What are the key success factors of an HR transformation?

Our client Comdata (now Konecta) won second prize in the Ambition category of the 2021 Digital HR Awards, run by Future of HR with Deloitte, for its HR transformation project with Map & Match.

The Ambition category rewards a project — finished or under way — whose transformation goals are genuinely ambitious, sometimes well beyond HR itself.

We took the opportunity to ask Yan Leblanc, HR Development Director for the France region, what he now sees as the key success factors of an HR transformation.

What was the context for Comdata France's HR transformation, and over what period?

Comdata Group wanted to support its HR transformation after several significant structural changes since 2017, which accelerated in 2020:

• acquisitions;
• changes in its investor base;
• new governance and the arrival of a new CEO, Maxime Didier.

The group's intention from the outset was to turn those changes into an opportunity to anchor a distinct Comdata identity and culture ("OneComdata"), while keeping its agility and continuing to build communities as the pillars of its organisation.

That is how "Better know each other, better grow together" was born, sponsored at the highest level by the CEO and run jointly by the Transformation Office, the HR community and the Map & Match teams. The project set out to map the DNA of the top 150 managers through the talents behind the work they enjoy, and align them with what the new strategic roadmap demanded of management.

It was rolled out in 21 countries and 5 languages, over four months.

How did the HR teams bring managers on board?

Three things really made the difference:

• The meaning of the project and the level of sponsorship behind it. This is a new management paradigm, it carries meaning, and it was driven from the very top. Treating what people enjoy doing at work as a genuine talent unsettles practices built on hard skills alone, and adds each person's own drivers of performance to the picture.

• Joint ownership by the Transformation Office, the HR community and the Map & Match teams. A project like this needs methodological support to match its ambition, reaching the right layers of the organisation — and the HR community was on the front line. To carry the rollout and to share the understanding and the common language the approach depends on, the HR community was trained and certified by the Map & Match teams.

• Transparency and sharing. Our approach rests on both: transparency about what was at stake, with every manager involved; transparency about the results and how they would be used; and shared analysis. Mapping the different communities, by geography and by theme, brought out real patterns, and let us discuss the challenges ahead in terms of our talents. Every manager was also debriefed individually on their profile and management style by Map & Match experts, which did a lot for adoption.

What were the main stages, and the main obstacles?

Globally, the project ran in several sequences:

• defining the scope and the stakes with the CEO and the executive committee;
• a first rollout within the executive committee itself;
• a kick-off with clear communication to the managers involved;
• deployment across 21 countries and more than 150 managers;
• individual debriefs, mapping, analysis and sharing of results;
• in parallel, training and certifying the international HR community in the Map & Match methodology;
• team seminars with local leadership around their own challenges, and embedding the practice in HR processes — hiring, mobility, succession planning.

The obstacles were essentially about adoption, and about making clear that the T5™ assessment is in no way a tool for sorting "good" profiles from "bad" ones. They disappear quickly once the approach and the model are clearly explained and everyone can see what they get out of them.

What results did you get, and how did you measure them?

The rollout covered the executive committee and a top line of more than 150 managers. More than 120 further managers then joined the project. Together, that let us compile the data, map it and benchmark the results — anchoring the approach and turning it into decision support for HR, hiring and mobility processes.

Adoption has been a clear success, as the satisfaction score from the managers involved shows (4.7 out of 5). And the most tangible measure of adoption is when managers spontaneously ask to run T5™ assessments and mappings themselves, which is now the norm. That is when you know it has taken root.

We also measure that ownership through the cascade across the organisation: managers asking, unprompted, to map their own teams to know each other better and build their collective performance.

What would you advise HR teams planning an HR transformation?

It has to be sponsored at the highest level and led by an executive committee member. The approach implies a deep, long-term shift in the company's management culture.

Second, method. The Map & Match teams guided us through each stage so that the rollout succeeded and the project stuck, particularly on change management and communication.

And of course transparency and clarity in how the solution is introduced. Training HR professionals in the approach is essential here: it is what lets them inform, convince and carry adoption.