Implementing a Global MSP to Manage a Contingent Workforce

We launched an OCM plan with the goal of helping individuals understand and accept the new behaviors that would be necessary for them embrace letting go of the administrative duties associated with onboarding contractors and refocusing on more strategic hiring and retention of long-term employees.  Ultimately, the program would be a more efficient way to hire and manage the large network of contractors throughout the company and the OCM plan was seen as a critical success factor in launching a seamless migration.

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It’s important to note that at the time of the implementation, the company had a significant amount of change projects happening at the same time.  As the OCM leader, it was important for us to use tactics that could break through the ongoing noise. We spent a significant amount of time reviewing and revising our change objectives and goals.  We knew that implementing an MSP was a mandate from the organization in an effort to control costs and create efficiencies; however, we wanted to make sure the implementation was seen by our stakeholders as a positive transition that would make their jobs easier. Even though the rollout was regional, we had some unusual circumstances due to the size or the organization and regional process variations within the H.R. department. For example, even though a majority of our stakeholders sat in the North America region, we knew there were people throughout the company who remotely managed teams in other implementation regions. Therefore, a phased rollout would have its challenges.

 

An important part of our process involved close communication and coordination with the future MSP provider to develop a strategy that would seamlessly introduce the new program and create a positive experience for our stakeholders.  We developed a branded name for the program complete with its own logo for the launch.  

 

Our OCM strategy strongly focused on sponsors in the organization who would be accountable for the changes. Activities included engaging key sponsors in one-on-one meetings, re-explaining the concept, and securing buy-in prior to any type of internal implementation.  This was done through a series of road shows that involved high-level leaders from the H.R. team.

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Once our high-level sponsors were on board, we focused on our strategic implementation – executing our change plan. This plan included initiating a series of Webex conferences that included members of the H.R. team who were impacted. During these sessions, we talked about how the change would impact the organization, why a decision was made to initiate the change, and provided a detailed description of how the future state would look.  We also had follow-up sessions to introduce the MSP provider and to provide an opportunity for these key stakeholders in H.R. to ask questions. In addition, we launched a portal page that was completely dedicated to the program.  This portal provided a direct link to the program office, with live help and resources for users.

 

When it was finally time to launch, we sent a series of pre-communications, letting key stakeholders know that the program was about to go-live.  Our go-live communications included a full explanation of the change and links to various resources, including the portal page.

 

In order to complete our change management effort, we held a series of sessions with our H.R. stakeholders, as well as our own small change team to evaluate our process and evaluate our lessons learned. We also sent a series of subsequent “Pulse” surveys to measure the program against our set objectives and to ensure that users were satisfied with their overall experience.