What is an HCRA?
An HCRA is a detailed analysis and assessment of an organisation’s key jobs and reporting lines, of the incumbents (and potential incumbents) in those jobs and a detailed report of any organisational or human capital risks. The report is supported by a set of human capital risk heatmaps which identify and categorise all identified risks related to jobs and job incumbents as “high”, “medium” or “low”.
Common risks are:
Jobs considered “mission critical” for an organisation’s strategy either unfilled or not created, outdated job descriptions, confused or overlapping reporting lines etc.
Key person dependencies, clusters of low performing employees in key functions, high turnover risks etc.
An HCRA is much more comprehensive that a traditional “talent map” or “succession plan”. Our approach combines features and discipline of risk and control self-assessment (RCSA) and diagnostic audits. An HRCA provides executive decision makers with hard data and metrics.
The Value of a HCRA for Risk Mitigation and Succession Planning
This approach enables our clients to make informed decisions on a very wide range of matters, including:
- Organisational Design, Reporting Lines and Job Descriptions
- Outsourcing and Co-Sourcing
- Localisation
- Succession Planning
- Diversity & Inclusion
- Onboarding and Off-boarding
- Leadership Development Programmes
- Variable Pay Plans
Al Massar Declan has in-depth experience in all of the above and we are able to design and project manage end-to-end implementation if requested to do so.
Our Deliverable to You
The deliverable is a dashboard and a set of risk heat maps containing details of:
Ranked by “mission criticality” based on our client’s business strategy.
Details on their:
- Fixed pay relative to the market (measured by a percentile);
- Performance, potential, exit risk and exit impact (measured as “high”, “medium” or “low”); and
- Biodata (e.g. age, nationality, length of employment, time in current role etc).
This comes in the form of:
- Risk Heatmap,
- A detailed narrative report of current state and
- Possible risk mitigation, together with our recommended approach.
Our Credentials and Our Approach
We have global experience in conducting human capital risk assessments. One recent assignment (2018-19) was for a global bank with operations in four continents. The results persuaded the bank to create a “talent council”, i.e. in which the bank’s global executive team meet twice a year with the sole agenda of identifying high potential (“HiPo”) employees and future leaders within the bank’s global network. The bank later engaged Al Massar Declan to design and implement (1) variable pay plans to retain and incentivise HiPos and (2) a one-year modular “future leaders” development programme. we have considerable experience in diversity and inclusion (D&I) and have run “Localisation” projects in several GCC countries
Our approach is risk-based and innovative. The scope of each analysis depends on the requirements of each client but a typical approach is to use a “T structure”:
- Horizontal: all roles reporting to the CEO (n-1) + the next two levels down (n-2 and n-3)
- Vertical: other roles below the horizontal line (down to n-3 or n-4) which are deemed “key” or “mission critical”.
Once the scope is agreed with a client, a typical project is in four phases:
During this phase we gain an in-depth understanding of a client’s strategy.
We begin our analysis by reviewing the organisational structure, reporting lines and job descriptions of the jobs within the scope of our project.
We review fixed pay relative to the market, performance, potential, turnover risk and turnover impact.
Mitigations are discussed.