Change Management on Cloud HR projects

Integrate your change approach to the system implementation

Typical gap

HR Cloud applications in the market are presented as straight forward, and self intuitive.

With a bit of change management, you can adopt the native best practice processes.

Implementation partners will propose you a very generic Agile methodology (requirements gathering, 3 iterations, validation and launch).

Some of them also understood it is important to support the change management required by the system implementation. I had the chance to collaborate with a few change teams. We experienced their methodology during HR cloud projects. I am refining my own method project after project, since back in 2008 when I was for the first time more on the side of process and change management.

The biggest challenge to my opinion remains though to integrate project management driven by the system with change/process design management.

Our Recommendations

We propose to integrate two additional tracks  into the project  planning :

  • process design
  • change management

Process Design

Cloud applications implementations have a shorter elapsed time to implement. However, this is based on the assumption that

  • the client knows its process (in all countries)
  • or that the core team members attending the workshops are mandated to take decisions in a couple of days

Reality is slightly different. No matter the project’s context and company culture, HR and the business (even Ex Com) have to take key decisions. This requires time and validation of major stakeholders, in some cases before requirements gathering starts.

Change Management

For this reason, we propose to work in two steps

  • before the official implementation starts, we hold a visioning workshop to anticipate strategic decisions
  • during the realisation phase, we fine-tune the process design
  • Visioning is the first change activity. We recommend a workshop with key stakeholders from HR and the business. We work in tandem with your system implementation partner to prepare and moderate the workshop. We want to come to very concrete agreements, anticipating not only requirements gathering, but also resistance to change.
  • Later on, as the process design is completed, we proceed with audience and impact analysis. We prepare with your local and global stakeholders communication material for HR and end-users. We identify the change agents who will belong to the change network.
  • Optionally, we can moderate the Change Network.
  • Ultimately, we support optionally the go-live with Hypercare calls with your change network.

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