SHRM-CP Functional Area 7: Organizational Effectiveness and Development

What is SHRM’s BASK definition for Organizational Effectiveness and Development?

“Organizational Effectiveness and Development concerns the overall structure and functionality of the organization, and involves measurement of long- and short-term effectiveness and growth of people and processes and implementation of necessary organizational change initiatives.”

What are the steps of the Organizational Effectiveness and Development (OED) process?

1. An organization recognizes that a problem exists that impacts the mission or culture of the organization and therefore change is desired. Alternative, leadership has a vision of a “better way” and wants to improve the organization.

2. Assess the situation and define it to fully understand it. Assessment can be done in various ways.

3. Plan an intervention. The type of change desired determines the type of intervention needed.

4. Implement the intervention. During and after implementation, gather data. The data to be gathered is determined by the change goal.

5. Use the collected data to determine the effectiveness of the intervention. If the intervention met its goal, the process may end. If the intervention did not meet its goals, a decision is made on whether to continue the cycle by planning and carrying out another intervention or to end it

What are the three strategies to OED?

• The Behavioral Strategy

• The Technical Strategy

• The Structural Strategy

What is the Behavioral Strategy to OED?

• Talent Development!

• Takes an employee training and development approach

• Based on the premise that employee learning would bring about the organizational change needed

• Learning consists of gaining knowledge, skills, and new attitudes that lead to new behaviors, which then lead to improved quality and performance

What is the Technical Strategy to OED?

• Performance Improvement!

• Takes a continuous improvement approach

• Based on the premise that process in the areas of customer focus, product and service delivery, support, and supplier and partnering can be improved

• Maintains that technology be continously updated and aligned with the processes of production and service to make work more efficient and effective, which leads to improved quality and performance

What is the Structural Strategy to OED?

• Organizational Design!

• Based on the prmise that organization structure and design should be aligned (or realigned) consistent with the vision, direction, mission, or goals of the organization

• Will incorporate changes in the organizational chart to optimize resources which will lead to improved quality and performance

What is Organizational Effectiveness and Development?

• The practice of planned, systematic change in the beliefs, attitidues, and values of employees for individual and company growth

What is the purpose of Organizational Effectiveness and Development?

• To enable an organization to better respond and adapt to industry/market changes and technological advances

What are the five benefits of OED?

• Continuous Improvement

• Increased Communication

• Employee Development

• Product and Service Enhancement

• Increased Profits

How is continuous improvement a benefit of OED?

• The OED process creatges a continuous cycle of improvement where strategies are planned, implemented, evaluated, improved, and monitored

• OED is a proactive approach that embraces change and leverages it for renewal

How is increased communication a benefit of OED

• A key advantage to OED is increased communication, feedback, and interaction within the organization with the goal of aligning all employees to shared company goals and values

• Candid communication leads to increased understanding of the need for change within the organization

• Relevant feedback is recurrently shared for improvement

How is employee development a benefit of OED?

• To stay competitive, organizations need to regularly enhance employee skills to meet evolving market requirements, which can be achieved through a program of learning, training, skills/competency enhancement, and work process improvements

How is product and service enhancement a benefit of OED?

• A major benefit of OED is innovation, which leads to product and service enhancement

• Innovation is achieved through employee development

• Product innovation is achieved through competitive analysis, market research, and consumer expectations and preferences

How are increased profits a benefit of OED?

• OED affects the bottom line in a way that increases efficiency and profits and reduces costs

• The culture shift to one of continuous improvement gives the company a distinct advantage in the competitive marketplace

What are the five critical enablers of company agility, or what does leadership look like in agile companies?

• Actively build seasoned, diverse leaders and management teams

• Speed up decision making

• Prioritize strategic directions

• Prepare their ecosystems to act quickly

• Invest in and make more use of data analytics to run the business

What does it mean to actively build seasoned, diverse leaders and management teams in an agile company?

• Leaders ensure that managers up and down the organization are fully accountable and have the right competencies to handle a diverse set of circumstances

What does it mean to speed up decision-making in an agile company?

• Leaders establish a culture of making critical decisions quickly, always ensuring that those decisions are tuned to market condition

What does it mean to prioritize strategic decisions in an agile company?

• Leaders distinguish between the decisions that affect everyday operations and the bigger decisions that concern the company’s strategic direction

What does it mean to prepare their ecosystems to act quickly in an agile company?

• Leaders arm their business ecosystems with their sources, information, and tools to take decisive, well-orchestrated action and to quickly measure the results and correct their course when needed

What does it mean to invest in and make more use of data and analytics to run the business in an agile company?

• Leaders understand the competitive value of deeper insights and know how to mine many sources of data to obtain those insights

What are some opportunities for OED for alert HR professionals?

