2. Determine impacts and those affected.Once you know exactly what you wish to achieve and why, you should then determine the impacts of the change at various organizational levels. Review the effect on each business unit and how it cascades through the organizational structure to the individual. This information will start to form the blueprint for where training and support is needed the most to mitigate the impacts. Show
Key questions:• What are the impacts of the change?• Who will the change affect the most? • How will the change be received? 3. Develop a communication strategy.Although all employees should be taken on the change journey, the first two steps will have highlighted those employees you absolutely must communicate the change to. Determine the most effective means of communication for the group or individual that will bring them on board. The communication strategy should include a timeline for how the change will be incrementally communicated, key messages, and the communication channels and mediums you plan to use. Key questions:• How will the change be communicated? • How will feedback be managed? 4. Provide effective training.With the change message out in the open, it’s important that your people know they will receive training, structured or informal, to teach the skills and knowledge required to operate efficiently as the change is rolled out. Training could include a suite of micro-learning online modules, or a blended learning approach incorporating face-to-face training sessions or on-the-job coaching and mentoring. Key questions:• What behaviors and skills are required to achieve business results? • What training delivery methods will be most effective? 5. Implement a support structure.Providing a support structure is essential to assist employees to emotionally and practically adjust to the change and to build proficiency of behaviors and technical skills needed to achieve desired business results. Some change can result in redundancies or restructures, so you could consider providing support such as counseling services to help people navigate the situation. To help employees adjust to changes to how a role is performed, a mentorship or an open-door policy with management to ask questions as they arise could be set up. Key questions:• Where is support most required? • What types of support will be most effective? 6. Measure the change process.Throughout the change management process, a structure should be put in place to measure the business impact of the changes and ensure that continued reinforcement opportunities exist to build proficiencies. You should also evaluate your change management plan to determine its effectiveness and document any lessons learned. Key questions:• Did the change assist in achieving business goals?• Was the change management process successful? • What could have been done differently? Is your business going through a period of organizational change? PulseLearning can assist in managing the change process to meet business goals and minimize the associated impacts. PulseLearning is an award-winning global learning provider experienced in change management consultancy and developing engaging and innovative eLearning and blended training solutions. References:
Change management is a systematic approach to dealing with the transition or transformation of an organization's goals, processes or technologies. The purpose of change management is to implement strategies for effecting change, controlling change and helping people to adapt to change. This checklist can be used to create a simple change management plan.To be effective, the change management strategy must take into consideration how an adjustment or replacement will impact processes, systems and employees within the organization. There must be a process for planning and testing change, communicating change, scheduling and implementing change, documenting change and evaluating its effects. Documentation is a critical component of change management -- not only to maintain an audit trail should a rollback become necessary, but also to ensure compliance with internal and external controls, including regulatory compliance. How does change management work?To understand how change management works, it helps to apply its concepts and tools to specific areas of business. Below are examples of how change management works for project management, software development and IT infrastructure. Change management for project managementChange management plays an important role in project management because each change request must be evaluated for its impact on the project. Project managers, or the senior executives in charge of change control, must examine how a change in one area of the project could affect other areas and what impact that change could have on the project as a whole. Project areas that change control experts should pay particular attention to include the following:
When an incremental change has been approved, the project manager documents the change in one of four standard change control systems to ensure all thoughts and insight have been captured with the change request. Changes that are not entered through a control system are labeled defects. When a change request is declined, this is also documented and kept as part of the project archives. Change management for software developmentIn software development project management, change management strategies and tools help developers manage changes to code and its associated documentation and enable chief information officers (CIOs) to keep projects on track. Agile software development environments encourage changes that are made to satisfy requirements and/or adjust the user interface. Change is not addressed in the middle of an iteration, however; changes are scheduled as stories or features for future iterations. Version control software tools assist with documentation and prevent more than one person from making changes to code at the same time. Such tools have capabilities to track changes and back out changes when necessary. Change management for IT infrastructureChange management tools are also used to track changes made to an IT department's hardware infrastructure. As with other types of change management, standardized methods and procedures ensure every change made to the infrastructure is assessed, approved, documented, implemented and reviewed in a systematic manner. Changes made to hardware settings are also referred to as configuration management (CM). Technicians use CM tools to review the entire collection of related systems and verify the effects that a change in one system has on other systems. Types of organizational changeChange management can be used to manage many types of organizational change. The three most common types are the following:
Popular models for managing changeBest practice models can provide guiding principles and help managers align the scope of proposed changes with available digital and nondigital tools. Popular models include the following:
What are the benefits of change management?As laid out in other sections of this definition, taking a structured approach to change management helps organizations mitigate disruption, reduce costs, reduce time to implementation, improve leadership skills, drive innovation and improve morale. In addition, here are some ways that change management can help add structure to IT and operations:
What are the challenges of change management?Companies developing a change management program from the ground up often face daunting challenges. In addition to a thorough understanding of company culture, the change management process requires an accurate accounting of the systems, applications and employees to be affected by a change. Additional change management challenges include the following:
Importance and effects of change managementAs a conceptual business framework for people, processes and the organization, change management increases the success of critical projects and improves a company's ability to adapt quickly. Business change is constant and inevitable, and when poorly managed, it has the potential to cause organizational stress, as well as unnecessary and costly rework. By standardizing the consistency and efficiency of assigned work, change management assures that the people side of an organization is not overlooked. As changes to work occur, change management helps employees understand their new roles and build a more process-driven culture. Change management also encourages future company growth by enabling it to remain dynamic in the marketplace. Principles of change managementThree principles of change management build on the three stages of change management introduced by Kurt Lewin in his seminal book, Principles of Topological Psychology:
Popular change management toolsDigital and nondigital change management tools can help change management officers research, analyze, organize and implement changes. In a small company, the tools may simply consist of spreadsheets, Gantt charts and flowcharts. Larger organizations typically use software suites to maintain change logs digitally and provide stakeholders with an integrated, holistic view of change and its effects. Popular change management software applications include the following:
Change management certificationsChange management practitioners can earn certifications that recognize their ability to manage projects, manage people and guide an organization through a period of transition or transformation. Popular certifications for change management are issued by the following organizations:
Overcoming resistance to changeIn general, no one likes to change, even it is for the better in some way. Here are some best practices to help mitigate this resistance to change:
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