Client: Financial Services Institution

Project: HR Process Analysis

The HR Challenge

A large financial services institution wanted to review all of their core HR business processes affecting the employee lifecycle.  Data integrity and accuracy were key drivers of this initiative, but overall, process efficiency and optimization were the critical success factors.  The existing knowledge of HR business processes by employees was limited and haphazard, had never been formally mapped or structured, and did not exhibit any overall consistency.  In general, processes were poorly understood which made it difficult to manage performance expectations to HR customers. Processes and workflow were often manual with few standard controls or service levels and had been institutionally crafted over many years creating dependencies on single individuals and personal relationships across the organization.

These problems were systemic and prevalent throughout the organization to the point where all functions within HR had resorted to ‘their way’ of doing things.  This created an environment full of conflict with an “us against them” mentality, finger pointing between functions, and limited collaboration.

The Solution

It was decided that a business process analysis initiative be undertaken to improve the HR processes.  Due to limited existing documentation, Intellilink documented employee lifecycles to bundle HR processes into manageable groups for process analysis. A combined team of Intellilink consultants and internal resources then used a four step process to map, validate, develop solutions, and present recommended changes to management.  Starting with over 100 interviews, the final process kit contained over 115 HR processes and a number of quick hit and high priority solutions.

Map Current State Processes - Intellilink developed a framework across all HR processes to coordinate the current state mapping process.  Based on this framework, interviews with SMEs were scheduled and conducted so that the team could maximize subject matter expert effort and where possible, overlap processes with similar SMEs to quickly get to the ‘current state.’  Intellilink tracked progress against completion by process, by employee cycle, and by SME and SME grouping. This enabled the team to identify which processes needed a greater effort and vice versa. Once all processes were mapped, Intellilink used SharePoint to post all project documentation, including the finished ‘as-is’ maps, for review.  Periodic ‘reviews’ were conducted with stakeholders to assess the completeness of all processes.

Review and Prioritize Current State Processes - After completing the current state mapping exercise, the Intellilink team led a four day validation session consisting of director and VP representation from every HR function.  The purpose of these sessions was to review all current state maps giving the audience perspective, identifying opportunities for improvement, and defining the relative priority of each process.  The priority of each process was defined using three factors: a) how broken the process is, b) what type of impact the process has on the organization, and c) how difficult it would be to change the process.  After all processes were reviewed, Intellilink led the team through a mapping session noting relevant points of process contention raised by the process operators.  The team then used all of the information presented to bucket each process and begin ranking.  By using yes/no criteria for each priority area, Intellilink led the team to consensus, which ultimately resulted in a numerical value for each priority area.  The processes were then mapped against impact/difficulty matrices and placed in the proper quadrant.  This final ‘assessment’ for each process was again validated with the team prior to recommendations being developed.   The validation team also verified short-term report definitions against stakeholder business needs.

Develop Solution Recommendations - Intellilink focused on processes that would provide the greatest benefit to the client and had the most cross solution impact.  Intellilink developed solution recommendations using both industry and consulting expertise along with recommendations provided by the SMEs during the interview sessions, recommendations from the validation teams, and subsequent follow up sessions with stakeholders.  The current state mapping sessions and validation exercises served as both a ‘how do you do it’ mapping session and a forum for SMEs to provide recommendations and potential solution ideas.  Intellilink gathered all information and separated each of the solutions into two sections – quick hits and high priority long term solutions.  The quick hit solutions were, generally isolated to one single process and limited in scope (1-3 months), limited in cross functional needs, and required only small system modifications at most.  The longer term solutions generally cut across multiple processes, were larger in scope (3mos – 1year+) required some organizational shift or structure change, and required a level of automation that did not previously exist.  Final recommendations were presented to and agreed upon by the validation team.

Present Recommendations to Management - Using the quick hit and long term solution recommendations, Intellilink presented the recommendations to HR Management.  Intellilink also provided implementation success factors and common themes for management to determine go/no go on each solution and the phasing of the effort.  Management chose to move forward with all but two longer term solution ideas based on resource availability and management’s perceived inability to influence change across all of the organization. Once management validated the recommendations, Intellilink began road-mapping the long term high priority improvement opportunities and initiating quick hit changes.

Client: Fortune 500 Financial Institution

Project: Recruiting Capability Assessment

The Recruiting Gap

A Fortune 500 financial institution’s strategy demanded the building of a world-class workforce by attracting and retaining top talent. However, they found that they were not meeting this objective. The perception of hiring managers, prospects, new hires and senior management was that the recruiting process was very inconsistent and poorly executed. Negative feedback included: the process was too time-consuming, candidates felt “lost” in the process, employees felt neglected when applying for internal jobs and no metrics were available. As a result, hiring managers tended to perform their own recruiting, candidates withdrew from the process and employees stopped applying for internal jobs and submitting referrals.

Assessment of the Situation

To determine the cause of the issues, Intellilink conducted an analysis to understand the current situation, develop hypotheses for the problems, and test the hypotheses against fact-based findings. Since the potential problem areas needed to be viewed holistically, the organization, processes and systems were included in the analysis.

Assess the organization – As a first step, the organization was reviewed to determine how recruiting was aligned with the business. It was found that recruiters reported into HR generalists that were aligned with the five major business units across 50+ offices. Recruiters were further subdivided into senior and junior recruiters, with the junior recruiters generally working with internal candidates and the senior recruiters working with external candidates. Recruiting for management candidates was handled inconsistently, with responsibility split among a senior recruiter, HR generalist, or hiring manager.

Assess the processes – As a result of assessing the organization, the major stakeholders involved with recruiting were identified. These included; recruiters, recruiting coordinators, HR generalists, compensation analysts, controllers, hiring managers, EEO compliance, diversity staff, corporate communications, HR service centers, hiring managers, officers, candidates, and employees. Interviews and workshops were conducted with representative stakeholders from each of the major business units to develop ‘As-Is’ process maps. Where possible, metrics were collected to quantify the inefficiencies that existed in the processes.

Assess the systems – After the processes were mapped, the supporting systems were identified. The team found that the application tracking system was not widely used due to lack of functionality, slow performance, and poor usability. Additionally, point solutions built in MS Access and Excel were used at certain steps in the process. As a result, metrics tracking and consolidated reporting were not possible.

The Improvement Plan

As a result of the assessment, the Intellilink team developed recommendations to improve the situation and an action plan to implement them. Recommendations included: 1) Establishing a centralized recruiting organization; 2) Redefining roles & responsibilities of individuals involved in the recruiting process; 3) Designing and implementing consistent recruiting processes; and 4) Conducting a package selection process to replace the current applicant tracking system.