1. HR-A Rightful place at the table
I have been asked to define the place of HR in an organisational context by addressing the question Does HR have a Rightful Place at the Executive Table . My answer is an unequivocal yes
I am going to cover:
Why I believe its critical for HR to sit at the executive table
And what the expectations are for HR to be a really valued contributor .
And I will do this by sharing the Monash story, our story
HR-A Rightful place at the table
November 2015

2. So first let me tell you about Monash
Council Profile
Municipality
Culturally diverse community of 182,485 residents, 45% born overseas, and have come from more than 45 countries
Residents are highly skilled, well educated. 30% of residents over age of 15 have a bachelor degree or higher (compared to greater Melbourne 23%)
Businesses in Monash provide 118,076 jobs. This makes Monash the second largest employment destination in Melbourne, after the Central Business District.
Council
Council employs 1100 employees (760 FTE) over a diverse range of areas
Historically stable management, CEO for 18 years, focus on low rates ,
Risk Adverse, little investment in leadership development, leadership concentrated at the very top.
An organisation that appeared to have stood still - we do things the way we do because that’s how we have always done them.

4. What are our big issues?
As the lowest rating municipality we recognised that as an organisation we had not kept pace with a diverse community and growing economic sector. Change and growth were happening despite us. We have needed a different approach and response.
Our community has been telling us for years in repeated surveys that we need to improve customer service and consultation – (LG Satisfaction surveys).
The challenges for us include:
How do we deliver high level services with financial restraint and required 5M pa recurrent savings and facing Rate Capping?
Financial constraints mean no increase to EFT and a need to implement Best Value
Need to determine core business and services have required a major change – example divesting resi care, vacation care, delivering FDC as cost neutral, PRIDE crew, Cleaning, so we need to be flexible and adaptable
Our customer base now spans over 6 generations serviced by 4 generations of staff
What are the staffing and culture implications of our strategy – How do we develop the capability to deliver in this environment?
How do we develop a culture that is innovative not bureaucratic?
How do we deal with an Ageing Workforce where 39% of our employees are over 50, 13% are over 60 years old. What does this mean for workforce planning?
How do we modernise our organisation – from the way we lead to our business systems
For us this has meant a focus on the 3cs. Customer service, consultation and communication. But we have some big challenges to meet in order to deliver on this strategy.

5. “Making a difference through Commitment, Leadership and Expertise.”
How do we want to position ourselves?
Monash Vision and Mission
If HR is to add value at the strategic level HR practitioners have to not only understand our challenges and implement our strategy they have to help shape it. So lets look at what the vision is for Monash and how HR and OD are integral to our ability to deliver on this vision at Monash.
Our Vision
An inviting city, diverse & alive with activity, designed for a bright future.
Our Mission states how we are going to achieve this vision by “making a difference through Commitment, Leadership and Expertise.”
Like us, most organisations frame their vision and mission around the belief that “people are our most important asset.”
And the big question if this is our vision and mission can we deliver? Its not a question that had been asked before.
We have needed the HR lens to make this determination.
Our Vision
An inviting city, diverse & alive with activity, designed for a bright future.
Our Mission
“Making a difference through Commitment, Leadership and Expertise.”

6. Strategic Operational Transactional
Strategic HR
Organisation Development, Talent Management,
Staff Engagement,
Leadership Development,
Workforce Planning,
Programs that support and influence strategy
Operational HR Training, ER
Transactional HR
Payroll, Recruitment
Strategic
Operational
Transactional
Operational HR (not at table) – Strategic HR (at table)
If the HR function is solely operationally based around traditional areas including payroll, industrial relations, employment records, recruitment and some training, then you will probably find there is a gap between what HR is offering and what the Executive team need.
Whilst these are vitally important day to day HR functions they are not necessarily building capability to deliver the future strategy.
Where HR makes contributions across key areas like talent management, staff engagement, leadership development and workforce planning then HR have an invaluable contribution to make to the organisation strategy.
In a strategic capacity, HR at Monash work to develop current employees and programs to meet our planned future needs. Recently this has included restructuring, job redesign, evaluating our culture, designing and implementing specific development programs and exploring ideas for collaboration with organisations such as Monash University.
To make an impact HR need to have a deep understanding of the organisations issues so that the work they do, and the programs delivered, directly support the achievement of the Council Strategy.
But first we needed a ”state of the nation”

7. We had not had a true OD function in the organisation and in re-establishing and redefining the function we identified that our first need was to get a snapshot of the present, before we could plan for the future. We had never had a culture survey in the organisation. What we needed to understand was:
How engaged is our workforce?
Do they feel empowered to do their jobs?
Who identifies as leaders at Monash?
Do they feel we invested in their capability development?
Do employees understand our core values and were they visible in practice?
Do they understand how their goals and objectives related to our strategy?

