Change Management Strategy for IT - CIO and CHRO Partnership
CIOs and their teams will need a change management strategy that embraces the can-do attitude and agile approaches that got employees working remotely in a timeframe never experienced before.
They will need a change management strategy to be future fit. This, according to Forrester, is a combination of being adaptive, resilient and creative.
These are traits that have seen organisations not only survive previous crises such as the burst of the dot.com bubble in 2001-2002 and the global financial crisis of 2207-2008 but will also see them differentiate themselves as the winners, not losers, in this pandemic of 2020.
In this series of articles, I am going to explore what the change management strategy for IT looks like and why it is needed.
A CHRO partnership
In last weeks article I said Gartner predicts that by 2021, “CIOs will be as responsible for culture change as chief HR officers (CHROs).”
According to Elise Olding, research vice president at Gartner, “A lot of CIOs have realized that culture can be an accelerator of digital transformation and that they have the means to reinforce a desired culture through their technology choices. A partnership with the CHRO is the perfect way to align technology selections and design processes to shape the desired work behaviours .”
There are a number of drivers for the partnership.
Employee experience
Both the CHRO and the CIO have the employee experience as a goal. They have to make the employee experience as great as the customer experience.
The CHRO can explain what the organisation and the employees need as users of technology. The CIO role is to understand the needs of the CHRO as a customer.
Learning and development
Employees have to be up-skilled in new ways of working and using new technology resulting from digital transformation initiatives.
The CHRO will need a sturdy and stable learning management system as the need for learning and development in a digital world increases. The CIO will be key in that provision.
Talent management
According to Gartner, in 2019 the top of organisational competencies for the CEO was talent management. This is clearly the realm of the CHRO.
The second, third and fourth competencies were technical-orientated. Clearly not the realm of CHRO but the realm of the CIO.
The CEO has to turn to both the CHRO and the CIO to achieve the top 4 organisational competencies.
The CHRO has the experience and expertise in talent management, recruitment, training and retention whilst the CIO has the knowledge required for digital transformation. This partnership enables talent management in a digital-era context.
Technology and data
A 2019 report by Sage called “The Changing Face Of HR” stated:
“Nearly 57% of HR leaders reveal they can’t invest in new technology because of resourcing restrictions, with 51% citing a lack of vision and leadership in their organization is preventing change.”
The same report reveals that 43% of CHROs think their organisations won’t be able to keep up with changes in technology over the next decade, including advances in cybersecurity and privacy. Additionally, only 25% identify as tech-savvy.
This highlights another opportunity for the CIO and CHRO to work together.
The CIO can support the CHRO with budget requests for technology by providing data and rationale. The CIO can support the CHRO in making sure that employee data is secure and increasing employee awareness of security issues.
The future of work
When COVID-19 hit us the CIO and CHRO were forced to work alongside each other, not through intent but through unforeseen circumstances.
What has been put in place to enable the workforce to continue working is a stop-gap solution.
The CIO and CHRO now need to partner and determine the future of work - during and post pandemic.
They will need to determine a joint vision and strategy; co-design the future of work in conjunction with employees; and drive the intensity of innovation and digital transformation with an aligned people and technology perspective.
One of the first items on the CIO / CHRO agenda is the return to work.
As Don Hinchcliffe writes in Rework:
“The CIO and CHRO must ensure that the resulting return to work process is a springboard to realize a more holistic approach to employee experience.
Simply put, the employee experience must evolve as fast the world. It must therefore be represented in a cohesive but decentralized transformation designed to keep up with the external operating environment. While the CIO and CHRO will spend the next generation of business getting this approach attuned for their organization, they’ll never finish evolving it. Nor should they.
The new and better ways we can and should work must be a primary focus now as we begin the momentous journey towards a new hybrid work reality. If we fail to do that, we risk the loss of a historic opportunity and will be largely right back to the fragile and piecemeal way we were before. The CIO and CHRO are the two most vital roles that can collaborate to avoid a retrograde outcome and actually achieve an improved future of work.”
Summary
Successful digital transformation and the future of work depends on the CIO and the CHRO working together as enablers and decision makers to further organisational goals.