Worldwide Staffing Service Company Partners with People & Performance Solutions

The Challenge
In the fall of 2004, the staffing service company launched an End-to-End (E2E) program and technology solution that consolidates human resources with procurement. The E2E process is designed to provide a single electronic, web-based tool to support the processes to take requisitions, manage subcontractors/temps, collect and approve employee time, and obtain management reporting across the employment life cycle.

To make the E2E program a success with customers, the staffing service company needed to empower and train its entire sales organization to sell and operationally support the E2E program and the supporting technology. However, the staffing service company was not only faced with adapting its sales organization to sell and support the E2E program, but a tremendous amount of change was transforming at the company that had a direct impact on the sales organization. A recent restructuring of the corporate sales organization brought upon new roles, responsibilities and expectations of the sales organization. Thus, bringing about new sales methodology and processes that needed to be learned and followed.

The staffing service company recognized that if the sales organization was to rapidly adapt to the new structure, processes and E2E program, a proven change management methodology was needed to help the sales organization achieve their goals. At that time, the company did not have a standard change methodology that was used consistently throughout the organization. The staffing service company turned to People & Performance Solutions, a proven provider delivering change management services and solutions. "We selected People & Performance Solutions because we believe in their change management approach and methodology", said the staffing service company's VP/CIO IT for North America. "Without People & Performance Solutions, we would not be seeing the results we are seeing today."

People & Performance Solutions was faced with the task of determining how to prepare the sales organization to sell and operationally support the E2E program, as well as to determine how various operational groups within the company would be impacted in their day-to-day operations once the program was sold. Not only did People & Performance Solutions need to deliver a change management solution to the sales organization, but they also had to align the solution to the new sales methodology and processes that were being implemented. These changes were some of the biggest cultural challenges that the staffing service company's sales organization has ever faced.

The Solution
To prepare the company's sales organization for the new challenge of selling and supporting a new software tool, People & Performance Solutions set out to develop and implement a change management solution that would address the impacts and concerns of all stakeholders - A stakeholder is an individual/group who can influence the success of implementing the required changes to process, organization or technology or an individual/group who will be impacted by the required changes to process, organization or technology. Since the entire sales organization was impacted by the implementation of the E2E program, the sales organization was divided into the following work groups: Corporate Account Executives, Professional Solutions Managers, Customer Implementation Services, Proposal Management, Corporate Account Management and Vendor Operations. This alignment was completed so that each stakeholder of the work groups would be ensured that they were aware of the change, understood how the change would impact them, educate and train them to function with the new technology and to help sustain performance. These four stages: Make me aware; Bring me to understanding, Build my skills and Sustain my performance, are People & Performance Solutions Stages of Stakeholder Engagement. The Stages of Stakeholder Engagement is crucial in helping to measure a stakeholder's readiness in a stage before continuing on to the next stage.

People & Performance Solutions methodically executed the following steps to prepare the staffing service company to effectively sell, implement and operationally support the E2E Solution:

Step 1: Identified the stakeholder groups that would be impacted by the E2E process and technology.
Step 2: Documented how each of the stakeholder groups would be impacted by using a new process, utilizing the new technology, and aligning organizationally - new/changed reporting relationship, responsibilities, performance measures and how to communicate differently.
Step 3: Conducted stakeholder group change management planning education sessions that included stakeholder group leadership and stakeholder group representatives to explain the change management planning process and the expectations of leaders/representatives.
Step 4: Conducted stakeholder group change impact validation session. Once the stakeholder group change impacts were validated a change management plan was developed to address those impacts utilizing People & Performance Solutions Levers of Organizational Readiness.
Step 5: Conducted a stakeholder group change management plan validation session.
Step 6: Conducted a stakeholder group change management plan roll-out session that included all of the members of the stakeholder group who would have responsibility for executing certain aspects of the change management plan.
Step 7: Implemented, monitored and measured progress of the change management plan execution.
Step 8: Transferred the knowledge and the skills from the implementation team to the operational team.

• What is changing and why is it changing?
• How will I be impacted?
• What's in it for me?
• How will I get the knowledge, skills and information that I need?
• What do you need for me to do?

Value Delivered
By deploying People & Performance Solutions change management process, the staffing service company, in fiscal year 2005, is achieving incremental increases in sales from the E2E program.

Already the company has been very satisfied with the results from the People & Performance Solutions training with a stakeholder audience survey revealing an overall satisfaction score of 4.33 out of a possible 5.00. "People & Performance Solutions is confident and understands that resistance to change is normal", said the VP/CIO IT for North America, "Without People & Performance Solutions patience and expertise in change management, the training with our sales organization would not have been effective." Due to People & Performance Solutions consulting expertise, the staffing service company expects to see great rewards in the very near future.

Summary
Working together, People & Performance Solutions was able to prepare and transfer the needed skills and knowledge to the company's sales organization. Thus equipping the entire sales organization with the training and new beliefs to successfully sell, implement and support the E2E program. It is only matter of time before the staffing service company will see the overall business benefits as a result of the implementation of People & Performance Solutions proven change management approach and methodology.

Contact Us to learn about how People & Performance Solutions can help you with your change management needs.