What is Organization Development?

Organization Development at UVIC can be described as an ongoing effort to create a healthy, effective and productive organization that supports our vision to be a “university of choice for outstanding students, faculty, and staff from BC, Canada and the world…”

Organization Development (OD) services include Human Resource related consulting, coaching, and facilitation services that assist leaders in developing and improving individual, team, department and organizational effectiveness over the long term.

The HR consultants can work work with you to clarify what is working well already and help you create "what you want more of" individually and in your work team, department, or program.

The field of organizational development (OD) was originally based on a blend of psychology and sociology; it now incorporates many business elements such as strategic planning, production, accounting, and others. OD looks at how groups and organizations function - how people interact to accomplish their work. Common types of OD work include change management, conflict resolution, strategic planning, diversity, performance development, teambuilding and organization design. Our OD Services to support this work are described below.

• When to contact your HR Consultant
• Consulting Services
• Leader Coaching Services
• OD Tool Kit for Leaders
• Change and Transition Services
• Team Building

When to contact your HR Consultant

As a Manager or Leader, you can call or email us:

• when you need a sounding board or coach (i.e. someone to ask good questions and help you find your own solutions)
• to facilitate new and existing team development
• when a change is not going well or you are anticipating problems with a change
• when your team or department needs to learn new skills together (e.g. to improve communication, meetings, decision making etc.)
• when you have a problem, struggle, issue or conflict within a team
• for advice on how to work within the various union agreements
• when you are struggling with difficult employee relations issues

Your HR consultants can be called both to ‘find out the rules’ for dealing with employee relations issues and when there is no ‘hard and fast’ rule on how to handle something – when its about relationships, about working together or about building a better workplace.

Consulting Services

The HR Consultants typically use a consulting framework to guide their work with you.  The framework includes some or all of the following phases:

Contracting Phase

Where we help you clarify needs, identify desired outcomes and determine options for proceeding. We explore how we can support you in achieving your objectives.

Assessment and Design Phase

Where we gather more information as required and bring it back to the leader/team to identify areas for growth and build a plan for development. We may collect information using interviews, focus groups, surveys, observations, or review historical material.

Implementation Phase

Where we work with the leader/team to implement strategies, make changes, and ‘grow your strengths’.

Evaluation Phase

Where we seek immediate written feedback on our work and if applicable longer term assessment (e.g. 3 – 12 months) of results

Leader Coaching Services

The HR Consultants are available by phone or in person to provide you with one on one coaching and support for dealing with Human Resource issues. This may vary from a quick call for clarification on an interpretation of something in a collective agreement to 30 to 90 minute coaching call or meeting to help you determine the approach you want to take on an issue, decision or problem.

OD Tool Kit for Leaders

This OD Toolkit provides some of the tools that will enable you as a leader to tap into the learning, experience and creativity of all your employees. Although each tool is intended to be self-explanatory, please contact Ardis Myette at amyette@uvic.ca (Local 5446) or Terrie Conway at tconway@uvic.ca (Local 5490) if you want guidance in how to apply the tool with your team or work group. Our intention is to continually add to this tool kit over the weeks and months ahead.

• Building Healthy Relationships
• Check-In or Check-Out
• Ladder of Accountability
• Ground Rules
• Developing a Shared Vision
• Waterline Model
• Navigating OD Presentation (Power Point) - 2005

Change and Transition Services

The HR Consultants use various models for effective decision-making, problem solving and change and transition management :

Team Building

The HR Consultants provide support to new, existing and amalgamated teams using the following:

Developing Effective Teams Model

Typically they work with the leader or a smaller working group to determine what they would like to get from the teambuilding session and develop an agenda to meet those desires.  Depending on the time the group has allotted to the session, they may develop pre-work for members to help them do some thinking prior to the session.

New Teams:

New teams usually start by getting to know each other better and sharing their ideas and expectations for building healthy working relationships.  They then work on creating shared vision of their preferred future and making team decisions about the processes and procedures they need to put in place to help them with their work. This can be done by the Team Charter Process.

Existing Teams:

Existing teams may go through a process similar to the one outlined in the Developing Effective Teams Workbook (PDF) . This may include profiling the current team and exercising to increase awareness and teamwork.

The work of amalgamating teams is often more focused on bringing together existing visions, processes and procedures to help the team create something new.

The Consultants Role During the Session:

The role of the consultant during the session is:

• to help create a safe environment for people to learn from each other
• manage the time and activities of the session
• equalize the air time of the participants
• ask questions to test for group understanding and agreement
• represent a “different” perspective as needed