Monthly Archives: September 2018

This week’s reading assignments related to planning for the evaluation.  Table 4.1 in our textbook illustrated a Checklist for Starting Up the Evaluation Process.  The following are the questions included in the checklist, and the answers, based on my case study which relates to creating a new process to handle leaves of absences and requests for accommodations.

What needs to be achieved through the OD Intervention? 

This OD Intervention needs to result in a process by which all requests for Leaves of Absences and accommodations from our associates are handled consistently and according to federal, state, and local laws.  Additionally, the experience needs to be positive for the associates, providing them with confidence that their requests are being handled professionally and correctly.  Finally, the process should result in associates who receive the appropriate leave of absence or accommodation they need, based upon their own personal medical condition or to care for a family member based on their medial condition.  This approved leave or accommodation should result in their ability to return to work and continue to perform the essential functions of their job.

What would the desired change state look like?

A clearly outlined new process for requesting leaves of absences and accommodations that is well communicated to associates and managers.

What metric will be used to measure success for the desired change after the intervention?

• # of approved leaves of absences and approved requests for accommodations
• positive associate experience- as measured through VOC survey
• lower costs of legal claims on the basis of disability

Who / which are the targets of change (e.g. people/group/units)?  What level of change do we need?

• Associates who meet the eligibility criteria for leaves of absences or accommodations (i.e. eligibility requirements under FMLA and other state and local laws) as well as the eligibility requirements set forth by our company’s Leave of Absence Policy.
• Managers
• HR Managers
• NEW- team that will be responsible for managing the requests for LOA and accommodation

The change that is required will be change in behavior and change in process and procedure.

What are the specific evaluation expectations at each level?

Associates – The evaluation expectations are that they understand the policy and procedure by which they would make a request for a LOA or accommodation.  Are they calling the right team?  Are they prepared with the appropriate information that htey will need to provide?  Do they know if they meet the eligibility requirements?  Do they know what is required to return to work?  Do they know who to contact for questions?  Do they know what will happen with their job during this time?

Managers – Similar to the associates, they need to understand the policy and procedure for LOA and accommodation, since associates on their team may need to request a claim at some point in the future.  In addition to the questions listed above, they also need to know what they should do and what they shouldn’t do.  A fundamental goal of the change effort is to remove the manager from this process in an effort to shield him/her from being aware of any medical information of their associate.  Therefore, if an associate comes to them with a question about LOA or accommodation, the manager should stop the associate and direct them to the team that will be handling this.

HR Managers will be targets of change as well because their responsibility around LOAs and accommodations will be different.  They should not be the final decision maker on whether a request for LOA or accommodation is granted.   They will be involved in decisions related to approving a request for an on-the-job evaluation, however.  They will need to help evaluate the associate’s limitations and their ability to perform the essential function of their job.  By understanding this, they will be able to help make a decision on whether a request for accommodation / LOA is reasonable, or prevents an undue hardship.

New Team – They will need to be intimately familiar with the policy and procedure for LOA and accommodation.  They will need to be subject matter experts and one way to evaluate this level will be to assess whether they were able to effectively handle all requests for LOA and accommodation in a timely, consistent manner and in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws.

Are the evaluation expectations aligned with the aims and levels of the change intervention?

Yes

Are you in agreement with each level of targets, with regard to evaluation goals and objectives?

Yes

Table 4.2 in our textbook illustrated Influential factors of Evaluation Planning Strategy.  The following are the resources that need to be considered for evaluation, based on my case study which relates to creating a new process to handle leaves of absences and requests for accommodations.

Time for designing, data gathering, analyzing and reporting:

Fortunately, all of the sources that are needed to provide these metrics exist today and do not need to be created.  Therefore, the time needed for data gathering, analyzing and reporting should be approximately 1 -2 weeksa repoR

Time for employees participating in the evaluation:

The evaluation components that involve people will be providing a short survey to associates regarding their experience with the LOA and accommodation process.  This would take them 10-15 min.  According to recent reports, there are 100 associates who either request a claim or have a question related to LOA or accommodation / month.  Therefore, in a month, this would require 25 hours.

A Manager focus group should also be a part of this evaluation.  The focus group discussion would be approx 1 -2 hours.  We would want to run 3-5 focus groups.

An HR Manager focus group should also be a part of this evaluation.  The focus group discussion would be approx 1 -2 hours.  We would want to run 3-5 focus groups.

Professionals from HR, Finance, Social Research, etc.

