Reactions to Change in an Organization

Delivered November 16th, 2019. Contributors: Nyaingo J. and

Early FindingsReactions to Change in an Organization

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Effective Communication Best Practices

 Tackling employee concerns, providing clear direction, and creating a compelling story are three examples of best practices for effective communication during change within an organization. Provided below are details on each practice and how organizations can implement them.
Tackle Employee ConcernsTop management must address the concerns of employees by answering questions relating to layoffs, department budget cuts, changing company vision, etc.
Since the top management always has an advantage of knowing the changes expected in an organization, they can start listing the questions or concerns employees may have for each circumstance.
On that note, the executive and direct supervisors can empower each other with appropriate verbiage that is transparent and true to try to calm down worried employees and respond to their queries.
Organizations can implement this strategy by being available and providing employees with opportunities to air their concerns and highlight any challenges they are encountering during the change.
Provide Clear DirectionAn organization's internal communication should work with top leadership to create information guides and talking points for both mid-level and direct supervisors.
These guides provide explanations and reasons for the change, including details about how the change is consistent with the company's goals and how the change impacts employees.
Organizations can implement this practice by ensuring that all stakeholders involved in the change, i.e., employees, leaders, and customers know what to do for a successful change.
In this regard, the direction for each party will be different, but all parties involved will require more clarity about what is expected of them to avoid confusion, delays, misunderstanding, potential failure, and even rework.
Overall, by providing clear directions, organizations must communicate in specifics and not in generalities. For instance, if the change demands customer service representatives to say, “Thanks for calling,” then that is what they say to provide clear direction and empower employees to act unhesitantly and unambiguously.
Create a Compelling StoryDuring change, internal communicators in an organization should share employee stories that show support for the change. These stories must also indicate how the change aligns with the organization’s identity and values.
Importantly, good change creates a compelling story in the minds of the individuals affected by it. Therefore, the story needs to have a “what” and a “why” capable of compelling individuals to act.
Great stories knit together the “what” and “why” in a meaningful way that empowers individuals to act on their own. Therefore, a good story must be shareable, recountable, and speak to all facets of the projects, not only the academic side of it.
Organizations can implement this practice by putting together an exciting story, storyboard, and primary details, and working with top management to customize the descriptive and emotional details of the story to make it personal and memorable.
Therefore, for organizations to become more effective at getting the message across, they should strive to come up with a storyline that captures all the change details in one package.
Research MethodologyYour research team found several reports with examples of best practices for effective communication during change within an organization. In determining the best practices, the team focused on those practices that are considered best and repeated in many sources. In this regard, we examined all the examples provided in the different reports we explored, then selected those regarded as key practices and repeated in numerous sources. Overall, we used reports published by reputable institutions, including Research Gate, an academic database, and other sources like Status.net, Express Works, Management is a Journey, and Institute for PR.

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Change Strategy Development Best Practices

 Team structure and governance and recruiting champions of change are two examples of best practices for developing a thoughtful change strategy within an organization. The next sections provide full details of each best practice, including information on how to implement them.
Team Structure
 and GovernanceOne of the best practices for developing a change strategy is creating a team and governance structure that sets the framework for decision-making and implementation.
The framework acts like a guideline specifying roles and responsibilities that organizations must establish throughout the company to engage stakeholders.
The change management team structure identifies the individuals who will be responsible for the change process and specifies their relationship with the project team.
Organizations can implement this strategy by assigning leadership roles across all employee levels. This implementation practice ensures that the committed individuals act as models who influence the rest of the members.
Again, in creating the team structure, organizations must be specific when distributing resources and assigning the roles and responsibilities.
Recruit Champions of ChangeChange is often met with unprecedented resistance, which organizations can mitigate through sponsor coalition. These change ambassadors will actively and visibly drive the transformations throughout the change process.

Change advocates should not necessarily feature top management, but also other employees across all levels. For instance, change advocates can include front-line employees, floor managers, supervisors, etc.
Organizations can implement this strategy by selecting leaders of the groups the change impacts the most. These individuals qualify for this role because they have a responsibility to build support and share the news about the change with their respective teams.
Organizations can further accelerate change by providing change advocates with more engagement and training.
Research MethodologyYour research team uncovered several examples of best practices for successful change management, with a keen focus on selecting best practices for developing a thoughtful change strategy. Therefore, to retrieve accurate findings, we searched through business management and consulting reports and evaluated expert reviews and advice on change management strategy development. Equally, we looked at successful examples of change strategies implemented by big brands, along with industry insights about successful change management strategies. On this note, we retrieved the two best practices reviewed above from reports published by Business Mapping — a process mapping business consulting company, Game Effective — an enterprise gamification software as a service platform, and Prosci — a change management solutions provider.

