Change management is one of the most written about and least understood aspects of digital transformation for enterprises and small businesses. While different size businesses face the same challenges, small businesses are likely to see bigger rewards with a technology implementation that often sits at the heart of the need for change management.For more details please visit IT Services in Houston.
Although this process seems easy on paper, it’s more of a challenge in practice with less than 50 percent of initiatives meeting outcomes. Planning and execution may appear to be the biggest challenge to change management success. But a closer look reveals it’s always rooted in the lack of employee acceptance. That may not be the easiest thing to turn around for enterprises, but small businesses are often in the best position to empower its people to be the drivers of successful change management.
How People Drive Successful Change Management
According to a Gartner survey of over 6,500 employees, the best organizations rely on their workforce rather than executives to lead change. By putting people at the center of the initiative, your business can be better prepared for change management challenges and ensure successful outcomes.
The right approach is to look at the major roadblocks through the lens of preparing and involving people early and often. This is the surest way to avoid challenges before they become major issues in implementing change in the workplace. By building the process on a foundation of detailed planning, you can minimize problems and navigate unexpected events common to digital transformation.
Lack of Proper Planning for Digital Transformation
Technology like CMS, ERP, Office 365 and others go to the heart of how your workforce delivers positive outcomes and productivity through processes. Proper planning starts with a clear roadmap of current-state workflows to drive the technology implementation and rollout strategy.
This requires a plan for existing environment evaluation and optimization focused on the needs and experiences of the workforce. By involving the people doing the work every day you build the framework for plan development that includes:
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How new technology and processes will integrate with legacy technology and established workflows
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Identifying and training internal change management champions to promote the new technology, answer questions, and assist with problems
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Developing training programs ahead of implementation
Creating exploration teams made up of the people doing the work enables you to map processes and uncover pain points while also forming the roadmap for new workflows. By involving the workforce at all stages of planning and implementation, you can minimize the challenge of resistance to change.
Resistance to Change
It’s natural for most human beings to resist change based on the fear of the unknown. Workflows become engrained over time. Workaround that make up for the limitations of legacy systems are also hard to give up. Without knowing how it will change our workday and responsibilities, our resistance to change becomes the biggest challenge to the business.
Overcoming these hurdles requires being transparent by explaining why and how the change will happen along with the benefits that will be shared by the workforce on an individual level. To accomplish this, you should focus on clear cross-communication using all available channels to make it possible for conversations that value everyone’s input, perspectives, concerns, and ideas.
Failing to Communicate
Success of change management hinges on communication with the workforce, which avoids uncertainty and cultivates buy-in and ownership. Management must center the experiences, knowledge, and beliefs of everyone impacted by the change in the following ways:
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Develop a communications plan for rollout in the months leading up to the actual change and the months of post implementation
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Involve all employees as much as possible through meetings or brainstorming sessions to help during the planning, implementation, rollout, and adjustment phases
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Make the change management process a conversation with the workforce rather than a lecture
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Create a work environment where employees feel they are driving the change
That means involving each employee in meaningful decisions about their work on a process and departmental level. Many things can go wrong in a change management process, so having experienced support can mean the difference between success and failure.See more at IT Services in Houston
The Merits of Skilled Technology and Change Management Support
It’s expected that everyone within an organization will focus on the business and core competencies. The challenge is this structure leaves little room or experience for dealing with the complexities of digital transformation through change management.For more details please visit IT Services in Houston
Small businesses often lack the IT and change management experience to make all this possible on their own. The ideal answer often lies in having a skilled technology and change management support partner. Their goal is to help the business prepare for digital transformation via project leadership services.Also for more details please check IT Services in Houston
The right support partner brings a combination of deep experience with many transformations coupled with a fresh viewpoint and workforce engagement. This enables them to understand the limits of current-state processes and uncover the needs of the workforce. By engaging the people in all phases of the process, they can drive lasting change that positions the business for future growth and efficiency.