Client Overview
The client is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercialising innovative medicines for people with serious diseases. With a strong commitment to improving patient outcomes, they operate in multiple regions and employ a diverse workforce dedicated to advancing healthcare.
Challenge
The HR Leadership Team (HRLT) recognised the need to upskill HR professionals in Organisational Development (OD) and Change skills to better support the business, its people, and its patients, drive continuous improvement and align HR practices with the company’s strategic goals. Additionally, there was a need to gather feedback on opportunity areas to further strengthen the HR operating model.
Approach
Tim and Sophy partnered together to design and deliver an intervention, which both built individual OD skills, as well as increasing effectiveness across the HR function, ultimately leading to significant evolutions in the HR operating model.
An initial diagnosis phase allowed us to agree on some key learning outcomes across the function. We took a systemic perspective and deliberately planned to bring the whole HR system into the learning process, including the HRLT. We also embedded the OD cycle into the learning intervention itself, ensuring that the intervention required application of learning to a real-life organisational issue. Practically this meant requiring participants to carry out some diagnosis work themselves and make sense of their findings with others, build contracting and design skills as they undertook their analysis in the organisation and develop a change leadership mindset throughout their process.
Outcome
Over a 6 month period a number of outcomes were achieved, at an individual, team and system wide level:
- Participants gained a deeper understanding of OD, Change, and Consulting processes and practices, and felt more confident in applying these skills in their daily work;
- Improvements to the HR Operating Model leading to the implementation of a business-first prioritisation process for all future company-wide HR initiatives, enhanced communication and connection initiatives across the function, and better HR team resource allocation;
- The experience fostered an environment of psychological safety and trust, enabling productive and challenging dialogue within the HR function;
- The diagnosis phase identified specific areas for improvement and the main learning intervention provided actionable insights and strategies for enhancing HR effectiveness more broadly.
