Like Chocolate on the Pillow of a Fine Hotel

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Like Chocolate on the Pillowof a Fine
Hotel Helen Gonzales, Associate Vice
President Anne Mayer, HRD Manager The Department
of Human Resources University of New
Mexico Albuquerque, NM
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Todays Focus
Many HR Departments have reorganized in the past
few years. So, we wont focus on the what.
This session focuses on the how. We will
discuss the tools and techniques used to
reorganize our HR Department to improve customer
service.
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Session Overview

• The Dilemma
• The Performance Challenge Team
• Gathering the Intelligence
• Communicating to Staff
• Transitioning
• Reviewing Progress
• The Dilemma

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The Dilemma

• External Perceptions of HR
• Unnecessarily cumbersome
• Providing limited value to its clients
• Possessing pockets of good
• Internal Perceptions of HR
• Non-collaborative between units
• Resistant to change
• Managers lack cohesion

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Performance Challenge Team
The charge Develop innovative and courageous
recommendations to improve the effectiveness of
the HR department.

• Managers nominated one individual per functional
  area
• Director invited participants to serve on a
  performance challenge team to improve service
  in HR
• Participation standards were developed (1)

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Performance Challenge Objectives

• Understand Customer Service
• Understand Internal and External Perceptions
• Research Best Practices
• Compile and Analyze Information
• Formulate Final Recommendations to the HR
  Department

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Kick-off to HR Staff

• The Mission
• Mission Impossible Skit and Theme (2a)
• Review Project Plan and Objectives
• Activity What weve heard Tell us more
• Facilitator participant packets (2b 2c)

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Objective 1 Understand Customer Service

• Review and define customer service activities
  already evident in the department
• Define outstanding customer service experiences
  in their every day life
• Gathering Intelligence activities (3)

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Understand Customer Service

• 16 individuals were mentioned multiple times as
  providing excellent service
• These Customer Service Stars were interviewed
  for their words of wisdom

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Objective 2 Understand Internal External
Perceptions

• To gain a better understanding of the actual gap
  between our actions and our clients (both
  internal and external) perception of our value.

• Interview HR Staff Members
• Interview Key Customers

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HR Staff Interviews

• Why do you think the gap between our customer
  service efforts and our reputation on campus
  continues to exist?
• What would be your 3 wishes to help HR become a
  World Class department?

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Customer Interviews

• Listening to our Stakeholders
• Interviewer Guide (4)
• Group interview questions
• Today we would like you to be our consultants
  and utilize your knowledge of HR to help us
  diagnose why the perceptual gap exists.

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Capturing the Essence Meaning

• Understanding the content and feelings that were
  communicated
• Juicy Bits Instructions (5)

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Objective 3 Research Best Practices

• Benchmark studies were done with several
  universities, private public organizations, and
  Malcolm Baldrige quality winners
• Several books and articles were studied

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Objective 4 Compile Analyze Information

• External consultants were hired to assist in
  capturing the issues and emotions
• The consultants recommended a play where the
  major themes from the interview notes are
  transformed into a script

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The Play

• The team collaborated with the Department of
  Theater and Dance and one of the professors wrote
  a script
• Students and local actors performed in the play
  (6)
• Total cost approx. 4,000
• Like Chocolate on the Pillow of a Fine Hotel
  came from a customers quote

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Manager Roll-out

• Managers view the play
• Recommendations delivered to managers
• Managers are asked to rate their commitment (7)

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Staff Roll-out

• Staff view the play
• Managers and Performance Challenge Team
  facilitate table conversations after the play
• Hand out chocolates on pillows to staff
• What are your hopes, fears, what opportunities
  do you see? Whats your part in this positive
  change?
• On paper table cloths, note down or draw key
  connections, insights, discoveries, and deeper
  questions as they emerge
• Table cloths posted throughout HR

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Objective 5 Recommendations
Packet distributed after the play contained

• Moral of the story.100 accountability, 100
  responsibility, commitment to change
• Declaration Within one year we will be
  client-centered
• New measures of accountability, new structure,
  more resources
• Formation of 15 task teams (8)

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Next Steps

• Change Cafés with coffee donuts every Friday
  morning to share whats happening, ask questions,
  discuss issues, etc.
• Song Hopes in our Hands (9)
• Mascot Sockie

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Task Teams

• Task Teams led by Performance Challenge team
  member and an HR manager plus HR Staff
  volunteers.
• Ground Rules for Effective Team Communication
  (10)
• Process Guidelines for Harnessing our Collective
  Intelligence (11)

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Organizational Structure Task Team

• Managers identified all of their respective
  services and classified them as customer
  focused or technical focused
• A Task Disposition Study was conducted to
  determine if the functions should be centralized
  or decentralized (12)

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New Organizational Structure

• HR Director hires an external consultant to help
  finalize organizational structure
• Roll-out of redesign of HR
• New job descriptions
• All staff reassigned to a lateral position
• New/open positions used a competitive process
• Letters of interest encouraged

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UNM HR Service Model (13)
Customers HR Generalists HR Specialists HR
Admin Services
Applicants
Retirees
Employees
Managers
HR Service
HR Consultants
Center
Benefits
Career
Employee
Recruitment
Retiree
Temp
Comp.
EOD
Develop.
Relations
Services
Services
Services
Communi-
Finance/
Network
Special
AVP
Data Mgt.
cations
Accounting
Support
Events
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HR Elevator Speech
What the hell is going on over there in HR? We
are changing the way we do business! We are
looking for ways to work with our clients as
consultants rather than simply as enforcers of
policy. We want to break down the walls between
our traditional units (Employment, Compensation,
Benefits, Employee Relations, etc.) and become
more of a "one-stop-shop" with single points of
contact for many of the issues our clients deal
with. To achieve this, we are looking at new
organizational models and new responsibilities
for our staff that will allow us to be more
client-centered and more capable of partnering
with clients to provide them with better customer
service."
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Progress Review

• HR Staff activity
• Whats working now?
• What do we still need to do?
• Staff were asked to make individual commitments
• Building Connections Teamwork (14)

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Progress Reviews

• Teams were formed around central themes generated
  from HR staff meeting discussions (15)
• Networking internal communications
• Strengthening partnerships
• HR cross training
• Customer service standards
• Recognition
• HR FAQs
• HR SOPs

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Reinforcing the Message

• Sockie Awards

• The Secret Sockie (16)
• Hero of the Week
• HR Boosters
• Friday Notes

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The Dilemma

• Can we be all things to all people?

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Questions / Comments

• Helen Gonzales, hgonzale_at_unm.edu
• Anne Mayer, amayer_at_unm.edu
• The Department of Human Resources
• University of New Mexico
• Albuquerque, NM
• ? 505-277-2013