8. To help us understand our present state in 2012, we created a specific OD role and we launched our first staff engagement survey. We surveyed all our permanent employees and a sample of casual staff – at the time over 1000 employees and had a response of rate of 79% or 820 staff.
What did this tell us?
That staff wanted to have a say
That our engagement levels were low (31st percentile on the Denison Survey)
That there was a lack of clarity around individual goals and objectives
Lack of investment in leadership capability
That our coordinators felt like the meat in the sandwich – responsible for outcomes but not empowered or connected as a group.
It wasn’t a pretty picture
November 2012

9. Monash 2012 Coordinators 2012 Engagement 31st percentile
Engagement 36th percentile
These are the results of our first engagement survey in 2012 which showed our staff were not clear around a range of factors – in particular the organisations direction and how that linked to individual goals, there was a perceived lack of investment in capability development and difficulty with creating change. Our overall engagement score rated us on the 31st percentile using the Denison Organisation Culture survey, a well regarded survey used worldwide for over 20 years.
Of particular concern was the message we received from coordinators. They felt like they had responsibilities but lacked empowerment and did not perceive that there had been investment in their development as leaders. The overall engagement of the coordinator group in 2012 was ranked at the 36th percentile.

10. People Plan
As you can see here our OD strategy, the people plan is founded on our organisation’s mission – achieving through commitment, leadership and expertise and has 5 key outcomes to support our mission and vision:
Improved Performance
People are Valued
Achieving through Leadership
Increased Capabilities
Collaboration

11. Authentic Leadership – a Framework for Leadership at Monash
Our cultural change efforts became largely centred around building Authentic Leaders. Our belief was that leaders had the biggest impact on culture, engagement and in turn performance in areas such as service delivery. We wanted our Leadership development to build the organisational capabilities we needed to achieve our strategy - a focus on the 3C’s Customer responsiveness, consultation and communication.
We re-defined our leadership group to include team leaders and coordinators. We had considerable work to do to make this group feel like leaders in our organisation.
Partnered with Monash University, Dr Giles Hirst and the FBG Group to develop to develop and deliver our Authentic leadership program to all leaders.
Principals of authentic leadership are:
It is based on positive psychology and strengths – recognising the strengths in yourself and others, how to bring these out and knowing when they are under or over played.
Authentic leader attributes - resilience, optimism, confidence, collaboration, commitment to excellence and value diversity.
The program recognised that leadership is a shared responsibility, that it is about bringing out the best in people and empowering them to achieve personal and career goals.
As of 2015 we have put over 150 leaders through the Authentic leadership program including all Directors and myself and continue to provide ongoing development in the area of strengths based leadership programs.

12. Performance Conversations
To support Authentic Leadership we recognised we needed a model for authentic performance conversations in order to really commit to stronger communication between leaders and their team members.
We knew that traditional bureaucratic approaches and documents based on ratings and prescriptive task lists would do little to engage staff and improve performance.
We also understood to get real buy in that the model needed to be built by staff for staff.
So we consulted with employees from all levels via surveys and facilitated consultation groups to develop our “performance conversations model”. The message we got was clear, keep it simple, encourage regular meaningful conversations between staff and leaders. The result was our model deliberately puts the emphasis on “the conversation.” Even branding the title reinforces this message. The conversation is a positive, developmental, two way process covering not only objectives but importantly engagement and leader support. The documentation is simple and aims to provide a structure to quality conversations.

13. Improving Collaboration
To improve Collaboration and communication at all levels
We introduced CNET forums to continue to build on the authentic leadership program and sustain stronger networks across council. This forum brings together coordinators from across all areas of Council (approximately 80 staff) to build stronger relationships and facilitate communication and collaboration.
We host senior management forums and bi annual leadership forums which involve directors, managers and coordinators
We have introduced ELT Conversations – quarterly meetings open to all staff held at various locations across Council. At these meetings the entire executive team participate to provide updates and answer questions to any staff member that wishes to raise a topic.
Finally I hold regular morning teas with myself and a range of staff from all levels to help provide employees with avenues to communicate.
We also have regular staff newsletters and other online communication opportunities

