cipd change management case study

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September 30, 2015

Case studies illustrate key role of HR in transformational change 0

by Sara Bean • Facilities management , News , Workplace , Workplace design

At BBC Worldwide, for example, HR was described as ‘horizontal, running throughout’ and ‘part of the senior team’. Similarly, Zurich UK Life talked of HR as a facilitator of change across the organisation, encouraging middle managers to adapt the implementation of change to fit their role rather than behaving as a monitor for senior management. Expert facilitation like this clearly relies on strong personal relationships built on mutual respect between senior business leaders and HR leaders, and as the report notes, this shows an increasing recognition of HR leaders’ expertise and value, rather than just the applicators of rules and procedures.

Ruth Stuart, Lead Consultant – Strategic Projects at the CIPD, commented: “In a volatile world of work, change has become one of the few constants. As organisations evolve and adapt in response to this, we’re seeing a new generation of business leaders emerge that are much better equipped with the knowledge and capability to land transformational change.

“But what’s also evident from this report is the increasing presence of HR in change management programmes, supporting CEOs and business leaders in putting that change into action. It’s great to see so many have understood the concurrent opportunities available to them in times of transformational change, and adapted accordingly to make themselves indispensable to the process.”

The report also found that HR professionals are using a variety of skills to assist senior leaders and CEOs in times of transformational change. In the design stage for example, HR professionals used their analytical skills to interpret data and read the context through the interpretation of data sets, and pass that knowledge on to senior teams.

Similarly, in the implementation stage of change, HR professionals have demonstrated leadership skills in engaging managers through active listening and dialogue. Subsequently, the case studies show evidence of new career paths being carved out for talented HR professionals, as a result of the strategic roles played during times of change.

Stuart continues: “Our research into what the HR profession of the future looks like shows that building up expert knowledge to create value is crucial. Case study evidence of HR professionals using their skills to great use in change management seems a strong validation of the importance of organisational development (OD) as a core HR role and the profession being valued as a critical function by senior business leaders.

“With increasing demand for tools such as ‘big data’, the future is certain to show greater demand for HR and OD professionals to use these skills in order to influence important business decisions. It’s these skills and capabilities that will keep HR professionals integral in times of significant change.”

To download the full report, click here

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CONTENT FROM ORGANISATIONS SUCH AS:

MEET THE SPEAKERS

Aesha Zafar

Head of strategic capability, department of work and pensions digital.

Dave Harris

Director of people, culture and wellbeing, university of bradford.

Garin Rouch FCIPD

Chair of cipd london organisation development and design group, cipd & co-chair for cipd central london.

Founder, Change Agitators

Melanie Franklin

Author, agile change management.

Co-Author, Coaching People through Organizational Change

Dr. Susanne Gidda

Od professionalisation and capability lead, cabinet office.

Sarah Evans

Head of hr, premium credit.

Owen Thomas

Chief sales officer, premium credit.

Director, Distinction Consulting

Simon Bastian

Talent development lead, deutsche bank ag.

Amanda Arrowsmith

People and transformation director, cipd.

Dr. Lynn Kelley

Author, change questions and senior advisor, bbh capital partners.

Mags Flanagan

Organisational design & development lead, south wales office for police and crime commissioner.

Prof. Chrisina Jayne

Dean, school of computing, engineering and digital technologies, teeside university.

Penny Young

Organisation development & effectiveness specialist, phoenix group, your conference takeaways were:.

Hear how you can embed change by working closely with cross-functional teams, aligning resources and solutions to achieve your strategic goals.

Get a fresh perspective on standard processes and methodologies to transform how change is implemented

Establish ways to achieve and maintain buy-in from all senior leaders and engage employees for long-term success.

Maximise the potential of your data to identify development needs and opportunities to improve organisational performance. 

The CIPD Change Management Conference 2024 invited you to a day of interactive learning. Throughout the conference, delegates journeyed through topics guided by a typical change management cycle, embedding theory and practice of change models and where applicable using organisational development and design principles. Delivered through a mix of case studies, workshops and panels; relate to speakers from similar organisations and be inspired by Change Makers disrupting the industry with fresh perspectives.

