REQUIREMENT
This banking group needed an HR and change management professional to lead a programme accountable for all HR, people, processes and HRIS changes, including HR function separation, as part of a major divestment. The scale of change was huge: carving out a fully functioning bank from a larger group; designing then executing the best ways to separate a new technical and underlying infrastructure and at the same time, keep all that in step with developments and changes under way in the parent bank.
SOLUTION
With experience in structuring and delivering complex and large-scale transformation programmes, the interim started to build out the organisation design required to create a complete bank, including Finance, Treasury, Risk and HR. This activity involved recruiting 1,500 new full-time employees (FTEs). She then led the programme to build out all HR and people changes associated with the transition, including employee relations, reward, terms and conditions, pension schemes and TUPE. She worked with the leadership teams, mapping out the employee journey and supporting them throughout the entire process.
OUTCOMES
The divestment was achieved with over 600 branches transferred to the new business. The value the interim brought was twofold: the first was Stakeholder Management, critical in this situation where each party had a particular interest and focus. She dealt with conflicts of interest and resolved disputes and, at the same time, maintained the practicalities of what was needed to be achieved between the two sets of stakeholders. The second was the technical project management skills she brought which enabled an extremely robust and rigorous approach to all governance and technical aspects. The HR Director at the bank commented: “All those component parts are so technical individually and the way I describe it, it’s like unscrambling an egg. Those technical components needed to stand alone as an independent bank and the interim was responsible for that.” Another contributory factor to the programme’s success was her independence and impartiality which created an environment of collaboration and a high degree of trust.
WHY CW INTERIM?
The client depends on Campion Willcocks to deliver their strategic change agendas through proven interims. This candidate was chosen because of her significant experience in managing organisational and cultural change, HR transformation and performance improvement programmes.