Engaging Employees

Successful implementation is greatly facilitated when the people carrying out the change are engaged in the process and buy in to the strategy and tactics.

Ideally, this should involve:

• Acceptance

• Understanding

• Willing participation

• Enthusiasm

Achieving this requires two-way communication: not just top-down dissemination of instructions and information, but also soliciting and listening to workforce questions, concerns, and suggestions. Attention should also be paid to building motivation and incentives into the change process, such as recognition and reward programs and links to compensation.
Finally, critical to the success of any change initiative is follow-up during and after implementation to evaluate the new processes and modify them if they are not having the intended impact on departments or individuals.

Employee Engagement Tools : Be open, and invite employee participation and communication.

1. Communicate (in multiple directions):
• Convey strategic goals, rationale, and overall direction of change.
• Communicate constantly about what is different and how it affects people
• Communicate about links to corporate culture and other systems.
• Solicit feedback.
• Use multiple communication methods: Web sites, newsletters, focus groups, town hall meetings, information centers, and the like.

2. Think globally:
• Conduct surveys and interviews to determine employee views and needs.
• Obtain early input about impact on employees and their roles and functions.

3. Act locally:
• Facilitate effectiveness of local leaders and build trust within units.
• Create employee-driven teams.
• Reorganize work assignments effectively and equitably.

4. Provide motivation and incentives:
• Link implementation to objectives, compensation, HR practices.
• Establish recognition and reward systems.
• Empower employees in the change process.

5. Follow-up:

• Conduct surveys to assess successes, hurdles, and employee engagement. 

• Respond to employee suggestions and concerns.

Source: The conference Board

Image Flickr

Tips for identifying Change Agents...

After we spoke about change resister, it is fair enough to discover Change Agent ...

1. Find out who people listen to. Change agents lead with the power of their ideas. But be warned : these may not be employees with formal authority to lead.
2. Be alert to people who think 'otherwise'. Change Agent are not satisfayed with things 'as they are'.
3. Take a close look at new employees who have come from outside the circle of traditional competitors. They may not be infected with the same mindset as everyone else.
4. Look for people with unsual training or experience. Chance are she sees the world through a different lens.

Who are the Change resisters... and how to identify them ?

The Change resisters will either drag their feet or actively attempt to undermine your effort...

You can identify potentiel resisters by undermining where and how change will create pain or loss in the organisation. Once you have identify them, there are several things you can do to neutralize their resistance or make them active participants. These includes : explaining the urgent need to change, describing how change will produce benefits for them, and finding new ways in which they can contribute. People who do not respond to these efforts should should be moved out of your unit...

Photo -TazX - Flickr

Change readiness : Self Diagnosis

Do a little assesment of your own organization.

Consider how it has approach change in the past and how it is approaching any current activities.

Then score it using the brief diagnostic test, using a 1-5 scale ( 1= strongly disagree, 5 strongly agree).

Our organization...                                                                                                                         

1. Mobilise Energy and Commitment to change through joint diagnosis of business problems
2. Develop a shared vision of how to organise and manage for competitiveness
3. Identifies leadership
4. Focuses on results, not on activities
5. Spread changes to other units without pushing it from the top
6. Institutionalizes success through formal policies, systems, and structures
7. Monitor and adjust startegies in response to problems in the change process

How does your organisation fare on these parameters? A score of 3 or less in any category points to serious weakness that you'll want to identify and correct.

Source: Surviving change, Harvard Business press - Photo Dasha_K, Flickr

Meet the Ninja : managing changes...

 Dear readers,

Change management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams and organisations from a current state to a desired future state. As one of the most exciting challenges leaders will face, Padraig Hyland explains how getting change management right is critical to leadership success.

In this program, you will find out:

* What the different kinds of change management transformations are

* Why change management is so critical

* How to manage change successfully


Enjoy !! Funny and very accurate ...

As ever, I am intererested in your comments !

Dear Readers,

Today, I will focus on the preparation of the communication activities.

Action 1. Perform a stakeholder analysis

First of all, your change team will have to prepare a stakeholder survey. It will help you to understand and manage stakeholder expectations, assess ownership and commitment to the change journey at various point of the project life cycle, influence attitudes as much as possible to maximise the chances of the success of the project, validate and check that ownership commitment levels are aligned with where the project is in the life cycle, manage the approved change initiatives and incentives at the project level.

Practically, you need to do the following:

• Create a questionnaire ( if you need examples, just ask me)
• Plan questionnaire administration cycles, tool to be used and population targeted
• Launch the questionnaire and analyse feedback. This will be your basic to go to next steps
• Organise workshops with the management to dicuss main result and identify corresponding action plan.

Dear readers,

In the coming post I will focus on Communication during Change project. As a matter of fact, during this period, it is very important to develop a specific communication.
As you may know, large-scale changes impact people in a different way... and create a drop in performance.

• The implementation of a new project often sees a drop in business and individual performance


• Depending on how you manage the change process, will determine how deep your organisation will dip into the "valley of despairs"


• It is possible to minimize the time it takes to navigate through the changes and return to productivity-but it requires a comprehensic change programme
  
• By successfully managing the changes you can accelerate the delivery of business benefits and optimize overall business performance