Adopting a Successful
HR Strategy During
Organizational
Change
TAKE A PROACTIVE APPROACH FOR A POSITIVE OUTCOME
INTRODUCTION
Organizational change is one of the greatest challenges an HR
director or team will face, and maintaining good employee mo-rale
while ensuring the retention of key team members in periods
of uncertainty requires a proactive approach. Employees must
be made active players in the changes that affect them – in oth-er
words, they must become change agents. In many cases, this will
involve HR working hand-in-hand with your company’s commu-nications
and executive teams.
Senior management cannot bring about major change alone,
and with the era of one-way, “top-down” communications over,
the importance of HR in securing the “buy-in” and participa-tion
of employees in major change management campaigns has
never been greater. The following is a case study from a major,
award-winning change management initiative at Laval (Greater
Montreal), Quebec-based healthcare company Sanofi Canada,
who began a campaign that engaged a total audience of over 425
employees.
engagement
RELOCATION AND CULTURAL CHANGE
In 2013, the sale of one of its business divisions prompted Sanofi
Canada to relocate its headquarters to a new, custom-built office
space in Laval’s Biotech City. This move meant much more than a
new office space: the company had identified a rare opportunity to
completely overhaul its corporate culture and reposition itself to
respond to the changing healthcare market.
A primary objective of the relocation and move to an open-plan
office became bringing about a transformational change in Sanofi
Canada’s culture to embrace collaboration, transparency and innova-tion.
After many years spent in closed “silo” offices, senior management
decided that the company would shift towards a state-of-the-art of-fice
space where employees would, for the first time, work side by side
with their colleagues in an open-concept environment.
Since the mid-2000s, in common with many pharmaceutical
companies of similar stature, Sanofi had begun experiencing a se-ries
of “patent-cliffs” as its exclusive rights to medicines serving a
broad base of the Canadian population began to expire. Challenged
By Marie-Pierre Lalande
Lightspring/Shutterstock
HRPATODAY.CA ❚ SEPTEMBER 2014 ❚ 41