Developing Operational Efficiencies

The Challenge

A mid-sized, nonprofit organization struggled with a lack of departmental collaboration within HR, specifically between its Recruiting and Operations teams. This lack of collaboration resulted in high error rates, duplication of efforts, tedious manual tasks, and strained team member relationships. There was direct impact to the business in the form of delayed, missed or incomplete new hire background checks, disjointed onboarding and incorrectly scheduled and suspended start dates. Work being done on contracts was often interrupted due to inconsistent staffing.

The Approach

Tomi began with fact finding. She first met with the Vice President of the Human Resources department to gain an understanding of the organization, department goals, objectives, and desired future state. They also discussed department processes, hand-offs, time parameters, and past team member interactions. Tomi then facilitated meetings with the Recruiting and Operations teams both independently and collectively. She asked targeted and thought-provoking questions to identify the pain points, touch points, and potential root causes.

After analyzing the data, Tomi concluded that although these two teams appeared integrated, the processes, roles, and responsibilities were unclear, preventing the department from operating in a cohesive manner. She recommended conducting a Value Stream Mapping to document the processes, identify roles and responsibilities, handoffs, bottlenecks and potential areas to reduce manual tasks, and better utilize technology. To accommodate limited time and resources, Tomi recommended shorter, structured meetings with specific objectives. She led working sessions with the Recruiting and Operations teams to deconstruct the processes, step-by-step. She provided an objective perspective, reflection questions and challenged the teams to address true value-added vs. non-value-added tasks.

The Result

After working together for several weeks, Tomi led the team through the creation and of a clarified, cohesive, streamlined, and transparent process. She drafted an electronic process map and presented the new process workflow to the VP and both teams. The team began using the new process and maps not only to guide their work, but also to orient new team members. Additionally, the process map was provided to their Applicant Tracking System vendor to facilitate discussions on potential process automation.