Venue: The Montcalm London Marble Arch, 2 Wallenberg Pl, London W1H 7TN

To book accommodation at preferential rates, please visit the Priority website here using the event passcode: HAYC168. Alternatively you can call Priority on 0845 6123 611 or +44 1473 550 620 quoting Event Code: HAYC168 24.

Conference date

17 April 2024 

Montcalm Marble Arch,

2 Wallenberg Pl, London W1H 7TN

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Short Case Study on Change Management

A short case study on change management can be very helpful in learning how to manage change effectively. In today’s business world, change is constantly happening and it can be very difficult to keep up.

Having a solid understanding of change management is essential for any manager or business owner.

A good case study will show you how one company successfully managed a major change and what lessons can be learned from their experience.

By studying short case study on change management, you will gain valuable insights into the importance of planning, communication, and employee involvement when managing change.

You will also learn about the different stages of change and how to overcome resistance to change.

These are all important topics that any manager or business owner should be familiar with. Learning about them through a short case study is an excellent way to gain a better understanding of these concepts.

Here are 05 short case studies on change management that offer you valuable insights on managing change.

1. Adobe- a transformation of HR functions to support strategic change

Many a times external factors lead to changes in organisational structures and culture. This truly happened at Adobe which has 11,000 employees worldwide with 4.5 billion $ yearly revenue.

Acrobat, Flash Player, and Photoshop are among the well-known products of Abode.

Due to new emerging technologies and challenges posed by small competitors Adobe had to stop selling its licensed goods in shrink-wrapped containers in 2011 and switched to offering digital services through the cloud. They gave their customers option of downloading the necessary software for free or subscribing to it every month rather than receiving a CD in a box.

The human resource (HR) function also took on a new role, which meant that employees had to adjust to new working practices. A standard administrative HR function was housed at Adobe’s offices. However, it was less suitable for the cloud-based strategy and performed well when Adobe was selling software items. 

HR changed its role and became more human centric and reduced its office based functions.

The HR personnel did “walk-ins,” to see what assistance they might offer, rather than waiting for calls. With a focus on innovation, change, and personal growth, Adobe employed a sizable percentage of millennials.

Instead of having an annual reviews, staff members can now use the new “check-in” method to assess and define their own growth goals whenever they find it necessary, with quick and continuous feedback. 

Managers might receive constructive criticism from HR through the workshops they conduct. The least number of employees have left since this changed approach of HR.

Why did Adobe’s HR department make this change? Since the company’s goals and culture have changed, HR discovered new ways to operate to support these changes.

2. Intuit – applying 7s framework of change management 

Steve Bennett, a vice president of GE Capital, was appointed CEO of Intuit in 2000. Intuit is a provider of financial software solutions with three products: Quicken, TurboTax, and QuickBooks, which have respective market shares of 73 percent, 81 percent, and 84 percent. 

Despite this market domination, many observers believed Intuit was not making as much money as it could.

Additionally, the business was known for making decisions slowly, which let rivals take advantage of numerous market opportunities. Bennett desired to change everything.

In his first few weeks, he spoke with each of the top 200 executives, visited the majority of Intuit’s offices, and addressed the majority of its 5,000 employees.

He concluded that although employees were enthusiastic about the company’s products, internal processes weren’t given any thought (based on Higgins, 2005).

He followed the famous Mckinsey 7S Model for Change Management to transform the organization. Let’s see what are those changes that he made:

By making acquisitions, he increased the products range for Intuit.

He established a flatter organizational structure and decentralized decision-making, which gave business units more authority and accountability throughout the whole product creation and distribution process.

To accomplish strategic goals, the rewards system was made more aligned to strategic goals.

He emphasized the necessity of a performance-oriented focus and offered a vision for change and also made every effort to sell that vision.

He acknowledged the commitment of staff to Intuit’s products and further strengthened process by emphasizing on quality and efficiency of his team.

