The saying goes that change is good. Unfortunately, no-one ever said it was easy. But it’s getting easier.
In any big organisation, there are long-term employees who have remained faithful to the company through good and difficult times. That loyalty and familiarity with a company is tremendously valuable. Yet this throws up a specific set of challenges around implementing change. Hiring new staff always brings in a fresh set of ideas and ways of doing things. If you are a company looking to move with the times, how do you update the skills and talents of your workforce without looking externally? It’s a tricky balance to strike – about 70 per cent of change management programmes fail.
Being rigorous in your planning is absolutely vital. Treat the whole change management programme as a project within a project; executive sponsorship, separate budget, dedicated resource, confirmed deadlines and so on.
The next step is to ensure people value what you are doing. Start early – involve your audience in the decision-making process and listen to their ideas; make them part of the change and they will become advocates. Look for ways to reduce the risk of losing their interest.
A good change management programme should pass the “so what” challenge. If an engineer is presented with it and says “so what”, then you have failed. The best change management schemes are tailored around key motivators for the people they are targeted at.
The good news is that it has become easier than ever to get this right, by incorporating technology to deliver the programme. Smart phones and devices offer a virtual classroom in the palm of your hand. Instead of getting everyone in a room together, take the lesson to them. Tailor the programme to work around the individual.
Bitesize video tutorials, online tests, apps setting different challenges – they all give engineers the same lessons they would receive on a formal course, but for a fraction of the hassle and cost. Engineers that have been with companies their whole career have been given new skillsets; for example, engineers typically go into a home and fix an issue and that is it. Yet rather than companies spending millions on advertising to reach the consumer, some are introducing courses via their smart devices that are allowing engineers to cross-sell while in the property. It’s given some people who have been pigeonholed all their career a sudden and rewarding change of pace.
It’s from this level of personalisation of detail that we believe future change management policies will come. Gone are the days of monolithic programmes which fail to meet the objectives set – and that’s a welcome change.
John Henderson, ClickSoftware