HR Turnaround Work – a New Model for Better Business Results
In Season 2, Episode 2 of HBO’s Succession, we see Kendall Roy, who is on a world tour of enacting his father’s will, gut the company Vaulter - a media conglomerate that was acquired by the Roy’s ever expanding machine a year prior. Kendall arrives at the office and in a stunted awkward speech that builds in veracity announces that everyone will be let go. As viewers, it’s a narrative with which we’re all familiar - although that familiarity doesn’t make it any easier to watch.
A friend of mine referred to this scene as "turnaround work" when discussing the show with me. I was immediately struck by the realization that there is a real and continued misunderstanding of what turnaround work is in our current moment. While "turnaround work" was a phrase once used to describe mass firings, it's now better utilized to describe business optimization (think finding out what's not working and fixing it)
Effective turnaround work as reimagined for today is about changing things for the better. It requires an evaluation of a business, identification of underperforming areas, and accompanying recommendations for improvement. The most impactful turnaround work will generate a plan that puts the right people, processes, and technology in the right positions to give their best possible performance.
I’ve dedicated my career to helping businesses help their people and so I can’t help but think about these things when watching something like Succession. A considerable portion of my time is spent thinking about how learning and development programs and streamlined processes can transform a company culture. I’ve seen firsthand that better people equal better bottom line business results. I can go to work knowing that there are positive and real opportunities to make these improvements. And this updated model for turnaround work can be a significant part of that - when conceptualized and implemented correctly!
The key here is HR. Traditionally, HR is one of the first places cut when old-fashioned turnaround consultants came to clean house. This was because it was viewed as having no overt connection to business revenue or growth. Now that we know better, this new model of turnaround work, when focused on optimizing HR services can spark positive and significant company-wide change.
Improvement in HR means improvement in a myriad of areas: employee engagement, capability, new skill acquisition, career pathing, selling expertise, customer feedback scores, time-to-market, safety and compliance, and so much more. Simply stated, HR turnaround strategies help us draw a straight line from changes we make for our people directly to bottom line business results.
The leadership table is traditionally a place long reserved for other parts of the business such as sales, operations, account management, finance, product development, etc. But as HR begins to create its overall business case for change, the opportunity to take a seat emerges.
At the table, HR leaders are in position to identify areas of improvement in support of, or in collaboration with, other business leadership. In so doing, they help merge overall business change initiatives with the inherent people improvement that will support and sustain them. The possibility of finally utilizing combinations of data from all aspects of the business meaningfully is within reach of so many organizations.
So, what kinds of decisions might result from such an approach? Here’s one specific example with potentially broad reaching impact: reskilling and upskilling based on data-driven criteria that reveal what positions are at higher risk, where there is hidden talent, and where talent gaps exist throughout the organization. This is a key way to position our people to be empowered, informed, and capable of performing their best, driving better end results. By closing skill gaps we create a working environment in which people have the ability to move laterally and vertically within an organization, driving engagement, excitement, and loyalty.
Ultimately, if you’re planning on restructuring your business, HR should not be a “sidecar” on the business “cycle,” but rather have its own seat at the leadership table. Leveraging this framework of HR turnaround work has endless potential. It’s not a disparate solution, either. It’s holistic. It’s as much about empowering the individual people in an organization as it is improving business outcomes. HR leaders need to be involved in overarching business transformations in order to keep employee growth journeys aligned with larger business targets. Human resources might not be traditionally known for its effect on a company’s bottom line, but when meaningfully integrated into a wider company transformation, it can be among the most impactful business operations of all.