Resources were allotted for learning and development, and certain selected managers were recruited from GE in particular skill categories, all to enhance staff capabilities concerning productivity and efficiency.

Superordinate goals:

Bennett’s strategy was “vision-driven” and he communicated that vision to his team regularly to meet the goals.

Bennett’s modifications led to a 40–50% rise in operating profits in 2002 and 2003.

8,000 people worked for Intuit in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, and other nations in 2014, and the company generated global revenues of nearly $5 billion.

3. Barclays Bank – a change in ways of doing business

The financial services industry suffered heavily during mortgage crisis in 2008. In addition to significant losses, the sector also had to deal with strict and aggressive regulations of their investing activities.

To expand its business, more employees were hired by Barclays Capital under the leadership of its former chief executive, Bob Diamond, who wanted to make it the largest investment bank in the world. 

But Barclays Capital staff was found manipulating the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and Barclays was fined £290 million and as a result of this the bank’s chairman, CEO, and COO had to resign.

In an internal review it was found that the mindset of “win at all costs” needed to be changed so a new strategy was necessary due to the reputational damage done by the LIBOR affair and new regulatory restrictions. 

In 2012, Antony Jenkins became new CEO. He made the following changes in 2014, which led to increase of 8% in share price.

Aspirations

The word “Capital” was removed from the firm name, which became just Barclays. To concentrate on the U.S. and UK markets, on Africa, and on a small number of Asian clients, the “world leader” goal was dropped.

Business model

Physical commodities and obscure “derivative” products would no longer be traded by Barclays. It was decided that rather than using its customers’ money, the business would invest its own.

Only thirty percent of the bank’s profits came from investment banking. Instead of concentrating on lending at high risk, the focus was on a smaller range of customers.

In place of an aggressive, short-term growth strategy that rewarded commercial drive and success and fostered a culture of fear of not meeting targets, “customer first,” clarity, and openness took precedence. Investment bankers’ remuneration was also reduced.

Beginning in 2014, branches were shut, and 19,000 jobs were lost over three years, including 7,000 investment banking employees, personnel at high-street firms, and many in New York and London headquarters. £1.7 billion in costs were reduced in 2014.

There was an increase in customers’ online or mobile banking, and increased automation of transactions to lower expenses.  To assist customers in using new computer systems, 30 fully automated branches were established by 2014, replacing the 6,500 cashiers that were lost to this change with “digital eagles” who used iPads.

These changes were made to build an organization that is stronger, more integrated, leaner, and more streamlined, leading to a higher return on equity and better returns for shareholders. This was also done to rebuild the bank’s credibility and win back the trust of its clients.

4. Kodak – a failure to embrace disruptive change

The first digital camera and the first-megapixel camera were both created by Kodak in 1975 and 1986 respectively.

Why then did Kodak declare bankruptcy in 2012? 

When this new technology first came out in 1975, it was expensive and had poor quality of images. Kodak anticipated that it would be at least additional ten years until digital technology started to pose a threat to their long-standing business of camera, film, chemical, and photo-printing paper industries.

Although that prediction came true, Kodak chose to increase the film’s quality through ongoing advances rather than embracing change and working on digital technology.

Kodak continued with old business model and captured market by 90% of the film and 85% of the cameras sold in America in 1976. With $16 billion in annual sales at its peak, Kodak’s profits in 1999 was around $2.5 billion. The brand’s confidence was boosted by this success but there was complete complacency in terms of embracing new technology.

Kodak started experiencing losses in 2011 as revenues dropped to $6.2 billion. 

Fuji, a competitor of Kodak, identified the same threat and decided to transition to digital while making the most money possible from film and creating new commercial ventures, such as cosmetics based on chemicals used in film processing.

Even though both businesses had the same information, they made different judgments, and Kodak was reluctant to respond. And when it started to switch towards digital technology, mobile phones with in-built digital camera had arrived to disrupt digital cameras.

Although Kodak developed the technology, they were unaware of how revolutionary digitalization would prove to be, rendering their long-standing industry obsolete.

