YOUR CORPORATE TRAINING EXPERTS
Let’s face it, no one loves change.
In many cases it’s the fear of the unknown.
‘What will this change mean for me?’ is usually the first and most important question for employees.
Organizations that tend to spring change on their employees deal with the most resistance while those that can rollout an effective change management plan before the change takes effect, enjoy more acceptance.
According to a study by Towers Watson, 75% of change management programs fail1 across organizations today. Here are three of the major reasons why.
Poor Planning
Although this sounds like an obvious step, creating a thorough and well thought out plan is not as common as you would think when it comes to change initiatives. The problem is that the leaders or managers are more focused on implementing the new change and less on spending what can take a long period of time, thinking through how to address all areas that will be affected.
Take the time to think about all the stakeholders that will be involved and the engagement and communications strategy behind addressing them.
Also consider the change roles that are required and what the new process for decision making will be as your roll out happens
Before announcing a big change, it is also important to plan around the timing and critical dates. Are there hard deadlines and what do they look like, who will be affected and what needs to be done before reaching these dates?
Lack of Leadership Support
If your leadership team is not 100% behind your change initiative how can you expect employees to be excited? When being told about a change, employees will naturally look to their managers for explanations and information. The way that this level of the organization communicates with regards to the change can make all the difference. Before initiating any changes or announcing it to the company ensure that your leaders are all on board and clearly understand the plan, the time line, the implications and most importantly, how it will specifically affect everyone on their team.
Insufficient Training to Support Change
This is where your job as Learning Leaders comes in. A new systems roll out, a shift in organizational structure or even a physical move to a new location are just some examples of change that require the right training for all employees. Training needs to be engaging, timely and relevant to make sure that content is understood and followed by your employees. The first step to designing the right training it to conduct a training needs assessment. Through this process you’ll be able to identify the skills and knowledge gaps and address these with your training.
Consider additional factors like your timeline for learning, the structure that you’re dealing with (remote, in house, contract etc.) and finally the learning styles of your employees. Are you working with a group that will take easily to eLearning and benefit from microlearning or is this a situation where you need to have in-class training? How will you implement it and how will the LMS play a role?
Going through the process of creating change, building the plan and having it all fail at the training phase in not a new issue for clients that we continue work with. That is where TrainingFolks’ expertise is best utilized.
Contact the team anytime for additional support in creating effective training for change initiatives coming up with your organization. We also have the right Change Management professionals who can work with your team to build the right plan in place from start to finish.
Keeping these three factors in mind along side others that will affect your organization and unique change initiative can help you stay on the 25% of successful change implementation and produce happier employees when its time to make the move.
1https://www.towerswatson.com/en/Press/2013/08/Only-One-Quarter-of-Employers-Are-Sustaining-Gains-From-Change-Management