Strategic HR Overhaul: Driving Long-Term Success

Challenge 

An Ontario based, regulatory authority overseeing a professional body struggled to deliver upon its HR mandate. HR is responsible for ensuring effective recruitment, professional development, and employee retention while aligning with organizational goals and maintaining regulatory compliance.

Challenges faced by HR included outdated manual processes, inefficient technology systems, loss of institutional knowledge, and a high team turnover rate. The increasing demands on the HR team hindered their ability to act strategic.

To address these issues, the Regulatory Authority engaged CRG to assess and diagnose the HR function. Objectives included establishing a future-state vision and operating model for HR, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of HR processes and technology, and optimizing the structure and capacity of the team.

Approach 

To support the client's objectives, CRG devised and executed a comprehensive three-phased approach.

Mobilize

• Aligned with key stakeholders to ensure a shared understanding of project goals, success criteria, and the communication plan to promote transparency throughout the project’s lifecycle
• Executed a thorough data collection plan, capturing essential qualitative and quantitative data points for project analysis and evaluation

Diagnose and Assess

• Interviewed process stakeholders and leadership team to define and document current-state operating model, processes, and technology
• Identified issues across people, process, technology and gathered data to assess the impact of each one
• Assessed the current-state technology within the HR function to identify capabilities and limitations to achieve desired outcomes
• Conducted a benchmarking analysis to assess the function against leading HR operational and financial metrics

Envision Future State

• Conducted a workshop to define the scope of future-state HR service offerings, including the mission, vision, and strategic priorities
• Developed and prioritized recommendations to enhance the current-state HR operating model, processes, and technologies in alignment with the defined future-state needs
• Created a detailed and sequenced implementation roadmap to govern the execution of recommended changes

Outcome

The engagement yielded substantial outcomes for the client, delivering a comprehensive roadmap with 46 recommendations across people, processes, and technology to enhance operations, increase efficiencies, and improve capacity. The team identified annual savings equivalent to 6 Full-Time Equivalent Employees (FTE) post-implementation.