New challenges in the changing workplace

Few businesses can survive without adapting to change. Although change can be difficult to handle, your task as a leader is to prepare your employees for these inevitable shifts in how things are done. This can range from minor staff restructuring to merging or acquiring another company.

While the changes may be necessary for the future of the company, you are likely to face certain barriers and challenges. Anticipating these roadblocks can help you avoid them before they become major issues in the implementation of change at the workplace.

Lack of Proper Planning

Without step-by-step planning, change in an organization is likely to fall apart or cause more problems than benefits. You need to understand exactly what changes will take place and how those changes will occur.

For example, if you're transitioning to a new content management system, you'll need to know if the new system is compatible with the old system. You also need to know how you will transition the old information to the new system and if there will be limited access during the transition. And you have to assign roles to individuals who are responsible for the change so all duties are covered. The timeline for the change is also a key component. You need to plan for downtime or difficulties in completing regular work tasks while the change occurs.

Low Employee Morale

In many instances, employees dislike change unless it is one that they have requested or lobbied for, which means that obtaining buy-in is a major barrier to change. For example, let’s say you are changing your organizational structure from a flat structure in which all employees are encouraged to give feedback and help make decisions to a top-down structure in which all power and decision-making is in your hands. You can expect that employee morale will take a big hit as your staff members realizes they are losing the power to have a real say in how things are done.

Low morale becomes a barrier to your organizational change because your staff is likely to resist the changes. That resistance will make it difficult for you to facilitate a smooth transition and may impact productivity and efficiency as well. When employees are unhappy with your decisions, they are far less likely to implement those decisions in a manner that helps your company achieve success.

Lack of Consensus

If you fail to get everyone on board with corporate changes, you are likely to face barriers during the process. The decision to implement changes should come from the top level of the organization. All management level staff needs to be on board and able to deal with the changes or you may face dissent within the staff.

In many cases, you may not have everyone on board right from the beginning. Showing managers how the changes will affect the company and the steps for implementing the changes can help get them on board if they initially have reservations.

Adopting New Technology

Technology has become the linchpin on which many businesses grow and thrive but it does have its challenges. One challenge is integrating new technology with your existing platforms in a way that doesn’t cause huge logistical issues. Another challenge is getting your staff up to date on how to use the new technology. Your employees are the “end user” when it comes to implementing a new system at the workplace.

If they don’t believe that new technology will make their jobs easier, they will question why you are making the changes. Communicating the specific ways in which the technology will streamline work processes is an effective way of overcoming this barrier.

Failing to Communicate

Employees want to know what's going on, whether it is positive or negative news. The feeling of uncertainty when management doesn't communicate disrupts work and makes employees feel as if they aren't a part of the decision. Keep employees updated regularly about the plans and progress toward the change implementation. Involve all employees as much as possible through meetings or brainstorming sessions to help during the planning phase.

Tools and technologies which help organizations understand the impacts of change on different segments of the workforce with data-driven insights are a critical must-have as organizations navigate the COVID-19 era.

Digital tools such as SAP Qualtrics’ Remote Work Pulse, Typeform and EY Survey can be used to collect and transform data into insight.

Drawing on such insight not only ensures that business decisions are aligned to the true needs of employees but enables an evidence-based approach as organizations deploy COVID-19 change-related response activities including:

• Crisis communications. Newly collected data should be used to ensure crisis communications are striking the right tone and speaking to the issues that resonate the most with employees. Without insight, imbuing communications with genuine empathy is difficult. However, armed with a deep understanding of how people are reacting to change created by COVID-19, leaders can speak confidently to employees.
• Persona modeling and personalized change journeys. Rapid impact assessments, linked to personas can be used to understand what’s changing for different groups and how employees are likely respond to change. Armed with such insights, organizations can develop custom change journeys to best equip their people with the knowledge, confidence and skills needed to thrive in the new normal.
• Learning and development design – whether developing the ability to rapidly mobilize and support virtual working or onboarding large numbers of staff, having visibility into employee priority issues will allow organizations to deploy a personalized, bespoke approach to learning and development. Personalized learning and development correlate with higher levels of employee engagement; critical not only to equipping your workforce with the skills and confidence they need to succeed today and in the post COVID-19 world but also to keep “hibernating” employees engaged and ready to re-mobilize.
  

There’s a host of research that can suggest how employees will go through the many disruptions that will be caused by COVID-19 and its fallout, however no research is more powerful than primary research. Organizations must focus now on collecting data about the myriad issues their employees are facing; data that will become critical to both short and long-term planning and for the ongoing wellbeing of their employees.

Stay close – and keep the dialogue open

In our current socially distanced reality, connecting with other people is suddenly more important than ever. And this is as true within organizations as anywhere else. Leaders must become and remain highly visible. They need to feel real. And they need to be open to hearing what their employees have to say, so they can guide people through change with a genuine sense of human connection.

In other words, this is not the time to send out a single email explaining what everyone should do.

Successful companies will leverage creative digital and virtual technologies to design and deploy an immersive, 360-degree campaign comprised of videos, virtual town halls, manager-led discussions, short and impactful training sessions. Two-way communication and opportunities for feedback must be included – as feedback received from the workforce will further enable data-driven insight making ability.

In fact, companies will need to design unique and personalized communications and engagement experiences for multiple cohorts of their workforce, including “hibernating” employees – talent who may be off or on limited assignment, yet still critical to the organization’s operations. It is vital that hibernating employees still feel connected to leadership, to each other and to the firm. 

Companies who take such an immersive and interactive approach to communication can expect to foster connection, openness and clarity; and, as a result, employees will feel confident that change is unfolding in a manner that’s planned, empathetic, consistent and shared.

A different world

It’s apparent that with the depth and breadth of change we’re experiencing, the world during and post COVID-19 will look very different. Hence, there’s a second crucial characteristic to this disruption: it won’t be a one-off hit. It’s likely to bring waves of further disruption – to societies, economies and health provision. And each disruptive wave will create yet more change.

Once your workforce has achieved a level of stability, it’s important that leaders shift from being reactive to proactive and consider the new initiatives that will guide your organization through COVID-19 and beyond. The EY Change Insights tool is particularly helpful in helping to understand ongoing sentiment and manage your portfolio of change initiatives by providing near real time data on when each initiative is on or off-track affording organizations the agility they need to rapidly adjust.

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