NOVEMBER 2019HR TECH OUTLOOK8In MyOpinionHR IN THE DRIVING SEAT FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONChristina Cowling, Director Change Management, VEON [NASDAQ: VEON]ByChristina CowlingWhat are the top priorities for HR leaders in 2019? According to Gartner* one of them is to support the companies' digital transformation; and linked to this, to build internal change management capability.During the last 20 years I have been an independent business change manager working on technology driven transformation projects. Most of my clients had no internal change management function, despite being global blue-chip organizations. I am often asked "where does Change Management best sit within the organization?" In a typical project, the change management work stream reports into the business project lead or sponsor. This is because the IT department may be delivering the tools to enable transformation, but it is the business that is expected to adopt new ways of working and achieve the transform results.But today, faced with an ever-changing technological landscape, many companies are looking to develop their in-house change management capability by building a Change Management Office (CMO). But where does the CMO best reside within the overall organization structure?Richard Newton, Partner at Issoria Change, a specialist Change Management Office consultancy states that there are a number of factors influencing the organizational "home" of the CMO. The most important factors relate to the level of active executive support and sponsorship and with this active support CMOs can be highly successful in almost any organizational location. "Nevertheless, our research shows a strong correlation between the reporting lines of a CMO and its maturity. This relates back to sponsorship, as well as closeness to the key people shaping the change agenda and to those driving individual change initiatives. For these reasons, we tend to see the most successful CMOs are based in teams like Strategy and Transformation, which not only shape the change agenda, but also tend to create a drive for more mature change management in the organization."Role of HR Business PartnersWherever you decide to place your CMO, the HR Business Partner has an important role to play. This role is above and beyond obvious areas of hiring, firing, outsourcing and
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