Change. The word strikes fear in many people. If you are part of a change management initiative, or simply trying to help people through a workplace transition, here are six simple steps to create and implement a plan that works.
Create the vision
People fear change because they cannot anticipate the outcome. Help your program participants by asking them to imagine a great outcome, and what that will look and feel like. This will help to reduce the fear, or at least focus your learners on the positives of the initiative.
It does little good to have your learning participants leave a training with a head full of learning objectives alone. Instead, inspire them with the vision that they will receive assistance in transforming learning objectives into excellent job performance, which will lead to them making a positive contribution to their department and their organization.
“Helping your employees create their own compelling vision of the future is the first step in awakening their motivation to change,” says Angela Dooley, educational psychologist and training professional for a U.S. federal government agency.
For example, if you are instituting a new automated bookkeeping system to replace information currently stored in spreadsheets, have the future users imagine how simple it will be to enter data in one place, and how fewer errors will be made. Then, have them think about how clean their files will be. Finally, have them think about how they will use the time they save when they no longer need to manually populate and format reports. This time will help them to make a greater contribution to their company and create a sense of pride.
Design a holistic success plan
Especially when change is involved, training alone is not going to create the level of change you need for your initiative to be successful. Broaden your definition of training to include preparation, the training itself, and a support and accountability package after training is complete. Design your evaluation plan as you design the program materials.
Target 50 percent of your resources for supporting and measuring what happens after formal training is complete. If you doubt the possibility of doing these things in the real world, here is one example of an organizations that is doing it:
“At United Network for Organ Sharing, we reorganized the Professional Education department to ensure we had one full-time employee dedicated to our learning and performance plans, or LPP,” reports Dyan Troxel, assistant director, professional education. “The LPP project manager gathers the stakeholders together to state the problem, identify expectations which tie to the strategic goals, define critical behaviors and supports for the training, and determine what data will show success. An instructional designer is assigned to develop the course and is considered a stakeholder in the LPP. After the training, data are collected, and a stakeholder meeting is held to monitor and adjust the plan. The final step is to share the outcome with the organization. The work effort for each LPP is significant, so we plan for only two or three per year.”
Be clear about what you want people to do
This may sound obvious, but you need to clearly define exactly what people should do after training to be successful. You would be surprised how many training programs fail to include this. In the simple example of implementing an automated bookkeeping system, define what percentage of data entry should be completed using the system by certain dates, and define a final cutover date.
Performance expectations should be discussed with supervisors, managers and team leads before training to make sure there is alignment. During training, make sure participants are clear on what they need to do after training to be successful.
Implement a robust support package
The fear of change will become most real when training is over and people need to implement what they learned. This is why most of your resources should be focused on this critical period.
For major initiatives, include items in these categories: reinforcing, encouraging and rewarding.
Methods of reinforcement are typically familiar for learning and development professionals. Common examples include job aids, checklists, reminders and refreshers. Build these items as you build your content.
Encouragement systems are often left out of program plans because people think they are difficult to implement or expensive. If you have a culture where coaching and mentoring are standard practice, engage that system. If you don’t have that luxury, have learning participants create their own support groups or peer mentoring buddies.
Make sure your program is in line with formal reward systems. If not, see if you can discuss the disconnect with managers or human resources. From there, have some fun! Design a system of less formal rewards that you, managers, supervisors and training graduates can use to recognize people doing the right thing on the job.
Focus rewards on what people are doing, not just the outcomes. For example, if someone refuses to transition to the new bookkeeping system and continues to keep their records on spreadsheets, this should be noted in their performance appraisal and they should not be eligible for discretionary bonuses.
Hold people accountable for performance
What gets measured gets done, as the old saying goes. What you choose to measure is also important to achieve program results. Resist the urge to only measure outcomes. You also want to measure the degree to which people are doing what you taught them. Since you have clearly defined what people should do, you know what to look for.
For major initiatives, you typically want to have more than one measurement method in place. For example, you can have training graduates self-report the percentage of data they enter using the new bookkeeping system and then cross-reference that with back-end system reports.
Expect plan modifications
Big changes take time. Even with a comprehensive support and accountability package, there can still be resistance and unforeseen delays. When the data show you are not on track to meet your desired goal, don’t despair. Because you are tracking progress, you are in a strong position to identify and fix problems before they impact your planned results.
Think of it this way: Instead of reporting what happened and having to be satisfied with the results, monitor what is happening so you can make positive plan changes and maximize the outcome. Using this system will make your change management program — or any program, for that matter — as successful as possible.
