Raising the HR Bar: Transforming Your Culture With Strategic Vision and Key Partnerships - Part I
Background:
Human resource professionals spend countless hours improving the culture of the organizations they serve. A significant part of the culture that human resources is able to impact is the hiring process itself. It should, indeed must, be as streamlined and as friendly as possible. By taking the steps outlined throughout this case study, new employees will feel confident in their choice to join your team. The word will spread and soon you’ll see an increase in the quantity of quality of applicants. Your ability to become even more selective will be enhanced. As you provide better organizational staffing and human capital management, your stock with internal managers will rise as well. But to get there, human resources must focus less on its own internal efficiencies and instead focus on the needs and wants of its customers: the employer’s employees and potential employees. A more customer centric approach will make your employees feel better about working for your organization and that will improve the work that they do, whether they are line workers or receptionists who are often the first point of contact with a potential customer.
This is not only a valuable case study for human resource professionals in both the private and public sectors, but it should also serve as the framework for an ongoing dialogue about successful change management. This eight part case study focuses on radical, strategic, necessary, and successful changes implemented by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), which is the second largest public school district in the nation. The fact that LAUSD was able to implement a large scale $95 million enterprise resource solution a full four years ahead of schedule clearly demonstrates how processes or technology alone can never transform your organization’s culture. More importantly, it is the “engagement” of employees who become personally invested in the delivery of the highest standards of service. The strategies you will read about closely parallel those explained in John Kotter’s and Dan Cohen’s book, “The Heart of Change: Real Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations.”
The Challenge:
In order to understand how successful was culture change spearheaded by Los Angeles Unified School District’s human resource team, it is important to first gain a sense of how they conducted business and the challenges faced by their human resource professionals. Before the cultural transformation, the LAUSD employed almost 100,000 employees. Of the 100,000 employees, 35,000 were teachers. The school district operated 700 schools for kindergarten through 12th grades, 150 primary centers, and about 40 adult schools. This massive infrastructure was built to serve almost one million students, of which more than 700,000 were students in K-12 and most of which were low-income and spoke English as a second language.
In order to replace teachers who were retiring and resigning and to comply with the requirements imposed by the federal government’s “No Child Left Behind Act,” the Los Angeles Unified School District needed to hire more than 3,000 new, qualified teachers each year. As daunting a task as this would be for an employer of choice, the Los Angeles Unified School District had a terrible reputation amongst potential new hires. In fact, they were known throughout the country as the district of last resort. Simply put, not only were the best teaching candidates choosing to work for more accommodating, smaller, neighboring districts, but even lowly qualified teachers were choosing to work elsewhere. Many of the districts teachers were not qualified to teach let alone well qualified to teach in such a challenging environment. The situation was so desperate that the district frequently hired any candidate with a bachelors degree, regardless of their teaching credentials.
The inability by the LAUSD to hire even enough lowly qualified teachers was tragic. Students who faced far more challenges than those faced by a typical student were not receiving a good education due to the lack of qualified teachers. It also was a shame for prospective new hires who missed the tremendous career opportunities available in such a large, comprehensive school district with an unlimited number of job opportunities and upward mobility into the administrator ranks.
To continue reading this case study, please go to Part II.
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