The whole world has been forced to change everything to fight the pandemic ravaging the counties of the world. Most businesses are faced with enforcing drastic changes to enable them meet up with their targets, objectives, goals, and profit margins. The only way to achieve this is to create a new change management system.
Change management is a collective term for all approaches to prepare, support, and help individuals, teams, and organizations in making organizational changes. It is very essential to all businesses and organisations that want to be efficient and effective amidst Covid-19 pandemic and even post-pandemic. The purpose of change management is to implement strategies for effecting change, controlling change, and helping people to adapt to change.
If you are looking to make changes within your organization at this time you must first choose the right change management model. The second step is good planning— assess the context, understand the impact, analyse the stakeholders, prepare the change charter, change plan, and acquire the know-how. After implementing the changes, the company must make sure it sticks to them because all these steps are useless if the employees and employers alike do not stick to them.
There is a model that best describes this change management process, it was created by the Prosci founder JEFF HIAT. The acronym is ADKAR. They stand for:
• A – awareness for the need to change
• D – desire to participate in and support the change
• K – knowledge about how to change
• A – ability to implement change and behaviours
• R – reinforcement to sustain the change.
When embarking on any change management project an important question to ask yourself is, “What new competencies will be required to make this change successful?” in this case, ” How can our organisation operate from home for an indefinite period? How do we keep the employees accountable? How do we retain clients and get new customers in?”. If change management is about preparing an organization to successfully change, developing new competencies must be a part of that success equation.
Change management competency is a combination of knowledge, skills, and abilities that enable productive behaviour. While most organizations are familiar with the idea of needing a competent workforce, not all organizations are able to effectively address the competency requirements necessary to enable new ways of working that are successful.
It is both a training and a communication. For change management to work, there must be effective communication and proper training.
When there is just communication, there would hardly be any change management. Think of it like this; if we could change behaviour just by communicating more effectively, people wouldn’t smoke, and everyone would be at their ideal weight. Yes, having a Communication Plan is important, crucial even. But it is not enough. A communication plan must be blended with the other elements of Change Management.
It starts collectively before impacting an individual. As an organisation, when the decision to embark on change management is taken, steps on how to collectively train the workers are taken. This change starts collectively and then move to individuals adapting and embracing this change too.
STEPS NECESSARY TO CREATE EFFECTIVE CHANGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM.
• Scope: Change must be evaluated to determine how the scope of the change will affect the company. Since nobody knows how long it will take for things to go back to normal or if they ever will, we must prepare for an indefinite time. That way the organisation or business is ready for any possibility.
• Schedule: Assessment to determine how the change management decision will alter the set schedule. After knowing how it will be altered, a research on how best projects can be managed to fit into the new schedule should be carried out and a new schedule should be implemented as soon as possible.
• Costs: Change requests must be evaluated to determine how they will affect costs. Labour is typically the largest expense in an organisation. So extra costs should be accommodated. If a cut is necessary, it should be communicated appropriately and clearly.
• Quality: Change requests must be evaluated to determine how they will affect the quality of the products and services. Changes to the schedule can affect quality as the workforce may generate defects in work that is rushed.
• Human resources: Evaluate to determine if additional or specialized labour is required. When the schedule changes, key resources may be lost to other assignments.
• Communications: Approved change must be communicated to the appropriate stakeholders at the appropriate time.
• Risk: An evaluation to determine what risks the change management pose. Even minor changes can have a domino effect on the business and organisation, and introduce logistical, financial or security risks.
In Lapax Life Projects, we run a 360 Training, Coaching, and Consulting service which provides transformation for organisations, businesses, individuals and families. You can contact us for tailored trainings, and we come in to train your employees in any area. These change management steps listed above are applicable to individuals, families, and entrepreneurs and as a Certified Trainer, this is where I come in to prepare the organisation or business for change management. You can reach out to us on [email protected], check us on Instagram @emem.ng, call / WhatsApp us on 08033455364.
How has the change been for you at your workplace, home, and personal life? What has helped you adapt to the new normal? Do well to send us a message with any comments or questions. Until next time, stay safe and healthy.
