One of the biggest challenges any organization can face is to implement a large-scale, complex transformational change across the company… and to do it successfully.
Unfortunately statistics going back as far as the 1970s have shown there is a consistent 60 to 70 per cent failure rate for organizational change projects.
However if you have good leadership skills, your chances of success are increased greatly.
Employees are only human and it is natural to be resistant to change. If an organizational change is handled poorly it can do more than just annoy them and put them out of their comfort zones. It can affect job satisfaction, morale, physical and mental health, productivity and work quality. There’s a risk you could lose your best people.
Keeping employees front-of-mind in any change management process is going to be key to its success. Here are ways to minimize negative effects of change on your employees to make your change management process successful:
1. Leadership
Change management is never easy, and it is often messy and chaotic so many companies outsource their change management to consultants and human resources specialists. This is often a recipe for failure.
Employees perceive them as outsiders who don’t understand them or the company’s culture. This creates negativity right from the start.
It’s better to strengthen managers’ abilities to manage change and to develop their leadership skills so they can take accountability through the process.
[Effective Ways to Communicate with Your Team]
2. Set realistic timelines
You might want the changes to happen as quickly as possible, but that doesn’t mean that is going to work in reality once you unravel systems and processes and even redeploy staff to other areas.
Take into account your resources and current workloads and draw a roadmap to change that reflects this. Employees may already be slammed with current commitments and implementing large-scale changes on top of that could make them feel like they are drowning in work.
[How to Manage Change with DeskAlerts]
3. Don’t keep people in the dark
One of the worst things that can happen in a change management process is misinformation and gossip spreading among employees in the absence of clear and regular communication from management.
Have a communications strategy in place and use a range of communications tools to ensure all of your workforce is informed. Update regularly – even if there’s nothing new to report, just so your employees know where you are up to in the process.
[Deliver Critical Information to Your Employees – No Matter What]
During a change management process you can also take advantage of DeskAlerts’ inbuilt surveys, polls and quizzes module to quickly get feedback from your employees in real time – giving them a voice. This will let you tailor strategies that address their issues and concerns.
Consider investing in DeskAlerts - a powerful internal communication solution that will enable you to send pop-up notifications straight to your employees desk tops. DeskAlerts is a more effective way of communicating than email, so you can have peace of mind all your staff have seen your updates.