HR Managers, HR Directors, Director of HRIS (Human Resources Information System), Director of HR Shared Services Team, Associate General Council (regarding legal claims and costs), and Sr. Financial Analyst – HR.

Consulting Costs

We may need to plan for outside counsel to assist with the creation of this new process to ensure that it is legally compliant.

We may need to consult with our 3rd party – FMLASource, as well to help us create this new process which will require integration with their team.

Opportunity Costs (e.g. deferred decision)

The time that it takes to create this new process will present as an opportunity cost because in the meantime, there are associates that will require a decision on their requests for LOA or accommodation.  If these requests are not handled appropriately (before our new process is implemented), there may be legal risks involved.

Technology

There is a system that is used in our HR Shared Services group – Footnotes.  This system has the capability for handling LOA claims, therefore we will leverage this technology.

Assignment:  Alignment with the business or organizational strategy will provide support for your OD efforts. If leadership can clearly see how planning and completing an evaluation will benefit the final outcome, they will often listen and provide resources for the evaluation.

• Using your case study, provide the information that will demonstrate an alignment between the change evaluation and the organization’s goals.
• Utilize the readings and other resources to support your plan. Cite your sources.

________________________________________________

CHANGE EFFORT:  Creation of a Leave of Absence and Accommodation Team

Change efforts at my organization typically lack time spent on evaluation.  Based on this week’s lessons, this isn’t surprising, since, “Only 30% of OD consultants say they conduct rigorous evaluations; others simply rely on “gut instinct” to determine whether an OD intervention has worked” (Lesson 5 Commentary).  Part of the work needed is to convince key business leaders (shareholders and decision makers) that investing in an evaluation would be wise.  Since money will be spent on any solid change effort, the evaluation fundamentally needs to answer the question, “was it worth it?” (Rothwell et al., 2017).

One way that needs to be included as part of a business case for conducting an evaluation is that the change effort objectives is aligned to Key Organizational Objectives.  The Stakeholders need to understand if this change effort was successful in positively impacting the business objectives.  If it isn’t, then we need to understand specifically what needs to be “tweeked” in order to do so.  Before I lay out each of the business objectives, I think it is also wise to consider the arguments that are typically made that will prevent groups from conducting evaluations.  The biggest arguments  against conducting an evaluation could be time and money.  However, taking the time to conduct a thorough evaluation could identify mistakes that could be costly.  If those mistakes were left untouched, the time that would be required to fix them would far outweigh the time needed to conduct an evaluation (Rothwell et al., 2017). Another argument could be that it may disrupt associates who already may be resisting the change .  However, Involving participants in the evaluation by getting their feedback about the change will help increase morale and the likelihood for them to continue to support the change (Rothwell et al., 2017). These fundamental benefits should be prepared ahead of time and woven into the business case to leadership.  

Jones, C. M. & Rothwell, W. J. (2017). Evaluating Organization Development: How to Ensure and Sustain the Successful Transformation. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press (Taylor & Francis Group).

In this week’s readings, we learned about Kirkpatrick’s four levels of evaluation and how to apply it to change efforts in order to assess if it met the objectives.

I will continue to use the creation of our Leave of Absence and Accommodation Team as the change effort for these assignments.

CHANGE EFFORT TITLE:  CREATION OF THE LEAVE TEAM

LEVEL I- REACTION:  How well people like the change effort

The group that was assessed to have the most to benefit from this change was the HR Managers because in the absence of a centralized team, they needed to handle all requests for LOAs and accommodations for their respective areas.  When we decided to create the Leave Team, we held a 2-day meeting with the HR Managers to inform them about the purpose of this team and assess their feedback.   There were some questions about how their role would change as a result of this, but once it was clear that they would have less responsibility around this work, which also minimized any risk that might come their way (due to handling these requests inconsistently), the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.  One HR Manager quickly asked, “if this is going to be piloted, could I be the first to volunteer my Area for the pilot?”.

LEVEL 2- LEARNING:  How much people learned

The HR Managers were the first group to receive the information about the Leave Team, however it was also necessary to inform all managers so that they would be able to cascade the information to their associates and reinforce the new process as needed.  Their jobs were also changing, but again, the result was that they would have less responsibility  because we were now telling them that if any of their associates would come to them to discuss a need for an LOA or an accommodation, they should tell them not to disclose the information to them, but rather to…”JUST CALL THE LEAVE TEAM”.  To provide this information to this group, we created a short informational video and added it to every managers learning plan in the Learning Management System.  Following the video, they needed to complete a short survey assessing their reaction to the information, but also complete a quick “quiz”.  They needed to achieve a score of an 80% or higher in order to officially complete the training.  This was a way in which we assessed the learning around the change effort.

