1. The Customer Experience – A managing director who at his weekly executive meetings invites a key customer to discuss the customer experience from their perspective and why they would consider moving to another supplier.  It engages everyone around the table to understand that each aspect of what they do, whether it is billing, product, service quality, call centre assistance, and all touch points with that organisation that customer service is the whole experience.  You then take that first conversation and define a specific activity and process to be driven throughout the organisation to focus on changing the customer experience.  This is instead of just posting an article about why it is important on the intranet.

2. A program focussed on linking customers with staff in a face to face event and having staff ask the question, what is it that we do now that if we do even better you will always use our services and products.  You then take that information and design a program that engages employees in designing and implementing solutions. This empowers employees to own and control the change rather than change being done to them.

3.  Annual results – instead of just posting them on an intranet site or the CEO discussing them at a staff forum or town hall you actually teach employees about how to decide whether to invest in a company.  You then turn your attention to your organisation, review the financials together and ask the team to start examining ways to improve the bottomline by growing the business.  Then you design an activity that may be six months in duration but is focussed on achievement of business outcomes. Now employees have the opportunity to be clear on improvement activities because the truly understand the reason why.

Engagement is not about reading or listening, it is about doing.  Design a change communication strategy that has processes, actions, activities, reward and recognition, is measured by impact on business outcomes and impacts all levels of the organisation and you get engagement.  Design the content for intranets, CEO forums and emails and so on and you get a well informed workforce ready to move forward with the engagement process.  The two go hand in hand, you cannot inform without engagement, you cannot engage your workforce without information.  Change communication is specific alignment of the two focussed on agreed business outcomes and achievement of business strategy.   Most importantly you need to be creative and specific in your design of the change communication activity as it needs to be directly relevant to your organisational culture.

As always I am interested in your thoughts and experience with change communication strategies you have implemented.  Feel free to share them in your comments on this blog.

This is because rarely does a “one size fits all” approach work when it comes to change communication.  Who communicates with each stakeholder segment, how we communicate, what we communicate, the frequency and level of detail are all important.

However it is even more important to consider exactly what behaviours the business need to see changed in order to achieve the desired outcomes and to say our change communication strategy has been successful. The main measure of any change communication strategy has to be contribution to business outcomes.

So here are 10 key things to consider when undertaking a stakeholder analysis:

1. For each stakeholder whether group or individual what is going to change for them?
2. What is their level of support for the proposed changes?
3. Have you identified who you need to work closely with and what change communication activities you can implement to ensure engagement?
4. What will they need to do differently as a result of the changes?
5. Therefore what will they need to know that they don’t know now?
6. What is the best way to support them so that they in turn support the business changes?
7. How can you design change communication activities that will involve them in the process of change rather than simply inform them about the changes?
8. What communication tools work now that you can leverage?
9. What communication tools need to be tweaked slightly so that they can be leveraged rather than replaced?
10. How can you design change communication tools to support the change communication activities between stakeholders?

The worst examples I have seen of stakeholder analysis and engagement plans is a list of stakeholders and the various information tools for each.  By this I mean how regularly you will send emails, have one on one meetings, update the intranet etc.  This is information, and whilst important changes very little in terms of behaviours and engagement.

So if you focus on the above ten points this is a great basis for developing your change communication strategies.  It provides a clear analysis of all segments of your audience, you understand their needs, concerns, and can then work out what involvement activities will assist in facilitating their support.  You then can provide advice to key sponsors of the change program about your strategy to mitigate any possible people issues that could derail a program of change.

And above all, importantly people feel good about the change, you have designed a change communication program that supports them, involves them and rewards them for their commitment.

Here are five reasons change programs fail and what you can do about it.

1.       Embarking on change collaboratively.  Now I know in many instances, particularly downsizing there will be those staff members who want no part in it and will do all they can to ensure it doesn’t happen. But you cannot decide that because of a few the organisation will impose change on all employees.  Change efforts fail because they are initiated and managed somewhere in head office and done in isolation. The most effective change initiatives look around the maze of naysayers and disenfranchised employees and find ways to work with them so that they own the change.  This is the only way a change program will be successful.

2.       Process changes behaviour and it is not enough to say to leaders in the organisation you must engage employees in this change program.  As naïve as it is, I see it happen all too often.  To engage leaders to lead the change you need to give them something specific to do and be accountable for.  Change is difficult regardless of whether you are the CEO of an organisation or a frontline employee.  Given that the best change programs are leadership driven you need to ensure that there are specific processes and accountabilities in place to ensure that engagement happens.  Alongside leadership engagement are staff contributions to support change initiatives – this is the tipping point that changes the degree which transformation occurs in organisations.