• Diminished capacity, capability, and agility → this affects an organization’s ability to remain competitive

• Misaligned organizational structure → a reduction in force can mean individuals take on too many tasks

• Broken business processes → a lack of documentation can create gaps in an organization’s institutional knowledge management, which can lose the organization core efficiencies and damage customer experience

• Declinging workforce engagement → as employees take on more and more responsibilities, their morale can be damaged

What is HR’s key role in OED?

• Facilitate the improvement of employee understanding of change and communication between management and nonmanagement employees

What are some of the positive outcomes of communication efforts by HR in OED?

• Identification and mitigration of risks

• Increased buy-in and satisfaction from employees

• Increased trust between management and non-managerial employees

• Identification of needed change-related training initiatives to improve employee skills and proficiency throughout the change process

• Increased leadership cohesiveness

According to SHRM, what are the things HR professionals need to do when it comes to OED?

• Increase their focus on the development and engagement of highly professional talent and high-potential employees who possess deep expertise, drive innovation, and uniquely contribute to the organization’s value proposition

• Take responsibility to educate line management and help them acquire skills to become more proactive in managing and coaching talent

• Become skilled in organizational design and change management required to effectively implement enahnced organizational structures

• Develop superior communication and situational leadership skills, motivation, energy, and learning agility

• Integrate the workforce planning process with career planning and employee engagement to provide information and support for employees to help them identify and choose from available career paths and job opportunities

• Interact with technology specialists to produce accurate models to use in plannning and managing the workforce

• Use creative development tools such as mobile technologies for just-in-time-learning via “pulled” rather than “pushed” instruction

How do you identify an organizational gap?

1. Isolate the area of interest

2. Identify the benchmark or industry standard for the area or skill

What steps are suaully involved in implementation plans?

1. Document goals and specific actiosn required to achieve them

2. Meet with employees to discuss the new vision and what changes it requires

3. Solicit employee support and participation in the change process

4. Implement your change

5. Measure the results

What should organizational changes be when compared to the employer’s strategic plan?

• Consistent with the strategic plan

When is the greatest need for cultural assessment?

• In the wake of mergers and acquisitions

How can employers avoid incorrectly implemented OED Initiatives?

• Use caution

• Make sure a comprehensive data collection process is followed

What is the ADDIE Model?

• One of the simplest tools OED practitioners use

• An instructional systems design framekwork used by many instructional designers and training developers

What are the phases of the ADDIE Model?

• Analysis

• Design

• Development

• Implementation

• Evaluation

What are some tools and techniques that can help in OED initiatives?

• Team Building

• Group-Decision Making

  • Brainstorm

  • Dialectical Inquiry

  • Nominal Group Technique

  • Delphi Technique

• Diversity Programs

• Quality Initiatives

  • Systems Theory

  • Quality Standards

  • Quality Control Tools

  • Theory of Constraints

  • Six Sigma

What is the objective of any team building program?

• Acheiving the state where individual team members trust one another to do their work and support others in the group

What can impact team building?

• How the supervisor or manager treats each employee

• Group dynamics (if people like who they work with)

What is Group Decision-Making as a OED tool?

• A type of participatory process in which multiple individuals acting collectively analyze problems or situations, consider and evaluate alternative courses of action, and select from among the alternatives a solution or solutions

What is the difference between groups versus teams?

• Teams act more collectively and achieve greater synergy of effort

• The group has a definite leader, but the team has shared leadership roles

• Members of a group have individual accountability, but the team has both individual and collective accountability

• The group measures effectiveness indirectly, but the team measures performance directly through its collective work product

• The group discusses, decides, and delegates, but the team discusses, decides, and does real work

What are the different types of group decision-making methods?

• Brainstorming

• Dialectical Inquiry

• Nominal Group Technique

• Delphi Technique

What is Brainstorming as a type of group decision-making method?

• Freewheeling idea generation

What is Dialectical Inquiry as a type of group decision-making method?

• Opposing groups debate the pros and cons of selected solutions or decisions

What is Nominal Group Technique as a type of group decision-making method?

• A structured decision-making process in which group members are required to compose a comprehensive list of their ideas or proposed alternatives in writing

What is Delphi Technique as a type of group decision-making method?

• Group members are in different remote locations, and the group develops successive rounds of ideas, evaluation, refinement, and choices

How does workplace diversity impact business?

• Business that have high diversity are more likely to have higher financial returns in their industry

• Nonhomogenous teams are smarter

What are the different ways businesses can address quality?

• Systems Theory

• Quality Standards

• Quality Control Tools

• Theory of Constraints

• Six Sigma

What is Systems Theory?

