Personal Touches to Change Management ensure its Success

Many interesting takeaways from "Sustaining Change Momentum", Human Resource Executive Online. By Kecia Bal, September 16, 2013.

Employee engagement doesn't always filter down to managers, so you have to train them on how to keep employees engaged -- asking for input, involving employees in the change and going first via role modeling. You also need to help managers understand why people resist change.  Because of this behavioral need to adopt a change-supported groundswell, e-learning or online training for handling change are ineffective.  

Yep, I said it.  I have seen e-learning pushed throughout an organization as a means to drive adoption to change, and this fails consistently, from the word "Go". 

Humans are habitual creatures, and as such, change is difficult for most of the population.  That includes your employees.  Requiring them to sit through an online video and test module, when they feel they could be doing their work - for you - just creates a forced and unnecessary conflict. 

Additionally, I don't agree with the HR trend to train managers to speak better about topics that are unclear to them.  This would rather illustrate the first line of failure in effectively communicating change from the top down, via speaking at your employees, rather than speaking from a personal perspective, to them, about the coming changes. Managers can better usher change in through personal rollout sessions than through recorded speeches.

Towers Watson research report, Critical Human Capital Issues 2013, indicates 3 of the top 10 issues with employees involve dealing with change.  Encouraging employee support of a change initiative is best met through communication - early and often - and employee engagement through interactive training.  

This is one of the services Paintrock Consulting can provide your your firm, large or small.  From working with key executives to develop the Communication plan, to development and implementation of Train-the-Trainer plan through the Management ranks, through workshop-styled full scale employee engagement sessions and town hall meetings.