The Challenge
Our client, a leading state-owned energy utility is undergoing transformative changes needed to meet the demands of both Government and Private investment in new energy infrastructure, which is to be delivered in response to federal and state targets set for the energy transition by year 2030. Our client sought to expand part of its Major Projects - Community and Delivery Services division from 75 to ~160 FTE over a period of 18 months. The division is responsible for managing relationships across a broad stakeholder group including government and policy makers, indigenous and community groups, landholders and local councils. Teams within the division are distributed in regional and community areas, led by a head office management team. Devbase were engaged to lead the development of a transformation program which would include the following workstreams:
- Organisational redesign and restructure change management
- Recruitment and onboarding program development and implementation
- Business process development and implementation support
- Strategic business planning and implementation support
- Management Operating System development and implementation
- Executive Management and Team Leadership support
The Solution
Our experienced consultants supported the client by developing a comprehensive work program covering each of the identified workstreams:
Organisational redesign and structure change management
Working with the management team, our consultants developed an action plan to implement the client’s future state organisational structure. This included development of position descriptions for new roles and adapting those for existing roles to achieve consistency across future state business requirements. Our consultants further developed and subsequently led a detailed Change Management Program which would guide the formal implementation of new organisation structure. This included transitioning reporting lines to a new business division, thereby necessitating the management of change in financial and employee relations systems. As the nominated Change Manager, our consultant developed all communications collateral used with employees, unions and the executive leadership team, underpinning the business change consultation process. The Change Management program was developed to support the clients’ divisional leadership team with core transition activities, which ensured the success of the transition to the new end state organisation. Specifically our consultants designed and led the communications , strategy & culture, onboarding, skills & knowledge, task and process and safety & environment initiatives incorporated into the program.
Business Process development and implementation support
Process Maturity Mapping - With business pressure to accelerate recruitment, Devbase Executive Advisors guided the executive management and leadership teams to moderate the recruitment pace to accommodate the maturity of their onboarding process. This commenced with assessing the degree of maturity of core processes for each team to establish degree of clarity in roles and responsibilities for new starters. Our Change Consultants undertook a level 1 Process Review through a series of structured interviews and short workshops. This review enabled the populating a divisional process architecture for the client’s team functions, to illustrate the core processes and RACI for key functional roles. The outcomes of this review would later inform the scoping of the Onboarding Initiative, together with additional business Improvement initiatives necessary to scale out the organisational structure and achieve the restructure business case outcomes.
Process Implementation - Our experienced Consultants worked across the client organisation with a broader stakeholder set, to defined , document and map process interfaces. Over a 6 month period our consultants facilitated some 15 workshops and conducted over 35 interviews with key stakeholders. Each successive workshop was structured to bring clarity to ways of working, embedding ownership and standard templates and agendas to meetings, reports and plans which track and measure delivery across stakeholder groups.
New-Starter Onboarding Initiative
Devbase were requested to stand up a divisional onboarding initiative which would step out the development steps to mature onboarding materials, mentoring and readiness activities in support of large scale recruitment of new employees.
Terms of Reference – Our lead consultant established an initial Terms of Reference (ToR) defining scope and a high level project plan which stepped out the development timeline , informed by the outcomes of the process review completed previously. This ToR set out the budget requirements in terms of funds and personnel required to support development of collateral to be later used in educating new starters.
Onboarding Manual Development – To accelerate the first stage of material development, our lead consultant established a working group of local leaders to formulate a table of contents for a Draft Onboarding manual, referencing learning modules for core business processes as identified in earlier the process mapping initiative. Our consultants coached working group leaders in development of a detailed delivery schedule and then transitioned to a Project Management role, setting priorities and leading the development of onboarding materials to achieve the project budget and timing milestones Our consultants facilitate workshops with Client SME’s together with Devbase SME’s to map core content associated with the core business processes. Workshops established core roles and responsibilities, functional work flows, contact point references and fleshed out the required collateral necessary to educate and assimilate new starters into function roles within teams
Recruitment Program Development and Implementation
Job Design - As a precursor to the recruitment program, our consultants worked with Executive and Line Management to develop position descriptions for c. 12 new roles, coordinating position grading and business case development to underpin changes to extant positions, in aligning these positions to the future state business requirements.
Recruitment Planning - With a recruitment plan of c. 100 FTE (including backfill of existing role vacancies), our consultants developed a recruitment and onboarding schedule which balanced recruitment cadence within the time constraints of hiring managers and SMEs, ensuring that new recruits had sufficient support materials and access to team managers as they arrived in business. Recruitment staging focussed initially on the key leadership and specialist roles necessary to enable recruitment of subordinate roles and support for onboarding of new team members.
Hiring Manager support- Our consultants relieved the pressure on hiring managers supporting the development of interview packs, shortlisting criteria, candidate screening and assessments, while also supplementing management interviews as panelists for recruiting key leadership roles.
Strategic Business Planning and Implementation Support
Clarity on Purpose - As a component of the business transformation Devbase were asked to facilitate the development of the Divisional plan. Our Executive Advisor worked closely with the client Executive to establish the desired outcomes for a Strategic Business plan. Devbase subsequently led an initial Purpose Statement development workshop, to engage leadership team in conversation and development of a Divisional Purpose statement which aligned under the corporate purpose. This was successful in creating alignment across the senior leadership team, documenting the “Why” behind the divisional accountabilities.
Engaging Leaders – Two of our lead consultants developed and led a 2 day Off Site strategic business planning program aimed at bringing cultural alignment across a disparate team of leaders and managers with varying levels of leadership maturity. With a focus on building leadership accountability, our facilitators developed a structured program agenda with workshop activities and preparatory work which engaged management thinking ahead of the off-site activ to ensure that the off-site workshops were effective and attendees were engaged.
Executive Management and Team Leadership support
Our Executive Advisors were retained to support the incoming Executive Manager in a part time support and coaching role , to assist with establishing the culture of the expanded Management team. This engagement saw our advisor establishing and leading the the following initiatives with the Executive Manager and Direct Reports
- Implement weekly Result Action Review (RAR) reporting & management team Stand-Up meeting
- Uplift of General management reporting to Executive Management
- Revised meeting regime to reduce overlaps and align reporting to outcomes
- Weekly General Manager one on one reviews - assessing project and personnel risks, explore systemic changes to address "burning platforms" across People/IR, Capacity, Capability, Stakeholder and Project delivery outcomes
- General Management Reporting Dashboards - realigning data and metrics to corporate objectives and migrating the management team from reactive to proactive
- Strategic Plan Implementation Support including developing communications, messaging and facilitating development conversations and training with middle management leaders
Our Impact
Our advisors received positive feedback on the ability of our team to assimilate to the nature of the challenges presented , given the depth of experience our advisors bring from their prior career in client side organisations. Specifically, Devbase was praised for bringing structure and discipline to business operations and management decisions. Our team were recognised for creating clarity and aligning manager messaging to business purpose and strategy.
Our team was successful in reducing frustrations of newly established leadership teams, bringing clarity to planning and reinforcing the teams agreement on principles of culture centered on team respect, collaboration and accountability. Through selective part time secondments of our experienced advisors, Devbase was successful in building trust with client management teams and was effective in embedding discipline and change to the Clients' reporting and meeting regimes, which measure the agreed outcomes set in the Strategic Plan, the development of which which was facilitated by two of our of advisors.
Our team has since been retained to develop and lead successive initiatives which bring further rigour to the subordinate teams within this organisation, further recognising our teams credibility in bringing about successful outcomes in business transformation
