6 Tips for managing organisational change

Whether you’re intro­duc­ing a new per­for­mance man­age­ment plat­form or launch­ing a new busi­ness process, at some point, your com­pa­ny will have to nav­i­gate change.

Change man­age­ment is nev­er easy, but it’s nec­es­sary to advance and com­pete. New poli­cies will have to be intro­duced based on indus­try events or HR trends, or upgrades will need to be imple­ment­ed to keep up with com­peti­tors. What mat­ters is how you man­age your staff and help peo­ple through the change. With strong lead­er­ship and a sol­id change man­age­ment plan, you can ensure success.

Here, we explore our per­for­mance man­age­ment tips for man­ag­ing organ­i­sa­tion­al change.

1. Estab­lish a change man­age­ment strategy

Whether you’re imple­ment­ing a major change or a small alter­ation to an exist­ing process, you should first devel­op a change man­age­ment strat­e­gy. This pro­vides both pur­pose and direc­tion for your man­age­ment team and employ­ees and will keep you on track when you feel things start­ing to go wrong.

To cre­ate a change man­age­ment strat­e­gy, you should begin by iden­ti­fy­ing the change. Ask your­self the fol­low­ing questions:

• What is the nature of the change?
• Why is it needed?
• What prompt­ed the change?
• Was employ­ee feed­back solicit­ed regard­ing this change?
• How will it ben­e­fit the company?
• Who will the change impact?
• How many peo­ple will be impacted?
• What could poten­tial­ly go wrong?
• Why would peo­ple oppose this change?
• What’s the scale of the change?
• What is the time­line of the change?

Write out your plan and be as pre­cise as pos­si­ble — decide who will do what by when. Define all roles involved as well as what sup­port you will offer. What’s more, take the time to iden­ti­fy fur­ther plans to revis­it the fall­out of the change to ensure it has been imple­ment­ed successfully

2. Be trans­par­ent about how and why the change is happening

As with every area of per­for­mance man­age­ment, trans­paren­cy and hon­esty make the process much sim­pler. With increased trans­paren­cy comes increased trust from employ­ees — and this is nec­es­sary for employ­ees to tru­ly embrace change and help it succeed.

Dur­ing every stage of the change process, be open about why and how the change is hap­pen­ing and be clear about what you want from your employ­ees. Let them know what their roles will be dur­ing the change, what is expect­ed of them and how it will affect them. Employ­ees are much more like­ly to embrace change when they under­stand it. Keep employ­ees in the dark and you can’t blame them for being reluctant.

3. One-on-ones between line man­ag­er and employ­ee are a necessity

Human resources can facil­i­tate change by ensur­ing that line man­agers and team mem­bers are sched­ul­ing and attend­ing reg­u­lar one-on-ones. Dur­ing a change, com­mu­ni­ca­tion needs to be flu­id, authen­tic and ongo­ing. Employ­ees need to be allowed to ask ques­tions and man­agers need to sched­ule one-on-ones to dis­cuss how the change is progressing.

Make an effort to expand com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels with­in your organ­i­sa­tion. Be avail­able and acces­si­ble — incor­po­rate an open-door pol­i­cy and main­tain vis­i­bil­i­ty. Pro­vide dif­fer­ent medi­ums for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, such as online team col­lab­o­ra­tion tools. The more avenues of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that are open to peo­ple, the more dia­logue will flourish.

4. Employ­ee feed­back is cru­cial dur­ing the change process

Every inter­nal deci­sion you make with­in your com­pa­ny impacts the employ­ee expe­ri­ence. You want your employ­ees to regard the com­pa­ny favourably and you want to cre­ate process­es that will sup­port employ­ee per­for­mance while keep­ing them hap­py and engaged. With this in mind, it’s cru­cial that through­out the change process, you ask for employ­ee feed­back. This can be con­duct­ed infor­mal­ly (dur­ing your one-on-ones) or for­mal­ly (with the use of employ­ee sur­veys). What­ev­er the case, you need to make it clear to employ­ees that you want to know how they feel. Their input is valu­able and can help to stream­line the process fur­ther, whether you’re revis­it­ing the impact of the change at a lat­er date or intro­duc­ing an entire­ly new change. 

What’s more, when employ­ees are in the loop and involved, they will have more own­er­ship over the change, rather than feel like a bystander. This will increase the odds of them want­i­ng the change to suc­ceed, rather than push­ing against it.

5. Under­stand that there might be upset or resistance

Don’t expect all employ­ees to be thrilled about the change being imple­ment­ed. It’s nat­ur­al human instinct to be unsure in the face of change. There is com­fort in famil­iar­i­ty and pre­dictabil­i­ty. Pre­pare your­self for a degree of upset or resis­tance dur­ing the change process — and don’t pun­ish peo­ple for these emo­tions. Let them know that you under­stand and take the time to put them at ease.

6. Main­tain a pos­i­tive atti­tude to increase employ­ee buy-in

We’ve already estab­lished that employ­ees might be less than thrilled about the upcom­ing change. At times like these, employ­ees often look to their man­agers or super­vi­sors. They will be observ­ing your atti­tude to see how you feel about it. To effec­tive­ly lead your employ­ees through change, remain pos­i­tive, upbeat and enthu­si­as­tic. This will fos­ter moti­va­tion in oth­ers dur­ing this time of transition. 

You can also take steps to reward pos­i­tiv­i­ty in oth­ers — pub­licly acknowl­edge employ­ees who have gone the extra mile to sup­port the change in ques­tion. Send week­ly emails of encour­age­ment while dis­cussing recent progress. Tell your employ­ees that they are doing a great job and that you appre­ci­ate their efforts. After all, employ­ee recog­ni­tion is an effec­tive way to boost morale and ensure engaged employees.

At Advanced, we have helped hun­dreds of organ­i­sa­tions nav­i­gate organ­i­sa­tion­al change by enabling con­ver­sa­tions and improv­ing per­for­mance. Get in touch to find out how our con­tin­u­ous per­for­mance man­age­ment soft­ware can help you.