HR teams need to help organisations think about change differently, and shift the mindset from ‘managing’ change to becoming ‘always ready’ for change.
This is according to a report from work trends analyst the Josh Bersin Company, which says that change management needs to evolve from being treated as a “sibling” of project management – where business leaders approach change with spreadsheets, deliverables and deadlines – to an organisational design feature that “nudges” people to adopt new behaviours that will transform work.
CEO Josh Bersin said: “A new era of change management has arrived – one that puts people, not processes, at the centre; prioritises purpose over procedures; and unleashes employee creativity.
“In this new paradigm, change management is no longer about spreadsheets, tools, templates, methodologies, timelines, rigour, and consistency. Instead, a focus on people, iterative and agile practices, flexibility, new approaches, and individuality must take priority.
“This is a mandatory evolution all companies must make in order to optimise their business resiliency and navigate and adapt to whatever is ahead.”
The Big Reset Playbook on change agility report claims that “change enablement” is a muscle that HR teams will need to help employees build via learning and reinventing workplace cultures.
Business resilience is also key to navigating change, as highly resilient organisations are 4.5 times more likely to respond effectively to change.
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The report identifies three crucial areas for business resilience: the health and wellbeing of employees, business agility, and adaptive transformation of work design and talent practices.
It outlines 10 lessons to help organisations manage any transformational change, not just the changes brought about by the pandemic:
- Every interaction is a change intervention – look for change opportunities in every interaction. Every meeting or team communication builds the change adaptability muscle.
- Effective change starts with listening to employees – employees “speak” to their employer all the time, whether via participation in workforce surveys or indirect signals like helpdesk tickets or absence.
- Start a mission-first movement, not a marketing campaign – mission and purpose needs to be central to everything employees do, which will help when transformation needs to happen quickly. Employees must understand the reason for ongoing change.
- Foster human-centered leadership to inspire change and transformation – how leaders behave is important. Transparency, empathy, and a focus on people above profit is key in leveraging them for any change.
- Transparent, fit-for-purpose communication sets the tone – During the pandemic, many companies started showing weekly videos from their CEOs. Regular communication with employees can help educate them about changes and will help them adapt more easily to new ways of working.
- Design thinking builds change adoptions into the solutions – Rather than seeing employees as recipients of change, make them active participants in the design of the solution itself.
- Microchanges result in macrotransformation – Trying to get everybody to implement a big change at the same time is usually unsuccessful. Change many little things, which will become big compound changes over time.
- Nudge technology puts behaviour change into the flow of work – the right technologies can digest data and interpret behavioural signals using machine learning, natural language processing and organisational network analysis.
- Reward and recognise new, changed behaviours – monetary, intrinsic, public or private recognition can help sustain new actions.
- HR capabilities to foster change agility are critical – 40% of HR professionals polled don’t think they have the skills they need to drive change. Employers need to support HR to build skills by assessing capability gaps, providing tailored coaching and mentoring, and developing corporate capability academies.
The report says: “Even if you follow any of these change management methodologies to a T, there will be something coming at you— your employees, your leaders, or your customers—that you didn’t expect and that will disrupt the best-laid plan.
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“We need to change the paradigm. Rather than managing change projects, we need to facilitate change and transformation for our people, supporting them on the journey to a new and always-changing future. HR capabilities, leadership behaviours, and employee ownership are key components of this, as is business resilience.”
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