Involve your employees
When you begin to implement the new initiatives, the change and what it will mean for the employees becomes clearer.
Therefore, at this stage, any resistance to change will also become clearer. Open and frequent dialogue about the change is therefore especially important now.
It’s important that you allow your employees to have the opportunity to talk about what makes the change difficult for them. For example, have the employees tell you how they feel, so that you can respond according to their individual reactions:
- If an employee lacks information, make sure he or she receives this information and knows where to look for more information, for example on the intranet, in newsletters, at meetings.
- If an employee lacks the skills to meet new demands, offer him or her training or support, as needed.
- If an employee is unwilling to accept the change, listen and ask questions to understand why, and then clarify any uncertainties and help the employee to cope with the situation.
- Employees’ emotional reactions – negative as well as positive – can also be used to adjust and improve the change process. Talk about what you can learn from the emotional reactions to improve the change process.
It’s important that employees can ask questions and get answers whenever there is something they are unsure about, lack information about, or other. You should therefore agree on when and how they can ask questions.
Involving and hearing employees in the change process can spur their engagement and sense of ownership, and can thus make the basis for the best psychosocial working conditions during the change process. Generally speaking, the employees should be involved in the process as early as possible, depending on the nature of the change.
Go for fast and visible results
Fast results that are visible in the short run will help you stay the course, because they provide tangible proof that the changes are going as planned. Focus on creating fast and visible results.
Mistakes are a natural part of the change process. Mistakes may occur and things may turn out differently than planned, and so it’s important that management knows how to deal with unexpected events. How management deals with unexpected events will affect the overall mood at the workplace and, thus, the psychosocial working conditions.
Don’t give up!
This may seem like an obvious advice, but major changes take time. In the beginning, maybe you will reap many low-hanging fruit, but it’s still a long-haul process. Once the first enthusiasm and motivation has waned, making the change visible, keeping focus and remembering the end aim can be difficult.
Because you are the manager, it’s important that you don’t lose motivation. Good advice is to have planned all the elements of the change process, so that you always know the next step. Retell the change narrative, and repeat when the end goal has been reached.
The integration phase
No change, whether major or minor, is complete until it has been incorporated into daily activities.
New habits
Most changes to norms and shared values typically only come later in the change process. The ‘new normal’ will not be fully embedded in the workplace culture until it has become clear how the ‘new normal’ works, and until the ‘new normal’ has proved better than the ‘old normal’.
The real success is measured by whether the employees have changed their behaviour and experience the change as beneficial.
Support
Providing good support can help employees to deal with organisational change. Employees may have different needs for support, and the need for support can be both practical, professional and emotional.