LEVEL 3- BEHAVIOR:  How much people changed on the job behavior as a result of the change effort

We launched the Leave Team in October 2017, and one of the metrics that we began to look at immediately was the call volume to the Leave Team.  If we were going to see an increase in call volume to the Leave Team month – over – month, this would indicate that the awareness of the Leave Team was growing with associates and managers.  Associates wouldn’t be able to have a claim for a leave of absence or accommodation without calling the Leave Team. Indeed, we saw more calls from month to month, indicating that people were learning about the new process.

Additionally, we depended upon feedback from our HR Managers and Managers to let us know the types of questions that they were getting, and whether they were experiencing any challenges with this change.   The feedback from both of these groups was only positive.  We were honestly expecting that there might be some expressed challenges with the new process, but we did not receive any complaints.

LEVEL 4- RESULTS:  How much change benefited the organization

Now that we have seen a year since the introduction of the Leave Team and the new Leave of Absence and Accommodation process, the metrics that have been aligned to the objectives have been very positive.  From an associate experience standpoint, we have continued to hear positive feedback from associates who have stated (in emails and in survey responses) that they believe that their situations are handled with more professionalism and care and they have confidence that their needs are being heard and met appropriately.  The feedback from the Managers and HR Managers have indicated that they also have felt a positive impact from the Leave Team and have more time to focus on other matters related to the business or other associate needs.  Additionally, the feedback from the Legal Department is that there has been a significant reduction in claims related to medical leaves of absence and disability (ADA and FMLA discrimination charges).  This, alone, has saved the company a tremendous amount of money.

Prior to outlining the business case for this evaluation, I’d like to clarify the business outcomes that were identified around this change effort.

The creation of a Leave of Absence and Accommodation Team will provide:

1. Increased Compliance and Reduced Legal Risks to the Organization (related to federal, state, and local laws that pertain to associates’ right for leaves of absence for their own personal medical issue or to care for a family member)  This can be disastrous to an organization’s reputation if they are not in compliance with the law because these cases are quickly highlighted in the media and come with enormous costs as well.
2. Increased Associate Satisfaction (related to the experience involved with a request for LOA or accommodation)- Do associates feel confident that the organization is making every effort to accommodate their needs?  Are the resources accessible and are they easy to deal with?  Typically, in a situation where an associate has a medical issue or they are dealing with a family member’s health issue, they are already stressed out and upset.  The last thing that they need is an overwhelming, confusing, rigid LOA and accommodation process.  They also shouldn’t feel compelled to disclose any medical information to their managers.  The Leave of Absence Team should be the centralized control room for this information.
3. Increased Business Productivity (associates who are able to meet the essential functions of their job, less OT to cover for LOAs, Managers can spend more time on the operation vs. handling LOA requests, etc.)  This also reduces the possibility of managers knowing any medical information about their associates.  Privacy laws have prompted organizations to contain confidential medical information about their associates.

Clarification around these outcomes then allows for clarity around the KPIs associated with this evaluation:

1. Legal Costs associated with claims of discrimination on the basis of disability
2.  Less time and resources associated with handling claims (would include associate salaries on the time spent handling these claims)
3. Reduced number of “open ended” leaves of absence
4. Increased associate satisfaction – using surveys to assess associate satisfaction around how their LOA or accommodation was handled
5. Reduced Turnover related to “Failure to return from LOA”, assuming that their LOA was handled appropriately with the goal of getting the associate back to work, able to meet the essential functions of the job)
6. % of time Managers are spending on requests for LOA and accommodation – this should be reduced significantly because the Leave of Absence Team will be handling the majority of the work around this.

I did some research and found that Absenteeism could be another KPI.
This indicator measures the absences of associates due to lateness, sick leave or excused or unexcused absences. Absenteeism definitely impacts the productivity in a department or a location (“7 KPIs,” 2017).

The business case for conducting an evaluation is connected to the business outcomes that have been identified, which align to Key Organizational Objectives.  The Stakeholders need to understand if this change effort was successful in positively impacting the business objectives.  If it isn’t, then we need to understand specifically what needs to be “tweeked” in order to do so.

7 KPIs for Human Resources Managers. (2017, May 19).  Retrieved from:  https://factorialhr.com/blog/indicators-human-resources-kpi/