You can read here in detail Kodak change management failure case study.

5. Heinz   – a 3G way to make changes

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and the Brazilian private equity business 3G Capital paid $29 billion in 2013 to acquire Heinz, the renowned food manufacturer with $11.6 billion in yearly sales.

The modifications were made right away by the new owners. Eleven of the top twelve executives were replaced, 600 employees were let go, corporate planes were sold, personal offices were eliminated, and executives were required to stay at Holiday Inn hotel rather than the Ritz-Carlton when traveling and substantially longer work hours were anticipated. 

Each employee was given a monthly copy restriction of 200 by micromanagement, and printer usage was recorded. Only 100 business cards were permitted each year for executives.

Numerous Heinz workers spoke of “an insular management style” where only a small inner circle knows what is truly going on.

On the other side, 3G had a youthful team of executives, largely from Brazil, who moved from company to company as instructed across nations and industries. They were loyal to 3G, not Heinz, and were motivated to perform well to earn bonuses or stock options. 

“The 3G way,” a theory that 3G has applied to bring about change in prior acquisitions like Burger King, was the driving reason behind these modifications. Everything was measured, efficiency was paramount, and “nonstrategic costs” were drastically reduced. 

From this vantage point, “lean and mean” prevails, and human capital was not regarded as a crucial element of business success. It was believed that rather than being driven by a feeling of purpose or mission, employees were motivated by the financial gains associated with holding company stock.

Because it had been well-received by the 3G partners, those who might be impacted by a deal frequently saw a “how to” guide published by consultant Bob Fifer as a “must read.”

However, many food industry experts felt that while some of 3G’s prior acquisitions would have been ideal candidates for a program of cost-cutting, Heinz was not the most appropriate choice to “hack and slash.” The company had already undergone several years of improved efficiency and it was already a well-established player in the market.

In summarizing the situation, business journalists Jennifer Reingold and Daniel Roberts predicted that “the experiment now underway will determine whether Heinz will become a newly invigorated embodiment of efficiency—or whether 3G will take the cult of cost-cutting so far that it chokes off Heinz’s ability to innovate and make the products that have made it a market leader for almost a century and a half.” 

Final Words

A short case study on change management can be a helpful tool in learning how to effectively manage change. These case studies will show you how one company successfully managed a major change and what lessons can be learned from their experience. By studying these case studies, you will gain valuable insights into the importance of planning, communication, and employee involvement when managing change. These are all vital elements that must be considered when implementing any type of change within an organization.

About The Author

Tahir Abbas

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• Case Study: How to Change Career from Retail to Human Resources

Start a new career in HR with a CIPD qualification

07 September 2020 - 2 min read

Natalie Armitage started her career in retail working at Greggs the UK’s largest bakery chain as a Retail Manager. At 26 she was inspired to switch career and study for a CIPD Human Resource qualification . Her first office job was with Kings College where she got promoted from an admin role into her first specialist HR position as OD Coordinator. She is now Case Consultant at Kings where she thoroughly enjoys managing a broad portfolio of employee relations cases including disciplinary, grievances, conduct, capability, whistleblowing, and employment tribunals.

We spoke to Natalie about switching careers, transferable skills and how gaining her CIPD qualification helped her to forge a successful career in HR.

Q: Do you have more opportunities now that you have the CIPD qualification? 

Yes, it has almost become an expectation when you go for an interview within HR or Learning and Development, the question pops up. “Have you got a CIPD qualification, or are you going to be working towards one?”

When I was transitioning from retail into HR, I found that my applications for jobs were just not being considered because the job description was asking for the CIPD qualification. As soon as I had on my CV that I was studying for my CIPD, doors started opening for me. There’s so much value from obtaining the qualification and continuing through the levels.

Q: What did you do beforehand, and what made you want to consider a shift in career to HR? 

