Pacific Life Leverages Trust and Strong Partnerships to Achieve HR Transformation

Pacific Life, a long-established financial services firm, was looking for a trusted partner to help develop its HR strategy, enterprise talent management strategy and lead the company through its transformation journey, which required a review of its HR operation model and technology ecosystem. Carol Sudbeck, chief human resources officer (now retired), wanted to find an organisation well-versed in HR and managing change that could deliver a good blend of strategic and tactical planning and execution. She selected Protiviti because she believed we would bring a combination of strategic insight, specialised knowledge, and practical solutions to help the company address its HR challenges, optimise its workforce, and achieve its business objectives.

A three-year strategy

We worked with Carol and her HR team to jointly develop a global three-year strategy that addressed key business priorities including:

• protecting the HR team’s capacity to support enterprise transformation efforts
• developing an enterprise talent strategy, and
• maturing the HR operating model to be future-ready.

The operating model work focused on global HR processes, rethinking how HR work gets done to create capacity for more strategic work, and delivering a better employee experience.

The project was managed consecutively across several areas within HR. For example, the service delivery team was focused on changing the HR team’s processes and time spent from tactical to strategic activities. An initial assessment determined that the team was too reactive, lacked automation and self-service tools (increasing the time and costs involved in meeting employees' needs), had limited workforce planning tools, and lacked a holistic talent strategy to meet future business needs.

To get Pacific Life’s HR team to an HR 3.0 level, where they would be considered strategic talent leaders, our team recommended:

• Process enhancement and automation
• Technology enablement
• A service delivery model
• Change management and communications

From these recommendations, the service delivery team completed:

• Current state survey design and development
  • Survey conducted with client’s HR staff attained a 99 percent completion rate and identified more than 13,000 data points to be cleaned
• HR survey analysis and activity analysis
• Service delivery design sessions
• Service delivery model and responsible, accountable, consulted and informed (RACI) matrix to define roles

The value of a trusted partnership

It was important in this case to take the time to understand their unique needs and “right size” our guidance and recommendations to fit Pacific Life’s objectives. In addition to providing people advisory and change enablement work, we counseled the company on vendor selection and technology implementation. As technology team support or resources to support job re-architecture were needed, or the team had questions about global mobility or M&A, we were able to bring the right resources to the table. As a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Half International, we had quick access to a pool of experienced contractors that helped this client backfill existing roles to create capacity for the team.

Throughout this three-year project, we developed an important level of trust with Carol, which enabled us to ensure Pacific Life was successfully executing the strategies that had been so carefully crafted. Carol repeatedly cited these factors in the longevity of this partnership:

• Cost-effective solutions:  Pacific Life appreciated the value Protiviti provided throughout this project.
• Efficiency: Protiviti helped accelerate the project timeline by dedicating resources solely to the task at hand, ensuring a more efficient and timelier implementation of HR initiatives.
• Change enablement: Pacific Life understood that this transformation was a significant change for its HR colleagues, so wanted an organisation with deep HR expertise, but that also had strong change management acumen.

What’s ahead for HR?

One of the most pressing challenges facing HR in the coming years is navigating the evolving landscape of remote and hybrid work. HR professionals will need to grapple with issues related to employee engagement, maintaining company culture across dispersed teams, fostering collaboration, and ensuring equitable policies for both in-office and remote workers.

Additionally, as technology advances, the ethical implications of using AI and data-driven tools in HR processes will become increasingly important. Balancing the benefits of automation and analytics with privacy concerns, bias mitigation, and maintaining a human-centric approach will be a significant challenge. And, as workforce demographics continue to shift, including the rise of the gig economy and the aging population, HR professionals will need to adapt policies and practices to cater to diverse workforce needs and preferences.

Addressing these challenges will require HR to remain agile, adaptable, and proactive in adopting new strategies and technologies.