Change in the corporate world: reasons for a challenge
Change in a company is a real challenge! Why? Change always has an impact on human beings, because it brings instability to habits. This is true in personal life, but it's also applicable in the professional world. Perhaps even more so. Most of the time in business, change is something we undergo rather than choose, and it doesn't just affect one employee: it has an impact on his or her team, management and perhaps even all employees and directors.
Human beings see change as a risk for three main reasons:
- Too much confidence in the past, the famous “It was better before”: obviously, we know the past, we know everything about it. But we worry about the future, especially if it's not built on the same foundation as the known.
- The preconceived idea that change is brutal, forgetting about the transition phase. This is why it's so important to prepare for change, by introducing it in stages, in a way that's appropriate for each person concerned.
- The unconscious mix of feelings about change (the body is afraid of the danger, the head wonders about the legitimacy of the change, the heart worries about the impact on well-being and happiness): how then to see events clearly and peacefully?
This is what many professionals are experiencing in a fast-changing employment world. And HR and recruitment experts are not the last to experience these transitions... quite the contrary!
The recruiting job is changing: zoom in on its transformations
Our study on changes in the recruitment profession (French version), conducted with Ifop and PageGroup, shows that a large majority of managers believe that recruitment teams occupy a strategic position within the company (98%)! What's more, 97% of these executives believe that recruiters contribute to the company's performance. This increasingly central role is just one of the major changes in the recruiter's role and missions.
There are 7 main transformations:
- The leading role played by recruiters within the company, and their growing expectations in response to the talent shortage.
- The importance of tracking quantitative (e.g.: ratio of visits to a career site to applications) and qualitative (e.g.: candidate experience) performance indicators in recruiters' missions.
- The analysis of this collected data to implement a recruitment strategy and make day-to-day decisions.
- The increasing relevance of talent sourcing in a world where candidates are more and more passive and difficult to convince
- Adaptation to new recruitment techniques, which are ever more essential to the recruiter's performance and the quality of the candidate experience (particularly Recruitment Marketing).
- The essential role played by technology and tools for monitoring, evaluation and automation in the day-to-day work of recruitment experts.
- The reorganization of recruitment teams, training in new skills and the renewal of recruitment professions with new specializations (data analysis, sourcing, employee advocacy...).
To ensure that these inevitable changes are seen as beneficial, change management is key.
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Defining change management applied to recruitment and the HR world
Change management is the process of managing all the stages of a change within a company or department (new strategy, evolution of working methods, team reorganization, new tool implementation, changeover from one tool to another...).
HR change: new mindset, new habits, new structures...
When a company faces profound change, HR often has a role to play:
- Recruit the right profiles to support the change
- Recruit the right profiles to complement teams whose organization is evolving or has evolved
- Ensuring the well-being of employees in the face of change
- Manage resignations and internal mobility linked to change
- Support requests for training and job changes
- Etc.
But what about a change that has a direct impact on HR & recruitment teams? Just as it's difficult to recruit a recruiter... it adds difficulty to difficulty!
Change management: best practices to support recruitment experts
It's essential to take a look back at change management project milestones. This concerns HR and recruiters, but is universal in the business world. So let's take a look at some concrete examples applied to the recruitment world.
Step
|
HR and recruitment change |
Review of the existing situation and needs for change, as well as the company's interest and urgency in implementing these changes
|
Example: the team has been unable to meet its recruitment targets for several months, even with the help of recruitment agencies.
There are very few applications, and the sales teams are missing a large number of salespeople: financial results are tumbling.
We have to test other sourcing channels to find the missing profiles before the end of the year.
|
Definition of change objectives for all involved levels
|
Example: obtain more applications for the positions to be filled.
Rework Talent Acquisition strategy by choosing a new sourcing channel.
|
Building an action plan and defining milestones
|
Example: set up a referral program for sales profiles, to capitalize on employees' networks: first tested on this type of profile, with attractive bonuses, then for several other job profiles. If the tests are conclusive, a generalized, digitized referral program will be set up.
|
Identifying the impact on teams
|
Example: one of the three company recruiters must be dedicated to setting up this program, and the others will have to take on some of his/her tasks.
This profile will need to be trained to succeed in its mission.
The head of the recruitment team will be responsible for promoting the project to management and staff.
|
Team federation through explanations and communications
|
Example: testimonial from a team member from another company who has implemented referral to explain the benefits and best practices.
Preparation of a distribution plan for the different tasks involved in this organizational change, with clear stages and a flow chart.
|
| Regular reporting on project progress and change results |
Example: implementation of an internal communication plan for employees (before, during and after the project's implementation), training in best referral practices for hiring managers.
Testimonials from those involved (referred, referrer), sharing of initial results (number of recruitments by referral, for example).
|
| Finalizing the project and verifying the changes have been implemented |
Example: comparing objectives and results. Analysis of the benefits of having implemented the first stage of change.
