One of the most difficult things when you're joining a new business is creating the new relationships that will carry you forward. This can be especially difficult where you see much that could be improved - but as the new kid on the block, you haven't yet established the kudos that will support your recommendations and earn the support of your colleagues for your initiatives.
You might also be quickly gathering a significant shopping list of things that need to be rectified, but not have a sense of priority for these initiatives. Talking through your concerns with the ELT is key to getting a sense of the urgency as well as the importance of the issues you are quickly becoming aware of. But you need to be subtle in your criticism of the status quo - you don't know how wedded the people you are talking to are with the current processes.
Clearly you don't want to be seen as a bull in a china shop, but the bigger issue perhaps is that you won't get far with any initiative if you don't get buy-in from your colleagues.
This issue can be exacerbated where your predecessor or members of the current management team were heavily involved in establishment or maintenance of the status quo.
Who are you to come in and claim that you have suggestions on how it might be improved?
This was the case in virtually every role I have been appointed to. Sometimes it is easy - and expected - that I would amend an existing process, as the previous one has failed and that is why I was appointed. Such as the second role I took at Unisys, where the finance team within the GCS business unit - which had always been a cash cow - could not identify where that division had lost serious money in the final quarter of the year. The team had not gone home for 3 days and still couldn't throw any light on where the results had gone side-ways. The CFO sent me in with a mandate to sort it.
But other times - such as at eWave - I was presented with a situation where it would have to be said that most people throughout the organisation were happy with the existing staff performance review, salary increase, and bonus scheme processes. The HR team had enabled the senior management team to devise a set of process across all of these important facets of employee recognition and reward that made no sense to me as I entered the business, for several reasons.
I won't go into detail here about the shortcomings of the (then) existing system, but from my seat it seemed like each of these processes were inefficient and unjustifiably complex, and missed the point of rewarding high performing talent. The bonus scheme had no relation to an employees' performance review and the salary review process - being executed on each employees' work anniversary - made it impossible to budget or forecast the salaries of the business looking forward, or to compare the salary of one employee to others in a holistic view.
It had to be changed.
Discussion with stakeholders
My first step was to verbally contact each member of the executive team to (gently) let them know my concerns with the existing processes. Sometimes over a cup of coffee, sometimes in a more formal environment. Just seeking to understand whether my concerns were valid and whether there were other factors involved that I had overlooked. Virtually all of them agreed that my criticisms were fair.
Letting each member of the ELT know that I wanted to change the bonus scheme process gave them an opportunity to raise issues that I needed to consider. Giving them an opportunity to provide input was an important apart of gaining their agreement to any revision to the system - as people do like to feel that they have had input to any change to a process.
The White Paper
Next, I documented the situation in a white paper. I took the time to discuss the pro's as well as the con's of the existing systems (although it was difficult for me to identify a whole lot of pro's). Whilst I didn't immediately jump to a recommendation of alternate processes, I did suggest in broad terms an approach that might address the con's without impacting adversely the pro's of the existing systems.
When drafting the white paper, I ensured that I included discussion of all of the matters that had been raised by the team in the prior round of discussions. On the inclusion of performance review data within the bonus scheme, for example, it was apparent that there were concerns that we needed to restructure the performance review system. So this became a commitment within the process as well.
I was then able to work the white paper into the agenda of the next ELT meeting and distribute a copy prior to the meeting, for discussion. The white paper focused only on the bonus scheme issue - but correction of this process necessitated addressing the shortcomings of the staff performance review and the salary review process also - so by focusing on one subject, the team was drawn into a process improvement cycle which had to address the wider matter of employee recognition and reward within the business.
The discussion at that ELT meeting was constructive and helpful, and the team took my suggestion on a better way of working as a starting point in establishing the new process. As expected, others in the group volunteered to enhance the initiative to include a new bi-annual performance review and salary review process, and working teams were established to address each matter.
The Result
Within a few months, we had a new global staff bonus scheme, performance review and salary review scheme and had been able to roll it out across our offices in Australia, HK and China, and in Eastern Europe.
Working with the HR team in each geography, we were able to bring all staff on the change journey and have all employees' performance review and salary recommendations submitted across the business, twice a year.
We were able to budget a set % increase for all staff and ensure that the overall review stayed within this limit, and the gender equality, experience, performance and other review concerns were being properly addressed and consistently applied within each geography for both the salary review and bonus scheme purposes.
Looking back, I still believe that this was one of my most rewarding and significant contributions to the business and an ongoing legacy for the hundreds of staff impacted.
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