Mike Sheridan, global HR Information Systems Director at pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, doesn’t hold back when it comes to confronting the realities of multi-country change management. Speaking at Webster Buchanan’s recent web seminar on “Standardizing Payroll – The Practical Realities”, he pointed out that success depends on a broad range of factors, from initial stakeholder buy-in to the practicalities of people management – and from top-level strategic decisions down to the nitty-gritty of operations. There’s no magic formula – but he has got a number of recommendations.

AstraZeneca has standardized its HR processes and systems in 23 countries so far as part of a major, continuing program to improve people management and HR service delivery in more than 100 countries around the globe. The project, carried out under the banner “hr.1”, has impacted more than 40,000 employees across the US, Sweden, UK and Asia Pacific. Sheridan has been program director for hr.1 since the beginning, managing it from inception to implementation and heading up a global team.

The drivers for the project will be familiar to anyone embarking on a multi-country HR or payroll program. The company was looking for consistency in its people management processes; flexibility; and transparency into people-related costs. The latter formed the basis for the business case that justified the project, partly through an analysis of cost avoidance: by identifying and costing technology projects that would have got underway in the US, Sweden, UK and elsewhere had it not embarked on hr.1, it managed to outline significant million-dollar ‘savings’.

“We did want to consolidate our IT platforms to reduce costs and introduce efficiencies into HR – but that was not the most significant driver,” said Sheridan. “It was part of an agenda, an unambiguous drive to become a truly global company and a people business and focus on the discipline of people management.”

For a company that has a culture of devolved decision-making at national and business unit level, one of the project’s greatest challenges was to encourage people to accept changes made on a global basis. But that was only one of many hurdles Sheridan’s team encountered. During Webster Buchanan’s seminar, Sheridan highlighted ten high-level lessons learnt from hr.1. spanning governance, project management, team management and collaboration with third parties. “They are learnings that come out of any major change project, but digging into them can reveal new things,” he told attendees.

Highlights from the lessons include:

Governance. Sheridan talked about the importance of the business case – and in particular, about ensuring that the owners of the business case are held to account. “We did not do sufficient work here,” he concedes. “For example, you need to ensure that governors and sponsors have constant visibility and show leadership, particularly when you’re standardizing across a devolved organisation and governance structure.” Business case sponsors should be encouraged to demonstrate their vision and keep it alive, so that local teams are less inclined to hang on to the status quo.

Second, he says, process owners need to be in place to drive though change and best practice, particularly when you’re dealing with global processes. Sheridan recommends contracting out these roles from the beginning. “We didn’t establish these at the outset, but we found that in a program without clear roles and overt contracting, the design of new processes got bogged down. To minimize the impact of change, what’s needed is a process owner who’s got the right mindset and frame of reference.”

Project management. Sheridan recommends organizations “over-invest” in project management, ensuring that it’s well suited to what they’re trying to achieve – particularly where the work is being carried out in virtual geographically-dispersed teams. He also suggests that companies invest upfront in defining the project methodology, which is important for standardizing processes and for implementing the program in remote parts of the world. “It’s important to be clear, more so than in any other event, about the methodology, since there’s much potential here for misunderstanding.”

He also suggests that regular reviews be undertaken, possibly by outside organizations. In AstraZeneca’s case a risk review was carried out by the risk practice arm of partner IBM Consulting.

Managing the team. Working with a disparate team spread around the globe, AstraZeneca carried out a number of initiatives to keep participants connected, motivated, aligned and productive. It was built around a “drumbeat” of communications through different channels and techniques, including face to face meetings and co-locating staff, backed by regular pulse surveys. In addition, a set of guiding principles was created by the entire team to encourage greater cross-cultural awareness, matched to a system of recognition and reward.

As with any project, accountability was important. Team members were also encouraged to focus on broader issues that might outweigh local concerns at any given time, which helped improve decision-making around cost, quality and time. Sheridan gives the example of being able to identify critical phases in the project when the timeline is the most important item to focus on.

Managing third parties. Sheridan recommends making sure your partners have sufficient project management resource as well as technology-specific implementation skills. “We had explicit contact at the most senior level and maintained it on a regular basis to ensure alignment of goals and escalation of any issues that arose,” he says.

You also need the flexibility to change contracts, as AstraZeneca did when it switched to a new type of risk/reward agreement with one supplier. “We changed the behaviors and actions – not just with third parties but within Astra Zeneca itself, to ensure success.”

Revisit the above. Finally, Sheridan suggests companies constantly review the guiding principles behind their projects. “At the end of the day, they are only words, but they take on a new force by reading them once and then, as the situation changes, gaining new insight from the learning that’s occurred.

A recording of Webster Buchanan’s web seminar on “Standardizing Payroll – The Practical Realities”, which included Mike Sheridan’s presentation, can be accessed through our seminar programme.