Achieving World-Class: DC Water Human Capital Management Program

摘要

In 2013 the water sector launched the Utility of the Future1 initiative, an industry-wide, triple bottom-line effort premised on embracing innovation and technology, improving performance, lowering cost and increasing revenue. DC Water on its path to embracing the challenge of creating and sustaining our enterprise as a utility of the future launched its Achieving World-Class, business-unit maturity project in 2016. Putting the early findings of this project to use DC Water made the decision to boldly restructure and refocus our human capital management program. By essentially blowing up our human capital management program, DC Water committed to not only becoming a Utility of the Future, but also launching a model of human resources management that defies typical perceptions of the public sector. Our aspirations are to create a human capital management program focused on strategy versus transactions by focusing on two critical but often forgotten or undervalued measures of any high performing enterprise - culture and engagement. DC Water's review of industry research coupled with the early findings of our business maturity project demanded we make a bold change to our human capital management program. In the initial stages of our program assessments we were endeavoring to do many of the same things most ambitious human capital management programs consider. Recruit the best talent; build talent pipelines; realize high levels of efficiency and maximize return on investment for our human capital management programs. Internally we formed workgroups focused on identifying policy and process changes that could optimize use of our limited resources. Much of the research we read indicated that our efforts were misguided. Efficiency, optimization and return on investment are always valuable considerations. However, the key to enhancing the value of our human capital management program required us to focus on strategy and people. Brian Hults, Vice-President for Global Organization and People Development at Newell Rubbermaid, captures this sentiment in an article he published stating: In order to add significant value to a business, HR must be able to support and enable the execution of strategy through building organizational capability. This is a role that cannot be automated, shared as a service, offshored or outsourced. It comes from an intimate knowledge of a business's strategy and the existing capabilities of the organization. The great advantage that HR has in this area is that, ultimately, all strategy is executed by people -people who need to be supported, trained and equipped to fulfill the strategic vision'.～ 2 Embracing the need to transition our human capital management program from a business unit focused on transactions to a strategic and innovative unit that enhances business outcomes DC Water decided to reorganize its Human Capital Management (HCM) department. In doing so, we did something that is often not considered when reorganizing a human resources department. We increased headcount instead of cutting it and created positions that offered little to no contribution to our transactional capacity or efficiency. Instead we recruited talent with skills in organizational development, project management, and strategy execution. We then marshaled that talent to solely focus on issues often considered soft: onboarding, change management, performance management and engagement. The primary focus of this presentation will be to provide insight into how organizational design can be used to maximize the contribution of your human resources department to business, strategy and operations. We will also explain how aligning the mission, vision, values, strategic planning and operational priorities of an enterprise leads to a results-oriented and high-performing culture and the importance of measuring engagement and individual employee performance to drive culture and engagement.