systems, and/or quality management systems.

A CEO would never hesitate to involve an accountant, lawyer, or banker, in the building and maintenance of business practices that are legally and fiscally sound. Why should it be any different when considering the value added by an HR professional?

To be cost effective, ultimately all outside support must contribute to improvements in the bottom line. It is easy for an organization to get into a performance deficit cycle without the right support. For example, failure to address a root cause such as turnover, can lead to a costly impact on performance. Plus, in the meantime, the organization also continues to spiral downward, struggling to focus and gain a foothold to change course.

Think about your business team. Are you calling on all your business partners to help keep all aspects of your business healthy? The best plan for building and maintaining a strong, innovative and profitable organization is to link a strong OD philosophy with your operating strategies.

© Debbie King, Evolution Management, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.