3.       Leadership capability is essential because as I mentioned the best change programs are leadership driven regardless of whether it is the CEO or frontline supervisor.  Employees will always look to their manager and the capability of the leadership team to drive the changes.  So a key component of any change program is to ensure that leaders know how to lead transformation initiatives with their teams and become supportive of innovative ideas.

4.       Many times the key messages communicated to staff during transformation programs are the need to change the way we do things.  Sometimes unintentionally the message is heard that they way we do things is wrong and we need to improve.  Successful change programs focus on what is good about what we do and how can build on this.  By focussing on positive messages and finding creative ways to communicate them and not relying on online tools, you have a much greater change of encouraging employees to participate and support change initiatives.

5.       Change is never owned by the change team.  The role of the change team is to provide the tools and techniques to enable transformation to occur within the organisation, change has to be owned by the leaders and employees within the organisation.  If you stop and assess your current change programs, ask the question, ” When the change team ceases to exist will we have transferred capability and appetite to drive change within the organisation?”.  If the answer is no, then your change program will surely fail as it will only be transactional and not embedded into the culture of the organisation.

Whether you are restructuring, downsizing, merging with another organisation, or implementing new IT systems and processes, avoiding the above five reasons why change programs fail is key in any organisational change context to ensure successful transformation.

This is why leadership competency in communication is so important, because from the top down people model behaviours including leaders on executive teams and right down to team leaders. If the CEO doesn’t communicate then it is likely others will follow her lead. There are two types of change in organisations, the first is the downsizing change, the other is about organisational transformation, and sometimes one follows the other.

Here are some tips about what leaders can do as communication change management skills come to the fore.

In a downsizing situation staff just want to hear from the leader.  If there is nothing to say about the detail this doesn’t matter.  In all cases I find employees just want to have access to the person at the top who they attribute to making the final decision whether that be accurate or not.  So what does the face to face communication consist of?  This is the easy part, transparency.  Employees just want to know why downsizing is taking place and when they will find out if they will still have a job. At this stage very few will be listening to any commentary on strategy, first and foremost want to know about their financial security. Once this is part of the change process is over, you need to move to strategy fast so that employees are clear on the road ahead and the opportunities to build on a solid foundation.

The second change scenario is organisational transformation, whether this is a new strategic plan, merger or acquisition, entry into new markets or new product lines or systems. Here the conversation is about the vision, the way the enterprise connects to achieve that vision and the importance of each area within the organisation to support it.  If employees can contribute to change based on what they do having some impact on business decisions, real time measures such as sales or customer service feedback are an excellent tool for measuring how well your change strategies are working. Sharing business information always creates a motivated and focussed workforce rather than one where people come to work, do their job and have no idea how they contribute to the big picture.

So as an easy checklist all you need to do first is consider the audience and what they want to know, what information and engagement strategies will make it easier for them to understand the reason why change is happening not what is happening. Whether you are implementing a new IT system, entering new markets or merging with an organisation, when focussed on articulating the why, transparency and openness will always be the outcome.

I’m interested to hear about your change strategies, please share them here with us.

We all know that projects have “change managers” on them to help design and implement the changes that the project is focussed on.  However the most significant contribution change managers can make to an organisation in my view is enterprise wide change.  This is where there is a significant difference from change on projects as the focus is on helping the organisation manage the implementation of strategy across the organisation.

Essentially you are the conductor of the orchestra ensuring that there are no wrong notes played during the performance.  It is about change governance and essentially risk management for the entire organisation.

So what does an enterprise change manager do?  Here are a few of the key responsibilities:

1.       Provide an overview of dependencies between key projects, if one project is delayed what is the impact on another project and therefore risk.

2.       A change management heat map, how many key projects are on at any one time, can you identify the key stakeholders that will be impacted for each, when will they be impacted, is it all at once or transitioned over a number of months, is the change process manageable?

3.       Key high level risks and issues from an enterprise wide perspective, what are they, who is managing them, what are the mitigation strategies?

4.       Enterprise wide communication to all stakeholders, are you helping them connect the dots or hoping they will figure it out for themselves.  If the organisation has no idea why it is doing what it is doing it is difficult for stakeholders, whether employees, customers and suppliers to understand what direction the company is headed and how it is all coming together.

5.       Integrate change with business as usual.  At the enterprise level it is not about a series of projects with names that have start and end dates it is just about business, if the organisation doesn’t innovate it will go out of business so it is about keeping the focus on leading and managing the business with an overview of business activity at the enterprise level.

6.       And most important of all…make change happen.  You need to be able to advise how to get traction with strategy, there are so many variables that can stop momentum, the most common is resilience by leaders to keep on with the change process when there is noise coming from all corners about why it can’t happen or the risks associate with it.

