Making A2Dominion’s HR fit for the future
by David and Jami-Lei
The challenge
A2Dominion is a residential property group with social purpose at the heart of everything they do. Their vision to improve people’s lives with the help of their services makes people feel good about working there. With the business introducing the new ‘Fit for Future’ programme, Director of HR, Penny St Martin, wanted to make sure the HR department was ready for the future needs of the business and enthusiastically engaged to become ‘one HR’. When Penny called Rambutan to see if we were up to the challenge of supporting them, of course we jumped at the chance.
The solution
We facilitated, challenged and advised on the journey of the whole HR department from working as multiple, diverse HR functions to uniting together as one team. First, the team needed to develop a vision to deliver, that all of HR could believe in, buy into and bring to life in their daily behaviours and actions. Using professional benchmarking, the organisation’s overarching vision and HR’s existing offer to the business, the team pieced all the functions of HR together and defined what they would offer to the business for the future.
The result
Following an organisation-wide employee survey, results showed engagement in HR had increased by almost 20% and the relationships between colleagues in HR had become a highlight of working at A2Dominion. Comments from the four awaydays complimented the energy, momentum and fun of the sessions while also adding there had been a positive change in attitudes and perception of HR.
After the events, there was a renewed focus on trust, career development and getting to know each other with regular team breakfasts arranged as a result.
Want to know more?
We conducted some independent research with HR’s internal customers to help the team look at how they currently stacked up against the new vision. With a vision of what HR wanted to be and results from Rambutan’s research on the current HR operations, the team began looking at how they would get to where they wanted to be, and what needed to happen to get there. We brought the whole department together to look at improving HR operations and the behaviours needed to achieve their vision. This resulted in the design of a new set of HR standards for A2Dominion.
As part of the HR programme to achieve ‘one HR’ and ensure the team were ‘fit for future’ we facilitated four awaydays. These were designed with specific objectives in mind whilst maintaining a flexible approach. It was important for everyone in HR to be able to thrive and add value, which meant working together as a team and getting to know one another better.
Each person in HR received psychological profiles and shared them with each other, to review how they worked together as a group of individuals. Different personality types brought out alternative ways of collaborating and communicating; similar personality types highlighted complementing priorities and ways of thinking. At the awaydays, every person made individual commitments to each other to help them work even better together. A lot of interesting and much needed discussion happened thanks to this, as everyone who participated in the awaydays came with an open mind and a willingness to contribute.
What Penny said…
“David and his Rambutan team have been an immense pleasure to work with. David’s delivery was engaging, unorthodox and challenging. He became part of our team and helped make the change real for everyone. We achieved all our objectives and saw a massive difference in our team’s engagement levels from the start to the end of our programme. I would definitely recommend Rambutan to everyone.”
Penny St Martin, Director of HR
If you’d like to know more about how we helped A2Dominion, give either David or Jami-Lei a shout, because they love chatting about this project.