In case of positive results: continuous improvement and extension of the project to other types of profiles.
|
Define the roles and responsibilities of a change management project: who does what?
When change comes along, you need a reassuring foundation so that your teams can feel comfortable. This basis of serenity exists if everyone's roles are clearly defined. It is therefore more than essential that everyone enters the change process knowing what is expected of them. Generally speaking, there are 4 main roles.
Project sponsor
This is often the team leader concerned and/or a management committee member (depending on the size of the project and the company) => he/she is a political representative of the project; he/she is responsible for its overall success without managing the day-to-day practical aspects.
Project managers
This is the person(s) in charge of monitoring the change management project: usually at least one person from the team impacted by the change, together with (for larger companies) someone with a project manager profile => they are in charge of defining objectives, deploying the stages of change and monitoring results. They are also accountable to management, and must defend potential decisions (budget, planning, etc.) with the sponsor.
People directly involved in the project
These are the teams impacted by the change => they participate more or less actively in workshops to define objectives and in tests organized as part of the change. They are often consulted at different stages, to ensure a realistic vision of the project and its impact. They are also directly involved in the various change phases.
Other project stakeholders
These are other teams within the employee group, but also partners => they are updated on project progress and can participate or be consulted at specific stages, depending on their profile and role.
For recruitment projects, this may involve, for example :
- generalist HR profiles with whom candidates evolve once they have become employees
- hiring managers who are impacted by changes in interlocutors or processes
- IT profiles for the implementation of new recruitment tools
- sourcing partners such as temporary employment agencies or recruitment firms
- etc.
Good to know: depending on the size of the company and its organization, as well as on the project type, these roles evolve and some can even be mixed. For example, in smaller companies, a sponsor may also take on the role of project manager.
Change reservations and arguments to overcome them
The most delicate aspect of a change management project is the various obstacles created by those affected by the transformation. And yet, there's a solution for every bottleneck. We've put together 6 examples that can easily be applied to HR & recruitment teams as part of a change management project.
Concern
|
Reinsurance element |
“I'm afraid that the tool we're implementing will replace me”.
|
"The tools we've put in place free up time for tasks that can be automated, and therefore have little added value. They will enable us to spend more time on more valuable tasks”.
|
“I don't understand why you want to change when everything has been working like this for years.”
|
You probably haven't communicated enough about problem identification. The best way is to back up the statement with figures.
“We've looked at our results over the last 4 years, and they've been falling steadily every quarter (-34% since 2020). The solution we've come up with will enable us to improve our results by +60%: we have to try”.
|
“I have no idea how it's going to work, I'm afraid of getting confused”.
|
You need to explain the different stages and indicate when each person will be involved.
"All changes are progressive and there won't be situation A then situation B on the same day. This project will last around 7 months and we will communicate with everyone involved at every stage and support them if they have any questions".
|
“I wouldn't have the time to manage new missions”.
|
"The reason for change is not to increase the workload, but to replace tasks that don't add value with others that can improve the situation. It will be a change, not an addition".
|
“What if this change impacts my performance and doesn't allow me to reach my annual targets?”
|
"The implementation project for our new Candidate Relationship Management tool will require some time to prepare for deployment. We plan to reduce some of our targets to give the people concerned time to participate in this project, which will ultimately improve the performance of the whole team". |
Convincing management of the importance of change within the HR & recruitment team
We've seen the case where the change is accepted by management, but doesn't convince the relevant team members. But what happens when a necessary change is identified by a team and the management has to be convinced to validate the project ?
The key: offer an attractive ROI (return on investment)
While most fundamental changes require time and money to be spent, no change will be validated by management unless it appears to be profitable.
Analysis of the existing situation and projections of the results will be essential to prove that your project is in the company's interest, especially if it's a long-term project. For example, you'll need to prove that you can improve:
- Recruitment cost
- Time to hire
- The candidate experience, and therefore your reputation
- The conversion rate between candidates and hires
- Candidate quality
- And so on.
The idea is also to use meaningful indicators and show concretely what the change can bring. For example:
“Using this algorithm at every stage of recruitment will save our two recruiters 2 days/month each. They will be able to reassign this time to interviews, in order to go further in the questions and better qualify the candidates. In this way, we minimize the risk of recruitment errors. As a reminder, 19% of trial periods were broken by new employees last year”.
Find out more: Top HR KPIs for improving hiring performance (talks with Mazars)
Operate in test format
Even with an attractive ROI in mind, some profiles may be hesitant. And yes, reluctance to change is not the reserve property of employees; managers can also have concerns about transformations!
It's also very important to show that it's possible to bring about change gradually. Propose small-scale testing with ROI validation before any general implementation of change! Projects are more easily accepted if they have a plan B and are not risky.
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