OD Annual Conference - What OD Delivers to the Bottom Line

by Steve Frigand

[Steve was the winner of our January 2007 program giveaway, the video archive of the OD Network 2006 Conference. In this report, he covers of the many presentations in that source.]

Marcela Perez de Alonso
Exec. VP Human Resources Hewlett Packard –Delivered 10/24/06

Marcela is a Chilean psychologist who has worked and lived in many countries. For some of her professional career, she was an independent consultant. Most of it however has been in senior positions in HR and OD.

Today’s corporate Landscape is dominated by:
Ø Globalization
Ø Rapid Technological advances
Ø New regulatory framework
Ø Workforce ages (baby boomers to generation X)
Ø Recruiting and retaining talent


HP has a tremendous number of stakeholders:1 billion customers, 150k employees, 145k sales partners

HP Challenges: (Managing large scale change)
Ø Large scale transformation
Ø Managing the largest merger in the IT industry
Ø Recent restructuring

OD role is to
Ø drive the human dimension of business
o alignment of strategy with Organizational design
o Processes
o Culture
Ø Enhance productivity

New Operating Model (OD Lessons- Era of High Performance)
Ø Organization architecture- clear alignment with strategy
Ø Accountability
Ø Simplification (agility and ability to focus)

HP way of Measuring Progress in OD area is via an annual survey (Voice of the Workforce) in 20 languages. ¾ of employees filled it out. Benchmarked against peer companies. A measure of how they are living their values.

Lessons from HP (OD is not an afterthought):
Ø Business results demonstrate OD effectiveness (Which she didn’t attempt to quantify)
Ø Goal is to have OD be practiced by all HR professionals
Ø OD needs to be part of any change or business transformation