From scattered consultants to a central team with a sharp assignment
At a large public organisation, selection procedures moved to AgO. A part of the HR consultants moved with them, while the internal team was redesigned. The question went beyond structure: what is the assignment of the in-house recruitment and selection function in that new context?
The consultants had historically been regionally spread and centrally coordinated. The handover opened everything up at once: what stays in-house, who decides on what, how does the collaboration with AgO run.
On top of that came an identity question, while service delivery simply had to continue. As long as the conversation was about what was going away, no new way of working got off the ground.
Three interlocking work packages. First the handover itself: guiding part of the recruitment and selection specialists in their move to AgO, while ongoing recruitments continued and the collaboration with AgO was formalised through clear service agreements and fixed alignment moments at operational and tactical level.
Alongside that, the redesign of the in-house function: a new service offering with the accompanying processes, and the consultants who had worked spread across the regions brought together in one new team with a team coordinator.
Finally, shaping that team around its new assignment: who does what, who can do what, who wants what, with the aim that team members take ownership of their work instead of just executing it. The team coordinator, grown from within the group as first among equals, was coached in that new role. The work happened in co-creation: weekly focus groups, short work cycles, sounding-board moments with those involved and process-oriented working groups.
The moment when the team started talking about its renewed assignment instead of about what it was losing. The boundaries were no longer experienced as loss but as clarity: this stays ours, this is where we add value, and here we see learning and growth opportunities for all of us.
A new service offering, and a central team that works well together and takes ownership of the new core process. The collaboration with AgO has since started from shared expectations instead of from ambiguity.
The function evolved from a scattered group of consultants to a clearly defined HR service that knows what it stands for.