I was a retail operations manager and then I also became a trade union representative. Before taking up the trade union rep role, I had very limited knowledge of what HR was. My understanding was limited to HR recruitment and they make the rules and then discipline people when they follow the rules. It was only when I undertook the role of union rep that I started to see employee relations cases and got involved in joint consultation meetings.

I remember sitting in a management conference and watching the HR regional manager present the people strategy and getting us to engage with that strategy. That was the moment that I realised I wanted to work in HR. I wanted to be involved in shaping strategy from a people perspective and to be part of creating an environment for an engaged, happy workforce where there’s fair processes and people want to come to work and feel like they’re valued.

Q: Has the qualification given you a framework to try different things? 

It has been incredible and inspiring. It gives you that push to keep going and keep progressing and keep learning. So far in my HR career I have been quite specialist and I think the real value for me doing the qualification was getting a broader insight of HR as a generalist role. It has helped me to think about issues more holistically rather than just be stuck in my specialism.

Studying the qualification with Acacia and having that interaction with people that are in HR and fellow students, you can also discuss any issues in more depth too.

Q: How did you find making the change, the transition to an HR role? 

I did find it quite difficult initially coming from a retail role which I began when I was 16 years old. I did not have a CV until I was 26 and I was looking for a route into HR. It was quite a challenge to understand how to write my CV. On top of that, people were looking at the CIPD qualification and they were also looking for office experience. I remember feeling quite frustrated because there were administrative elements to the management role that I held in retail. And I felt like they were very much overlooked because they were not in the office environment.

I enrolled on the CIPD level 3 and I changed my tactic a little bit. I decided that I was going to apply for an admin role, not specific to HR, just to gain the office experience. And I was very fortunate to get an admin job at King’s College, London.

I had just finished my CIPD level 3 when an internal vacancy came up for an organisational development role in HR. I applied for the job and was successful. It was difficult at first, but I do think that the CIPD has helped me to unlock some doors.

Q: Were there any skills from your previous role that were transferable to HR? 

I think even going back to my retail role, there were transferable skills such as customer service, that I still use today in my HR career. In HR you engage with stakeholders regularly and you are expected to deliver a service. It is understanding what is needed from you and delivering on that. And that is something that I learned in retail. I also learnt to be able to think on my feet and to be flexible and adaptable in my approach. In both retail and HR, you are working with people and people can be unpredictable. Stuff can happen out of the blue and you need to act quickly and often make decisions in the moment. That is something that I had to do regularly in retail and something that I continue to do now in my case consultant role.

I also learned the importance of effective communication and to communicate clear expectations, to actively listen and to clarify understanding of my team, and to demonstrate empathy. It has been useful in my career, especially in my role now as a case consultant dealing with employer relations matters.

Q: Is HR a rewarding job, and does it provide you with a good work/life balance? 

I love working in HR. Every day I wake up and I am happy to be at work. I feel like the work that I do is valuable and that it adds to my workplace. I am constantly learning and growing, and it is the best move I could have made.

Q: What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out? 

Resilience is so important. When you are getting those no’s, it is just preparing you for the yes. I took an admin role that was not specific to HR and that little diversion has been incredibly important in both of my specialists, HR roles.

I would say that it gets easier once you get a foot in the door and you are making those networks and you are learning first-hand. It gets easier and progression seems to happen quite quickly. You also find some incredible people who inspire and motivate and support you in this career.

Q: How is your work-life balance in HR? 

Fantastic. I work nine to five, and I do work nine until five. With the current circumstances I am working from home, so my life balance is even better because there is no commute.

With HR you can use it as a steppingstone into senior management roles because it involves the strategy of the business nowadays, and you have got all those skills. At one time we just had soft skills, but now if you are a senior HR person, you have got a budget to manage, and you must understand people, analytics, and data. Therefore, you have got all the skills that you are going to need, to move into a senior management role. I personally think companies, if they are choosing, an HR director to move into a managing director or CEO role, that is not a bad decision. So, the sky’s the limit!

Connect with Natalie on  Linkedin .

Acacia Learning

Premium education company, offering CIPD HR and L&D course, PRINCE2® and CMI qualifications for professionals looking to increase their earning potential.