• Less of a management methodology

• A way of analyzing and thinking about organizations

• Believes that organizations are like living organisms and are made up of numerous component subsystems that must work together in harmony for the larger system to succeed

• Organizational success relies on synergy, interrelations, and interdependence between different subsystems

• Alternative approach to understanding, managing, and planning organizations

What are the four published standards for human resource management according to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)?

• ISO 30400, Human Resource Management - Terminology

• ISO 30405, Human Resource Management - Guidelines on Recruitment

• ISO 30408, Human Resource Management - Guidelines on Human Governance

• ISO 30409, Human Resource Management - Workforce Planning

What is ISO 30400?

Human Resource Management - Terminology

What is ISO 30405?

Human Resource Management - Guidelines on Recruitment

What is ISO 30408?

Human Resource Management - Guidelines on Human Governance

What is ISO 30409?

Human Resource Management - Workforce Planning

What is included under ISO 30400, Human Resource Management - Terminology?

• Provides a common understanding of the fundamental terms used in human resource management standards

What is included under ISO 30405, Human Resource Management - Guidelines on Recruitment?

• Provides guidance on effective recruitment processes and procedures

• Designed for use by anyone involved in recruiting

What is included under ISO 30408, Human Resource Management - Guidelines on Human Governance?

• Provides the guidelines to create an effective human governance system that can respond effectively to organizational and operational needs but also foster greater collaboration across all stakeholders, anticipate and manage risks in human resources, and develop a company culture that is aligned with its values

What is included under ISO 30409, Human Resource Management - Workforce Planning?

• Helps organizations respond more effectively to their current and projected requirements for staffing

What are the seven tools of quality?

• Cause-and-Effect Diagram

• Check Sheet

• Control Chart

• Histogram

• Pareto Chart

• Scatter Diagram

• Stratification

What is the Cause-and-Effect Diagram also known as as a tool of quality?

• The fishbone diagram

• The 5 whys

• The Ishikawa Diagram

What is the Check Sheet as a tool of quality?

• A chart of event/occurance by date or time with stroke tally of times the event happened

What is the Control Chart as a tool of quality?

• A plot of quality conformance at times throughout the day

What is the Histogram as a tool of quality?

• A column chart showing frequency/intervals on the y-axis and the event being measured along the x-axis

What is the Pareto Chart as a tool of quality?

• A column chart showing types of quality problems on the x-axis and frequency of occurence on the y-axis, with the most frequency on the left

What is the Scatter Diagram as a tool of quality?

• A graph showing a plot of individual quality results using any two variables

• Plot points can be used to determine the slope of a trend

What is Stratification as a tool of quality?

• Flow charts or run charts

What is the Theory of Contraints (TOC)?

• “A chain is no stronger than its weakest link”

• Quality depends on the weakest point in the process

What is Six Sigma?

• Methodologies or strategies that can be rolled out in a matter of months or over the course of years

What is a guiding principle behind Six Sigma?

• Variation in a process creates waste and errors, so eliminating variation will make that process more efficient, cost-effective, and error-free

What is HR’s role in implementing OED changes?

• HR can be called on to support OED changes in other parts of the business or it can take on an OED change program in its own department

• HR can help train managers and employees on how the process will work, what the changes will be, and what expectations they should have for the results

• HR can provide the tracking systems necessary to document the program implementation

How do you measure organizational effectiveness and development?

1. Define the goal or objective

2. Measure

What are the two types of measurements you can use to determine whether you have reached your goal?

• Lagging Indicators

• Leading Indicators

What are lagging indicators?

• Confirm performance or lack of performance

• Measures the results of past actions

What are leading indicators?

• Predicts performance

• Measures actions that will affect future organizational effectiveness

How do you demonstrate value?

• Gather the results you have measured and show how your performance has met or exceeded the goals you set

What is the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI)?

• One of the most well-known tools available for companies to use to identify both their current and desired culture

• Two key dimensions

  • Internal focus and integration versus external focus and differentiation

  • Stability and control versus flexibility and discretion

What are the four organizational culture types?

• Clan Culture

• Adhocracy Culture

• Market Culture

• Hierarchy Culture

What is Clan Culture?

• Similar to a large family, where people have a lot in common

• The organization is held together by loyalty and tradition

• There is great involvement

What is Adhocracy Culture?

• A creative working environment where employees take risks

• Experiments and innovation are the bonding agents in the organization

What is Market Culture?

• Results-oriented

• Emphasizes finishing work and getting things done

• Emphasis on winning keeps the organization together

What is Hierarchy Culture?

• Formal, structured environment

• Procedures decide what people do

• Formal rules and policies keep the organization together