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Employee Recruiting Best Practices

 Using snowball sampling, recruiting influential employees and advocates who drive most of the conversations within an organization, and profiling employees based on skills, attitude, and experience and knowledge, are examples best practices for recruiting and utilizing enthusiastic employees as change ambassadors within an organization. The following sections provide the full details of each best practice, including how organizations can implement them.
Use Snowball Sampling Snowball Sampling is a strategy devised by McKinsey & Company for selecting internal influencers within an organization. The process is simple to implement and requires senior leadership to administer questionnaires.
These questionnaires seek specific names as answers to questions like who do the employees trust, who they look up to, and who would they go to in case they have questions.
In the names the employees put forward, the organization selects those that appear more frequently than others.
The names repeated multiple times represent the influencers within an organization. Therefore, this team can drive the organization's change initiative or perform a test run.
Recruit Individuals Driving the Most ConversationsOne of the best practice for recruiting and utilizing enthusiastic employees as change ambassadors is recruiting from influencers and advocates in an organization. These individuals are among the leading drivers of organizational change and performance.
Influential employees consist of the 3% of employees who facilitate 90% of conversations in an organization, whereas, advocates are self-recruited and are those individuals who engage in activities like well-being out of a commitment to drive organizational change and performance.
Organizations can implement this practice by utilizing advocates during change by positioning them for efficient, positive, and constructive focus while integrating their vigor and enthusiasm to drive the change.
Profile Employees Based on Skill, Attitude, and knowledgeResearch findings also suggest that an ideal change ambassador meets some minimum requirements that match the expectations of the role.
Thornley Fallis Communications, an integrated communications agency, suggests that employers profile their change ambassadors based on their skills, attitude, and experience and knowledge. For example, the ideal employees should possess unmatched interpersonal communication skills and thoughtful leadership traits.
Equally, these employees should be trustworthy colleagues and confidantes. These should be fellows who can make significant and well-intentioned efforts to drive change. They must be people who do not do or say negative things that undermine the trust others have in them.
Overall, change ambassadors should be employees who understand the organization and with credible experience. The team should be a mix of individual employees and senior managers.
Research MethodologyTo find the best practices for recruiting and utilizing enthusiastic employees as change ambassadors within an organization, your research team focused on reports about organizational change management best practices. We then narrowed down our approach to search for additional information around the best practices for recruiting and utilizing enthusiastic employees as change ambassadors. Our research findings retrieved three reports published by Thornley Fallis Communications, Changing The Terms, and Staff Base with relevant findings of the best practices for recruiting change ambassadors within an organization. We cross-checked the findings of the reports with those in other reports with general information around change management best practices and found out that they correlate. In this regard, we have included them above as examples of best practices for recruiting and utilizing enthusiastic employees as change ambassadors within an organization.

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Change Strategy Implementation Best Practices

 Prioritizing initiatives for change
 and developing and supporting a plan for effective change are two examples of best practices for implementing a change strategy within an organization. The next sections provide the details of these practices, including how organizations can implement them.
Prioritize Initiatives for Change
Any change initiative succeeds when employed tactfully. On that note, organizations need to prioritize and specify the changes in their approaches within reachable timelines and phases to avoid impacting the return on investment, implementation costs, revenue, and profitability of the organization.
By prioritizing, the organization ensures that target initiatives are rolled out on time and have the most positive influence on the company. In most cases, some transformation efforts fail because of implementing many initiatives at once, which stretches the resources of an organization.
According to a McKinsey Report, a prioritization process that helps a transformation succeed must have a broad scope. For instance, existing initiatives requires thorough scrutiny to eliminate zombie projects that waste an organization's resources.
Organizations can implement this strategy by first understanding the risks, comprehending the size and nature of every opportunity, scheduling, and any obstacles hindering the delivery.
Equally, organizations need to focus on mitigating and re-ranking the prioritization through preemptive measures, contingency plans, and monitoring to establish a portfolio of perspective based on the organization's risk-adjusted values.
Develop and Support a Plan for Effective Change Developing a plan for effective transformation is a critical step in the implementation process of change. The plan defines the roles of the key personnel involved and the short-term and long-term objectives of the changes.
While change is unpredictable, the plan must be flexible to accommodate new occurrences.
 Importantly, the plan must be supported, i.e., top management follows through on the plan. By following through, the management enables the employees to adapt to the new changes.
Organizations can implement this initiative by training its employees, adapting them to the reward systems, or hiring key personnel to lead in implementing the change.
Likewise, the management should provide the necessary resources required to implement the change successfully.
Research MethodologyIn finding the two best practices for implementing a change strategy within an organization profiled above, your research team searched through reports published by leading business consulting firms like McKinsey, along with industry publications by Business Wire and IDC & Change Industry News, which focuses on business management change. While these reports and many more that we examined featured several examples of best practices of implementing change, we decided to focus on those practices that are repeated across different sources, and are published by renowned business news and consulting companies. In this regard, we also explored findings in other reports published by Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and The Thriving Small Business; however, the reports published by these companies provided generalities as opposed to specifics to best practices for implementing change within an organization.