Organizations need to ensure that their employees are engaged in the change management process in order to make the transition successful. A change management plan can facilitate a smooth transition and ensure that your employees follow the change process. However, approximately 70 percent of change initiatives fail due to negative employee attitudes and unproductive management behavior. To avoid this, organizations must invest time and resources in their employees before and during the change management process.
The first step is to start with a vision. Having a common vision of how your team will work together and with stakeholders to make the change initiative a reality will help reduce employee stress and resistance to change activities. Once you've identified the employees who will play an important role in the future of your company, work with your management team to identify their needs, interests, and aspirations. This step can also help you determine the value of the exchange, which will quantify the effort and inputs you must invest.
It's easy to lose sight of the details when describing the big picture, but it's the details that impact employees the most. Team leaders may not have come up with these ideas, but employees can express both the challenges and the benefits of the transformation. It's important to carry out a critical review of organizational objectives and performance goals to ensure that the change takes your company in the right direction from a strategic, financial and ethical point of view. If companies don't listen to their employees and communicate changes effectively, transformations will ultimately fail.
Having leaders talk in person about what's to come can help alleviate employee concerns. Involving frontline employees in identifying changes needed to improve customer satisfaction levels makes sense. PulseLearning is an award-winning global learning provider with experience in change management consulting and developing attractive and innovative e-learning and blended training solutions. Through the change management process, you can identify skills or functions of your organization that don't fit your future needs.
If you involve employees in a change initiative, you must commit to implementing their recommendations that are within scope and meet requirements.
