When Maria Mercurio took over as CEO of RSPCA Victoria in 2002, she came to a passionate but makeshift organisation. Four years of change management has created a newer, sleeker organisation that’s lost none of its vigour. Melissa Yen reports
When Maria Mercurio took over as CEO of RSPCA Victoria in 2002, she came to a passionate but makeshift organisation. Four years of change management has created a newer, sleeker organisation that’s lost none of its vigour. Melissa Yen reports
While RSPCA Victoria may have built a strong reputation in animal welfare, the same cannot be said of its functioning as an organisation, its systems, structures, processes or accountabilities. Developing an organisation from scratch is no easy task but essentially, RSPCA Victoria had to evolve from operating as a welfare organisation into a more formal business operation. Even though staff are passionate about their work, a lack of communication on company-wide issues has historically meant there has been no understanding of how their roles contributed to the outcomes of the organisation. RSPCA Victoria had to go beyond being a mere collaboration of 204 people with a passion for what they do, to being an organisation with clear values and strategic direction.
This was what Maria Mercurio found herself up against when she joined the organisation as CEO in 2002. “What I inherited was an organisation with a wonderful reputation, public image and very high brand awareness that had been built over the last 20 years. What hadn’t been built was the organisation,” she says. And so began the efforts that would see RSPCA Victoria claim The Australian Graduate School of Management Award for Best Change Management at the 2005 Australian HR Awards.
In the beginning, staff consultation was not a priority for management and initially the staff was resistant to change, having previously developed their roles without any organisational reference. Employees were more concerned with output as opposed to outcomes. Industrial disputation was the main form of communication used with managers, since there was no concept of line management in place.
It therefore became essential for staff and unions, through the process of Enterprise Agreement negotiations, to witness management’s commitment to the organisational values.
Mercurio says that before attempting to implement any change to RSPCA Victoria, a planning process that looked at the strategic directions that needed to be addressed and then built into a communication and consultation phase was required.
“We try and ensure that people understand the change that we’re about to introduce, how we’re going to do it, why we’re going to do it and what the expected outcomes are,” she says. “We are very focused on doing this via the appropriate line management structure. Whether it’s multi-skilling, or a structural change, we talk to our staff before we attempt to impose any kind of a change. We’ve done that in every department of the organisation.”
Staff development became crucial to RSPCA Victoria’s efforts to increase the effectiveness of the organisation whilst ensuring they maintained an efficient, low-cost practice that could achieve excellent animal welfare outcomes. Resources of any kind have always been scarce.
Mercurio claims the HR department, which consists of just two managers, has been invaluable in driving the culture change of the organisation. “I see HR as an absolutely critical function, particularly in organisations like that I inherited, where we have to virtually create everything from scratch and we have to drive change. It is a key strategic function within the organisation.”
The most critical step in RSPCA Victoria’s change management process, she says, was a People Management Framework that “starts with how we go about attracting and retaining skilled people, how we induct them, how we develop them, how we performance manage them and how we plan for their ongoing development so they continue to add value to the organisation,” says Mercurio. “That whole framework from beginning to end was absolutely critical to starting to drive that change in culture of accountability that had been lacking.”
In 2003, an Occupational Health and Safety Management System was developed and implemented by a newly-recruited HR manager. Mercurio says the program was used as a key change agent, training people to understand their accountability for safety.
Designated work groups were established and the senior management team became the steering group for creating a safer workplace. Eventually safety became a focus for the entire organisation. Now, some 5 per cent of staff are trained safety representatives and WorkCover premiums have been reduced by 85 per cent over the last three years.
One of the main strategic directions of RSPCA Victoria has been creating a high performing organisation that, in the long term, saves money whilst producing better outcomes. Mercurio believes that the marketing and development team has been critical to this key change management strategy. Previously an outsourced function, fundraising is now sourced internally.
“We focused on marketing and development instead of outsourcing our campaigns, our appeals, all of our major fundraising efforts. We looked at reallocating or reorganising that department to bring those skills in house.”
The department’s senior manager took responsibility for coaching, managing and mentoring staff so that “we have developed the people that were here, we have skilled them up primarily by one on one coaching, by relevant seminars or conferences that come along,” Mercurio says.
“Some job rotation has also occurred in the department.” Among other skills that are now sourced internally are help desk support, training and the building of a new and cost-effective IT system by volunteers. “Again, it’s been about looking at the skills we need, looking at the skills we have, doing the gap analysis and then trying to close that gap,” says Mercurio.
She admits, however, that the desire to move forward and introduce change caused the organisation to make a few mistakes along the way. As so much change to RSPCA Victoria was needed at times, they pushed too hard, expecting too much in too short a timeframe.
The major lesson learned by Mercurio has been to “tackle it a bite at a time” when attempting to drive change in a business. “I think the biggest challenge is to try and judge the pace of introducing change. Cultures don’t shift overnight, organisations don’t change overnight – it takes time and a lot of patience and sometimes that’s difficult.”
