What do HR Managers exactly do? Part Two - Organisation Development

The second installment in a series of articles examining the work of the HR function

Organisation Development is closely linked to the previous HR Professional Area of Organisation Design. In fact Organisation Design and Development (OD&D) is the term that most HR Professionals use to these two overlapping areas.

According to the CIPD, Organisation Development “ensures that the organisation culture, values and environment support and enhance organisation performance and capability” The HR Professional involved in this area will therefore be required to “provide insight and leadership on the development and execution of any capability, cultural and change activities.”

Typical activities of an HR Manager involved in Organisation Development will be:

• Examining the organisation’s strategy and operating plans to determine if the business currently has the capability to deliver.
• Using various diagnostic tools to assess the health (or climate) of the organisation. These might include personality assessment, team diagnostic activities, employee satisfaction tools, cultural assessments.
• Where it’s clear that there’s a gap between where the organisation wants to get to, and where it’s currently capable of getting to, the HR Manager will invariably be involved in the design and implementation of any company-wide training intervention. (It’s worth at this point making a clear distinction between Organisation Development and Learning and Development. If, for example, an organisation wished to move from being a manufacturing business to one that was also involved in the service and maintenance of its product, the development intervention required would be an Organisation Development initiative. Sending a team of IT engineers on a training course to give them knowledge of a new software package would not be an OD activity, but just a simple training intervention)

What will a senior HR Professional need to know and understand in order to do these activities?

The skills and knowledge demanded of the HR professional in this area are almost identical to those that will have been put to use in Organisation Design. Understanding unique to this area would be:

• How to undertake a cultural audit and manage a cultural change programme
• How to carry out project planning for a complex change initiative
• How to overcome barriers and obstacles to change
• How to develop and apply OD Diagnostic tools

Questions for discussion:

How important do you believe an organisation’s culture is to its success?
How would you begin to change the prevailing culture in an organisation?
How would you define the culture of the following organisations: The Army, McDonalds, your local council, Manchester United Football Club?
Is there such a thing as an ideal culture for a particular type of organisation?

Further supporting activity: read the HR Case Study Ryanair and Virgin: Compare and Contrast and answer the accompanying questions