Discover the applications of HOW4
Discover how HOW4 enhances change and collaboration through Organizational Network Analysis, revealing how organizations work and guiding targeted actions for better performance.
Leadership Diagnostics
Cooperation Enhancement
Digital Transformation
Performance Management
Mergers & Acquisitions
Organizational Design
Diversity & Inclusion
Bridge Gaps & Misalignments
Leadership Diagnostics
From trial & error to evidence-based leadership diagnostic.
Challenge
A large company in the service sector turned to People Yield to increase the retention rate of its employees who held a middle management position. It had also noticed a low rate of successful onboarding of “newcomers”.
Insights
HOW 4 found work-related strengths and weaknesses for Teams and Employees and allowed to:
- Detect and characterize key leaders
- Compare leaders and team performance
- Assess influence over team
Actions
The company decided to:
- Learn from conversations with the top performer what they do differently to get connected in the organization
- Think about development programs tailored to such resources
- Establish a discipline for connecting newcomers to employees with central network positions in the organization.
Cooperation Enhancement
Make cooperation enhancement a strategic objective.
Challenge
The organizational size and personnel costs of a Food&Beverage company had increased significantly, but the firm struggled to transform the new resources into useful inputs to achieve greater Value creation and its share price was negatively affected.
Insights
HOW4 exploited data on Individual and Teams’ working and desired links and allowed to:
- Identify and characterize the most cooperative Teams and employees
- Assess the effectiveness of working links between Teams
- Compare the Individual and Teams’ results with those expected by design
Actions
The company decided to:
- Connect the individuals recommended by AVA to achieve quick wins
- Recalibrate how performance is evaluated to reward the team players and team performance as a whole
- Develop a role rotation program and accelerate the adoption of continuous feedback software
Digital Transformation
Recognise early adopters and potential technology angels.
Challenge
A company with an average old workforce asked People Yield to find the most suitable employees to be engaged in a plan of digital transformation and cultural shift from traditional tools towards new technologies.
Insights
HOW4 integrated the employees’ demographics with their behavior. This allowed to:
- discover the potential “agent of change” inside the company
- identify the employees that enjoy the “gatekeepers” position
- analyze the requests for organizational change from employees.
Actions
The company decided to:
- Identify, among central people, the potential early adopters of new technologies
- Co-create a program of activities to increase employees’ digital skills
- Start a reverse mentoring program in which early adopters spend time training lagger employees.
Performance Management
Complete your HR analytics with data on employee behaviors.
Challenge
A pharmaceutical company wanted to innovate its human capital metrics by adding a set of measures focused on the employees’ social capital and based on day-by-day interaction behaviors.
Insights
HOW4 calculated 7 different indicators at the individual level, divide in:
- Centrality indexes: allowed measurement of the employees organizational “power”
- Cooperation indexes: allowed keeping track of the individuals collaboration tendency
- Managerial insights: allowed getting some insights on how managers run their Teams
Actions
The company decided to:
- Integrate data on centrality and cooperation in the performance appraisal
- Consider a minimum results for some ONA indicators as a requirement for rewards allocation
- Adopt a continuous feedback app to keep track of the top and worst performers
Mergers & Acquisitions
Recognise opinion leaders and act on cultural blending in M&A.
Challenge
An energy company asked People Yield to identify its internal opinion leaders. In this case, the issue was not an M&A operation, but the equally crucial cultural change involved in becoming a renewable energy company from being an oil business.
Insights
HOW4 identifies a set of pivotal actors, in this case to be engaged in the cultural change process. This allowed to:
- Assess the “organizational power” of each employee;
- Measure the potential influence every employee can exercise on its network
- Identify the mediators, people particularly central in the communication flows.
Actions
The company decided to:
- Track the attitude of the key influencers
- Work with the influencers to disseminate positive messages about change throughout the organization
- Readdress the negative attitude of some key actor immediately, before it becomes widespread.
Organizational Design
New business models require new organizational designs.
Challenge
An Italian manufacturing company used the ONA to map the effective span of control of its managers and avoid the risk of burdening the structure with unnecessary organizational layers.
Insights
HOW4 developed a unique approach to the span of control analysis and allowed to:
- Unveil informal leaders and check if formal ones gained bottom-up recognition
- Calculate the number of collaborators who referred to them as “their managers”
- Calculate the index of complexity of the relationships that managers have to handle
Actions
The company decided to:
- Remove management levels that do not add value
- Strengthen other managers as ‘gatekeepers‘, streamlining the structure
- Reduce the rules so as not to constrain managers and prevent them from exercising their judgment effectively
Diversity & Inclusion
Detect bias and promote equity in workplace interactions.
Challenge
A client turned to People Yield to assess the existence of an unconscious bias in the composition of its employees’ networks that could create inequalities in the career opportunity of men and women.
Insights
HOW4 traced the working relationships of each employee. This allowed to:
- Get the ”broad picture” of men and women relationships in the company
- identify minority groups with potential inclusion issues
- Understand managers’ attitudes towards diversity (gender, nationality, age, etc.).
Actions
The company decided to:
- promote team-building activities to foster corporate cohesion (team sports, volunteering, outdoor days)
- Dive into the inclusion issue by interviewing peripheral employees
- provide training for managers on diversity & inclusion issues.
Bridge Gaps & Misalignments
Detect and solve alignment issues to improve cohesion.
Challenge
An energy company asked People Yield to identify its internal opinion leaders. In this case, the issue was not an M&A operation, but the equally crucial cultural change involved in becoming a renewable energy company from being an oil business.
Insights
HOW4 identifies a set of pivotal actors, in this case to be engaged in the cultural change process. This allowed to:
- Assess the “organizational power” of each employee;
- Measure the potential influence every employee can exercise on its network
- Identify the mediators, people particularly central in the communication flows.
Actions
The company decided to:
- Track the attitude of the key influencers
- Work with the influencers to disseminate positive messages about change throughout the organization
- Readdress the negative attitude of some key actor immediately, before it becomes widespread.