After a recent HR team-building outing, my one of my new hirescommented to me that his experience meeting everyone at the gathering reinforced his decision to join NAES. Specifically, he pointed out the level of camaraderie that was pervasive throughout the group, and that just about everyone he met offered to help him getting acclimated.
It got me thinking about my journey at NAES since I joined five years ago. More specifically, it caused me to reassess my HR management philosophies, how they’ve evolved, and what lessons one might take away my experiences.WhatI’veconcluded is that our successes at NAES have been the result of relatively straightforward process.
For those not familiar, NAES Corporation is a family of companies with a combined workforce of more than 4,000 that provides a portfolio of services to the power and energy industry. NAES is the power generation industry’s largest independent services provider, operating nearly 200 powerplants in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the U.K. Through its eight subsidiaries, the company also providesa portfolio of services including regulatory compliance consulting, grid management, business management consulting, asset management, metal fabrication and construction, as well as industrial electrical contracting.
Having a strong background in the HR field, I’d already seen my fair share of organizational struggles and hadsuccessfully re-built multiple teams for several large companies. However, when I came on board at NAES, I immediately was challenged by what I considered to be a dire HR situation. I made it my mission to transform the HR organization into one that would be recognized as best-in-class.Now,your company may be very different than NAES, but I believe the process I used is transferable to just aboutany organization.
Putting Metrics in Perspective
Success needs to be measurable, andunderstanding those metrics is a necessity for anyone in HR. They include: Turnover/retention rates, cost to hire, time to hire, time to fill, lost productivity, diversity ratios, absenteeism, etc.And while these are all valuable,they are also lagging indicators. They can give us baselines, point out shortcomings and help us establish goals. But they don’t offer solutions. And in today’s challenging workforce environment, there is a measurable payoff to be solutions driven.
Understand Your Company
More than just looking at it from the 10,000-foot level, I think takinga closer look is necessary.Learn your business’sintricacies, as well as its needs for operating effectively. Learn what makes your company tick.Learn what sets it apart. When I started learning about NAES, I recognized its business and structure were different than other companies I’d worked for. That didn’t affect my process, but it helped me structure solutions more effectively.
Create Your Vision and a Path to Get There
You probably already have a vision for what your department should looklike, but don’t forget to create a roadmap for getting there. Evaluate any impediments that are getting in the way, determine the best ways to remove them, and then replace them with a plan to realize your greater vision for how HR should impact the company.
At the end of the day, we do need to know if the things we are doing are making a measurable difference. Are we improving? While the metrics may not provide us with solutions, they do point us in the direction of where we need to look for them.
Fast-forward five years, NAES’s HR department has become a cohesive team with a connective flow of processes and is recognized throughout the organization as a valuable asset.
The Team
The question you need to ask is, do you have an actual
team? Do they think of themselves as a team? Or is it just a group of people? You’ll want to learn about your staff. What is the culture? What is the morale level? Doeseach member have the skillset needed to do their job well? Are they open to change and growth? Do you have potential leaders that are being underutilized?
As you ask yourself these questions, keep in mind that while you may be the HR leader, achieving your vision depends on your ability to create a well-aligned andcohesivecrew. They must understandyour HR vision and goals, communicate well with each other, and actively support the business units in which they serve.
Share Your Vision
One of the first things I did starting out was to identify potential leaders in my group and share my vision ofmaking HR a partner for the other business units, rather than a roadblock. I wanted to empower them by challenging them to:
• Be creative problem solvers
• Act with a sense of urgency
• Strive for continuous improvement
• And learn to be flexible
Lean on Your Team
Effective leaders embrace input from their team. After all, you can’t know everything. You can’t be everywhere. You can’t see or hear everything.I actively encouragefeedback and recommendations, and I have an open-door policy for questions and brainstorming. What I don’t do is micromanage. I place an appropriate level of trust in them, and that trust is empowering.Empowering them in this fashion has boosted their confidence, increased their levels of job performance and satisfaction, made them all better leaders, and strengthened theircohesiveness asa team.
The Company vs. Employees
Your job is to represent and support the company’s interests. Butit’s also to support the employee base, understand its needs, and serve them, as well. Some might see this as trying to serve two masters, but I see it as an interdependent necessity: By supporting the workforce, you’re consequently strengthening the company. It’s truly a win-win.
Embrace Change. It’s Inevitable.
Depending on your situation, the degrees of change you facemay vary. At NAES, I saw the need to make several significant changes. Some people could not adapt, which resulted in an almost complete turnover of our HR staff over these past 5 years. However, despite these changes – ormaybe because of them - our results have been wholly positive, and the team we have now is better than ever.While you may find your needs different than mine, my changes included:
• Engaging those that I’d identified as leaders to help champion the changes we needed in order tobuild that cohesive and collaborative team.
• Stressing the importance of the team membersmaintaining solid relationships with each other. Theyneed to have each other’s backs and embrace a “win together” attitude.
• Embracing accountability. While a win together attitude is a must, so is the need for accountability – an “I take ownership of everything that happens under me” attitude, especially losses or mistakes.
• Changing the reporting structure to reduce the layers of management.
• Placingan emphasis on reducing our number of meetingsand creating greater impact by making faster decisions to solve “now” issues.This involved giving team members more responsibility and the opportunities to grow.
• Implementing new and better technologies to aid in making more informedand efficient business decisions.
• And finally, reevaluating our benefits programs (something westill do regularly) to ensure that that our employees are taken care of and that we continue to meet one of our corporate values: Being an employer of choice.
Be Patient. It’s a Process
Changes – and results – don’t happen overnight. The same goes for cultures and perceptions.I told our team on Day 1 that one of our ongoing goals would be continuous improvement. Change is constant and complacency is not an option.In our case, it took a solid two years to begin to see the shift and its impact. But the shift has been significant. Still, I continue to stress the need to stay focused and not be afraid to challenge our status quo. In fact, we’ve already identified, and are addressing, several areas for improvement in 2023, putting us in an even better position to increase our value to the company.
But Don’t Ignore the Metrics
At the end of the day, though, we do need to know if the things we are doing are making a measurable difference. Are we improving? If so, how much? If not, where are we falling short and by how much? So, while the metrics may not provide us with solutions, they do point us in the direction of where we need to look for them.It’s all part of the process.