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Dubai’s Extraordinary Flooding: Here’s What to Know

Images of a saturated desert metropolis startled the world, prompting talk of cloud seeding, climate change and designing cities for intensified weather.

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By Raymond Zhong

Scenes of flood-ravaged neighborhoods in one of the planet’s driest regions have stunned the world this week. Heavy rains in the United Arab Emirates and Oman submerged cars, clogged highways and killed at least 21 people. Flights out of Dubai’s airport, a major global hub, were severely disrupted.

The downpours weren’t a freak event — forecasters anticipated the storms several days out and issued warnings. But they were certainly unusual. Here’s what to know.

Heavy rain there is rare, but not unheard-of.

On average, the Arabian Peninsula receives a scant few inches of rain a year, although scientists have found that a sizable chunk of that precipitation falls in infrequent but severe bursts, not as periodic showers.

U.A.E. officials said the 24-hour rain total on Tuesday was the country’s largest since records there began in 1949 . But parts of the nation had experienced an earlier round of thunderstorms just last month.

Oman, with its coastline on the Arabian Sea, is also vulnerable to tropical cyclones. Past storms there have brought torrential rain, powerful winds and mudslides, causing extensive damage.

Global warming is projected to intensify downpours.

Stronger storms are a key consequence of human-caused global warming. As the atmosphere gets hotter, it can hold more moisture, which can eventually make its way down to the earth as rain or snow.

But that doesn’t mean rainfall patterns are changing in precisely the same way across every corner of the globe.

In their latest assessment of climate research , scientists convened by the United Nations found there wasn’t enough data to have firm conclusions about rainfall trends in the Arabian Peninsula and how climate change was affecting them. The researchers said, however, that if global warming were to be allowed to continue worsening in the coming decades, extreme downpours in the region would quite likely become more intense and more frequent.

The role of cloud seeding isn’t clear.

The U.A.E. has for decades worked to increase rainfall and boost water supplies by seeding clouds. Essentially, this involves shooting particles into clouds to encourage the moisture to gather into larger, heavier droplets, ones that are more likely to fall as rain or snow.

Cloud seeding and other rain-enhancement methods have been tried across the world, including in Australia, China, India, Israel, South Africa and the United States. Studies have found that these operations can, at best, affect precipitation modestly — enough to turn a downpour into a bigger downpour, but probably not a drizzle into a deluge.

Still, experts said pinning down how much seeding might have contributed to this week’s storms would require detailed study.

“In general, it is quite a challenge to assess the impact of seeding,” said Luca Delle Monache, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Dr. Delle Monache has been leading efforts to use artificial intelligence to improve the U.A.E.’s rain-enhancement program.

An official with the U.A.E.’s National Center of Meteorology, Omar Al Yazeedi, told news outlets this week that the agency didn’t conduct any seeding during the latest storms. His statements didn’t make clear, however, whether that was also true in the hours or days before.

Mr. Al Yazeedi didn’t respond to emailed questions from The New York Times on Thursday, and Adel Kamal, a spokesman for the center, didn’t immediately have further comment.

Cities in dry places just aren’t designed for floods.

Wherever it happens, flooding isn’t just a matter of how much rain comes down. It’s also about what happens to all that water once it’s on the ground — most critically, in the places people live.

Cities in arid regions often aren’t designed to drain very effectively. In these areas, paved surfaces block rain from seeping into the earth below, forcing it into drainage systems that can easily become overwhelmed.

One recent study of Sharjah , the capital of the third-largest emirate in the U.A.E., found that the city’s rapid growth over the past half century had made it vulnerable to flooding at far lower levels of rain than before.

Omnia Al Desoukie contributed reporting.

Raymond Zhong reports on climate and environmental issues for The Times. More about Raymond Zhong

What caused Dubai floods? Experts cite climate change, not cloud seeding

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DID CLOUD SEEDING CAUSE THE STORM?

CAN'T CREATE CLOUDS FROM NOTHING

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