In recent years, the environment in which organizations operate has been turbulent. People professionals have a key role in supporting and enabling the organization to achieve its goals at times of greater or lesser stability. To ensure the people team has sufficient knowledge and understanding to do this, your manager has decided the team should have good knowledge of the external business environment, the organization’s goals, its products/services and customers, organizational culture, and the importance of change management. Your manager has asked you to undertake some research, then share your learning with the rest of the team through an information sheet.

• An examination of the key external influences impacting or likely to impact the organization’s activities.
• A discussion of the organization’s business goals and why it is important for organizations to plan for how they will achieve these.
• A discussion of the organization’s products and/or services and main customers.
• A short review of different technologies available to people professionals and how these can be, or are, used to improve working practices and collaboration. You might consider, for example, technologies relating to communications, information sharing, record keeping, learning, well-being, productivity, or security
• What is meant by organizational culture and why it is important to foster an appropriate and effective workplace culture?
• How organizations are whole systems, in which different areas and aspects such as structure, systems, and culture are all interrelated, and how people professionals work and actions could impact elsewhere in the organization.
• Why it is important that organizational change is planned, and effectively managed.
• The nature and importance of different roles that can be played by people practice professionals, in relation to change agendas. You might consider roles such as gatekeeper, champion, facilitator, critical friend, or record-keeper.
• How organizational change can impact people in different ways, such as changing their role or status or financial situation, and the different ways people may respond to change.