What I do as an HR Director in business transformation projects

For me, transformation begins the moment a company realises that what worked only yesterday is starting to hold back growth today.

The business has grown, there are more people and more tasks. Yet decisions are still made by the same few people, managers are buried in day-to-day operations, functions overlap, and responsibility blurs. Payroll grows, but for some reason productivity does not always grow with it.

That is usually when the request for change appears.

Business first, HR second

The first thing I do in such projects is try to understand the business, not HR. How the company earns money, where it wants to go, which functions are critical for that, and where speed, money and accountability are being lost today.

Because it makes no sense to start with KPIs if nobody knows who is accountable for which result. It makes no sense to hire new people before finding out whether the problem really is a shortage of people. And it is quite dangerous to cut payroll simply because it looks big, if nobody has measured productivity and actual workload.

Structure, functions, roles

After that comes the most substantial part of the work.

The org structure, functions and roles have to be reassembled. Sometimes that means removing duplication, sometimes creating a function that never existed before. Looking at management layers, headcount, payroll. Deciding which managers the business needs at its next stage and whether the current team is up to the task.

This is often where the hardest decisions begin. A person can be developed. Their role can be changed. The team can be strengthened. And sometimes you have to admit that someone was right for the company's previous stage, but the new task requires a different level.

Processes, not rules for the sake of rules

In parallel, the processes have to be put together. Not regulations for the sake of regulations, but a sound logic of work: who decides, who is accountable, who controls, how units interact, and by which indicators we even know the system is working.

Only after that does it make sense to talk seriously about performance management, KPIs, compensation and benefits, succession, leadership development, HR analytics and automation.

I am drawn to this sequence: first understand what the business needs, then build the system for it. Not the other way round.

Why an HR Director's job is wider than the HR function

That is probably why I see the HR Director's work as wider than the classic HR function. In transformation projects you have to deal with org structure, payroll, productivity, management and people. Sometimes sit over the numbers. Sometimes search for a new manager. Sometimes mediate a conflict between two current ones. And sometimes explain why yet another new hire will not solve the problem at all.

The result of a good transformation is that HR becomes less visible.

Because managers start managing, people understand their accountability, processes no longer depend on one irreplaceable employee, and the owner no longer has to push every decision through personally.

For me, that is the moment the system really starts to work.