Get your employees excited about change
Posted on May 08, 2017 by Faiyaz Farouk, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.
If you don't keep up with change, your company will not make it. Article discusses how to get your employees excited about the change needed.
Over the last decade, many things have changed in the workplace that almost everyone has adapted to. Fast processing computers, emails, web conferences, even corporate cell phones which I’ve always labeled the “dog leash” as a joke. Two things that have not changed: change and people. The two are intricately intertwined; one always affects the other. Managing and cultivating one, therefore, cannot be done without impacting the other.
This concept is one that many organizations often overlook. Several years ago, I had a contract with a national energy company to audit their customer service and sales operations of their branches. The company had hired a training firm to create a customer service platform for every customer service agent that answered phones to follow. It was a system to asking good questions and trying to upsell the customer. The company spent $1.5M on the services, with an additional $2M in deployment costs which included training the new employees and creating manuals. The company had amazing successes with this new protocol only because they had nothing to start with. My firm was hired to audit and find out why there were so much resistance to the new protocol. Only 40% of the 2,700 branches actually used the new protocol daily. Executives of the company felt that they needed to make it into a company policy and try to force it down on people. The results did not change. Only 40% of offices still used it after a year. Many managers didn’t believe in the protocols and didn’t want to follow the new ways regardless if it was policy. Here is what I found organizations can do to get your employees excited about the change.
1. Stop putting the responsibility on HR department.
As much as I value theHR department, they aren’t business people and don’t directly work with the departments where change is needed. Often times I have found the Executives assigning the “change” tasks to HR because they don’t want to deal with it. This is a clear sign of poor leadership. If the change is company wide, it needs to be inclusive of every department head including HR. The facilitators should not be the HR head. It should be the organizational development person, or an outside consultant who specializes in change management and can conduct a workshop for a day or two.
2. People participate in a world they help create.
Get your employees to help with the change, instead of pushing it down your employees as a new rule or policy. Put together a focus group, let them know that change is coming and how it will benefit them. Be honest about the change because no one likes to be lied to. If you lie to them, you will lose their trust and lose the excitement of the change. In the recent years, I have been exposed to world of positive psychology to bring about change and initiatives and the best model that I am proud to say I am a part of is “Appreciative Inquiry”. This is a summit that includes every stakeholder that is affected by the change. Using a framework created by my Professor from Case Western University David Cooperider.
3. Provide clear vision and direction.
People are more inclined to change behavior when their leaders have a clear sense of direction and present their vision in a compelling way. Strategy is a framework that guides the choices that determine the nature and direction of an organization. Communicate, communicate as often as much as possible. The challenge is to ensure people feel the leadership of the organization has clearly communicated the direction. Peter Drucker said it best when he stated “develop common understanding is more important than getting everyone to agree with the direction”.
4.Build the right infrastructure for change.
An organization’s structure is a kind of skeleton that holds together its disparate parts. This infrastructure must be aligned with the strategy and it must be “people-friendly.” Prevailing wisdom suggests building the infrastructure first and then helping people adapt through change initiatives. But people adapt structures, systems, and processes to their needs, and needs change. Therefore the infrastructure must always be evolving. People are the measure of what the structures, systems, and processes should be.
5. Create a learning environment.
A learning environment encourages employees to learn new skills to adapt, and continuously self-improve. It extends beyond training and seminars to include the way an organization nurtures and shares its collective wisdom. While companies must provide the tools, equipment, and systems for employees to excel, the emphasis should be on developing critical thinking skills and using them. When people become more proficient problem solvers, decision makers, and planners, performance increases dramatically.
Share with us your thoughts and experiences of what you’ve experienced with changes you’ve tried to implement in your working life.
Thanks for reading!
