Change management needs to be applied so the human factor is always considered.
That might sound a bit harsh but seriously does anyone really think? OK, I am being a bit harsh, but I have seen and heard of a lot of situations where people don’t and I find myself saying and / or thinking, ‘Doesn’t anyone think?!’. If I step back and have a look at the situations when I have thought that, it is because the people component or the human factor hasn’t been given the thought needed. However, this is what we as Management Consultants focused on people in the workplace do and Business Owners are running their business – but – people are key to their business.
This actually supports the need for having systems and processes and any business owner or manager will tell you just how important these are to the success of their business but it really goes beyond that. They need to include and consider the human factor.
I see this lack of human factor consideration in both personal life and work. I particularly hear it a lot from parents around school issues, however, some workplace examples, there are many but here are just a few:
- Little consideration to the merging of 2 cultures which resulted in staff turnover, loss of employees from acquired business and of course a flow on effect for years from that,
- Lack of communication in various situations but I talked about that last month (in Talk it’s not rocket science)
- Lack of consultation with office move which resulted in not so engaged employees
- Minimal communication on change of leadership which resulted in employees feeling fearful due to the unknown
- Promotional opportunity given to someone else, when others (who are still regarded as valuable employees) expressed interest, which resulted in disengaged employee who eventually resigned
Not all these examples mentioned are about change but I do believe change management is important – big or small, so the human factor is considered. (However, these examples also support my belief that there is so much more to compliance than mitigating risks). As you would know and no doubt experience in your own businesses, change is happening constantly; from mergers & acquisitions, restructures, new technology, office moves, leadership changes, governmental regulations, economic conditions, changes to services, products and the list goes on.
Common to every organisation affected by change are processes, technology and people components. However, it is the people who must adopt these processes and technology for the benefit of the organisation. So change management is about mitigating resistance early at its source. Change management adds structure and intent for moving employees through the psychological change cycle to a point of acceptance and change adoption. However, if organisations are proactive in managing change, their management initiatives can shift from preventing and managing resistance to engaging employees and building enthusiasm and passion around the change.
They say 80% of change programs fail. Only 20 to 50% of major corporate reengineering projects at Fortune 1000 companies are successful. Mergers and acquisitions fail between 40 – 80% of the time and 10 – 30% of companies successfully implement their strategic plans. Why? People are the hardest part of change. Do you focus on people with your organisational change? In 75% of cases, failure of organisational change is linked to failure to consider and effectively manage the people side of change. Understanding the dynamics of the human transition in organisational change and how to manage this process is critical.
I believe change management, on a scalable level, should be just simply part of what we do for any change in the workplace – big or small, (like the rest of my team – not all organisational change is created equal….or is it?)
At HR Business Direction we can assist with managing workplace change. Contact us here.
Leisa Messer BBus(HRM); GradDipIR; CAHRI; IRSQ
HR Strategist
leisa.messer@hrbd.com.au
07 3890 2066
www.hrbd.com.au