DeskAlerts in Your Change Management Process

In today’s business environment, change is often necessary to ensure the long-term viability of your operations. This is true no matter what size organization you have.

Managing change effectively, however, can be difficult. When change management fails it is usually because of employee resistance, miscommunication and a failure to adequately prepare for change. In fact, researchers have found that change initiatives are almost twice as likely to fail due to organizational resistance instead of operational or technical issues.

Change management that hasn’t been handled right can have results right across the spectrum that range from being inconvenient for employees through to being utterly disastrous and ruinous for the company.

When a company manages change effectively, it gains a distinct advantage over the competition and can become more successful.

Successful change management happens when you are able to minimize or stop employee uncertainty, reduce negative impacts on productivity and engage or re-engage your staff.

There are four key ways to do this, and DeskAlerts can help you every step of the way.

DeskAlerts is a powerful internal communications tool that allows you to quickly and easily communicate with your entire workforce simultaneously. No matter where your staff are located, no matter what software applications they are using at the time, every-one will receive a pop-up notification on their screens at the same time.

This gives you peace of mind knowing that everyone has been sent your important information, unlike email where messages can get missed.

1. Communicate with employees

Good communication is critical to the success of a change management process. You should develop a communications strategy and communicate regularly, keeping your employees in the loop from the inception of the change process through to the completion.

In the absence of direct, honest and regular communication from management, misinformation and gossip can spread, derailing your change management processes. This can lead to fear, negativity and hostility.

With DeskAlerts you can send out regular updates quickly and easily. These can be scheduled in advance to make it easier for you. You can send video content or hyperlink to more information that lives elsewhere, for example on your intranet site, ensuring your employees always have the full picture.

2. Help to overcome resistance

Employee resistance is to be expected throughout any change process. Human beings are naturally very resistant to change and reluctant to embrace it.

One of the reasons for resistance is because employees don’t understand the need for change and what the benefits for them will be. It might be that change is necessary for any number of reasons, from being more efficient and saving money right through to ensuring your company remains viable and people still have jobs.

Explain why change is good. You can use DeskAlerts to send hints and tips in a bite-sized format to reinforce your messaging.

3. Engage your employees

Engaged employees are far more likely to be invested in seeing a change management project succeed because they want what is best for your organization.

There are many ways to engage employees, but improved communication (discussed above) is one of them. Another way is to give employees a voice during the process.

Two-way communication is possible with DeskAlerts via the surveys, polls and quizzes module. You can quickly garner employee feedback throughout the change management process and incorporate it into your strategies.