14. People are Valued Monash EAP Monash E-Cards Learning & Development
People are valued, increased capabilities
In 2012 we had no Learning and development calendar, no EAP but did have a HWB program which whilst well received was not reaching staff outside of our head office locations.
Part of our people plan was to address these gaps and in the last 2 years we have:
Launched our first annual L&D calendar,
Launched our new EAP which is now open to staff and direct family members
Developed our health and wellbeing program to include a range of opportunities that can be participated in regardless of location with a focus on healthy eating, physical activity and mental health.
Developed Monash E-Cards to encourage a culture of recognition
Launched our generating equity and respect programs including providing all leaders with awareness training in Family Violence, Unconscious Bias and shortly in the area of mental health awareness and support.
Monash E-Cards

15. The Impact on Engagement
What do our engagement surveys tell us?
You can see there is clearly more colour in the profile for Monash in 2014 compared to Put simply this translates to employees having greater clarity around a range of areas.
In 2012 Monash Engagement was at the 31st percentile and by 2014 it had increased to the 52nd percentile. The specific questions staff answer around engagement relate to:
How proud they are to work at Monash
Are they passionate about what they do
How enthusiastic are they working for Monash
Are employees energised and does their work drive them to go the extra mile.
2012 – Engagement 31st Percentile
2014 – Engagement 52nd Percentile

16. The Impact on Coordinators
2012 – Engagement 36th Percentile
This slide shows the change in coordinator profiles where a great deal of investment in development has been made including CNET and Leadership development programs.
Engagement increased from the 36th percentile in 2012 to 80th percentile in 2014.
2014 – Engagement 80th Percentile

17. Impact on Business Outcomes
So what impact have these strategies had on service outcomes? To what extent have they supported our service capability? I would like to now share a couple of examples with you. My first example relates to Building a High Performance Customer Service Team.
In 2012 – Customer service at Monash was spread over 8 locations.
In 2013 as part of our business strategy to improve communication, consultation and customer responsiveness we moved to a centralised customer service model.
The implications of this decision required consideration of the “impact on people” from the onset. The initial service team was made up of existing staff redeployed from other areas.
Considerations included - how could job’s be redesigned, staff redeployed to new roles and new locations. What re-training, new systems and organisation structures were needed to support the change? Did the team leaders have the leadership skills to navigate the change successfully?
HR were integral to ensuring all these elements were considered and addressed helping to shape the strategy before making the decision to progress and were instrumental in the implementation of the business strategy.

18. What we Achieved Within 2 years: 80% first contact resolution
Customer Service measures up 3 points per LG Satisfaction Survey
Staff engagement 85th percentile survey
We were told it would take 4 years to reach our customer service targets from various external consultants. We fired those consultants and did the work ourselves
Whilst centralised CS is not new for Local government we have achieved significant service improvements in a short time frame of 2 years with existing staff resources, demonstrating this has been an example of a successful change management program
Within 2 years, the centre has succeeded in achieving substantial improvements in service as measured in the Local Government Community Satisfaction Survey (up 3 points) and reached impressive internal targets including 80% first contact resolution
Staff engagement in the team is also high, in the 85th percentile, as measured in our most recent culture survey in September 2014

19. Moving out of Residential Care
A second example I would like to share is the decision of council in 2014 to move out of direct residential care.
There was a high cost to council to support a quality service – each year requiring financial investment to keep the service going
The transition to divest this service involved over 200 staff directly who were employed over two sites Monash and Elizabeth Gardens
Council decision to move out of residential care was met with great deal of concern from community and staff. We had considerable media interest.
In order to implement council’s decision authentic leadership was critical in ensuring a transparent process to both community, staff and unions.
Outcomes:
Residential care was sold to the Freemasons in 2014, a not for profit, well established and well regarded organisation in the residential care sector
Most staff were re-employed with the new owner
Staff and unions were kept well informed during transition
Council has saved over $1.4million per annum in operating costs which has been able to be redirected into other community programs and netted over $20M

20. Be Assertive, Have a Voice
What I have demonstrated today through these examples is that HR needs to sit at the executive table helping to shape our organisations strategies and ensure achievement. However to be a valued contributor at the table HR must be more than operational. They need to:
Have a commercial focus and understand Council direction
Develop programs and tools that are framed in the strategic context
Need to demonstrate how the people plan supports the business and measure its outcomes
Be an enabler
A final comment, HR needs to be assertive. As a CEO I want HR, like every other group around the table, to tell it to me as it is. We need honest, brave contributions to establish trust and confidence. The executive team need HR to give fierce and frank advice.