We all know of projects that have been going for years with no real progress, I am constantly amazed at the efforts that some people go to, especially at leadership levels to make sure that nothing changes.  And that’s because the engagement process has been poor from the outset, there is fear of the unknown, they feel it is being imposed rather than engaging their experience and knowledge and it is “safe” staying with the status quo.  Helping organisations get traction with strategy means that you see behaviours before they have an impact on change and advise on action to be taken to help move innovation forward. Enterprise change is at its core about change governance and making it happen.

Also speaking of results I am not interested in results such as awards for well designed intranet sites, number of visitors to portals, the number of people that turned up to a CEO presentation or later said it was good or the worse I have seen, asking staff to recall what the key points were in a presentation.

And the reason why is that none of the above can directly be linked to bringing about results in terms of business outcomes, all they will ever do is measure the quality of your information strategies not your communication strategies and the difference is huge.

A bit provocative – let me explain why.  Let’s suppose you are meeting with the CEO of your organisation, his concern is that the value he is looking for from change communication is that you have been able to connect with the audience, that you have been able to engage them, bring them to that “Aha” moment when they finally understand why things are changing and what they can do differently to contribute to this, the what is the easy stuff, it is information, it engages no one it simply informs them about what is changing.  Even if you write stories, post interview videos online all about the why as well as the what, unless you design strategies that can be measured by business impact not by readership then your change communication strategies will not produce exceptional results.

Here’s a simple example.

The Business Objective:

This hospital wanted to cut costs while at the same time ensuring that its patients were not adversely affected by the changes.  The hospital was also a major provider of healthcare in a small community, so it was essential that its reputation of high-quality care was not reduced.

The Method:

The hospital wanted to ensure that its personal care remained at the highest standard.  So they sought feedback through focus groups, telephone surveys and directly contacting the carers.  Three key attributes in patient care emerged as the main contributors to patient satisfaction.  The hospital staff concentrated on improving these three areas while simultaneously reducing costs. Cross-functional teams were then established with employees who volunteered to take part.  An employee with strong project management skills was selected to lead each team.  They then presented management with a list of options to improve the experience of the patients, with details of the costs and timeframes for implementation.  Agreement was reached on the changes and the senior management team ensured line managers were not barriers to the implementation.

The Outcome:

As a result of the changes implemented, patient satisfaction rose to 98%.  This significantly high score contributed to a great lift in employee morale and increased motivation despite the cost-cutting activities. Employees were directly involved in implementing the improvements, and a staff survey indicated greater levels of job satisfaction.

Now the usual change communication approach would have been a CEO forum where the head of the hospital would have explained to employees why they needed to cut costs, then updates would be provided via email and the intranet on changes, there would have been face to face communication between team leaders and staff on cost cutting – all of this would just have been information.  But by communicating and engaging the audience, both staff employed by the hospital and carers a change communication strategy was implemented that could be measured by achieving the business objectives.

In my manual, The Future of Employee Communication – 50 Case Studies of Excellence you will find more ideas on exceptional strategies you can implement that can be measured by business outcomes.

I look forward to reading your comments on strategies you have implemented and how they contributed to business results.

Take for example a sales division, this most likely will have a different culture from the IT department just based on the skill set, the type of work and environment in which employees work therefore the best approach is to define specifically what will work within an organization not the organization as a whole.

Here are 5 tips to get you started.

1.       The first is to understand the business context.  This goes almost without saying that you need to understand what the business reason is for the change, what are the business impacts both within the organization and externally and what is the goal and vision for the organization as a result of the changes implemented.

2.       What is the scope of the change, is it a new way of doing business, new technology, new markets, or a new organizational structure?  These are just some of the questions you need to ask as the impact will be on employees and other stakeholders and by analysing the impact you will understand begin to understand the scope of your change strategy.

3.       Once you have done this analysis you are ready to identify the best approach to implement the changes.  This includes the communication strategy which is nearly always about information, the engagement strategy which is about designing activities aimed at getting the buy-in and support of all levels of employees including the leadership team and then identifying the business measures.

4.       Implement the change strategy for all levels including the leadership team and assess continuously and monitor the success or otherwise of change interventions and alter as the need arises and continue to measure.

5.       Change should be seamless and become part of business as usual activities.  Where change processes fail is when they are labelled and treated as something happening over there and separate to the business.  Seamless integration into the new way we do business is the most difficult but necessary aspect of managing change so ensure that the engagement activities designed in step 3 are designed to become a new process so that behaviour changes.

Change management is difficult, stories abound of change strategies that fail, either due to lack of support by the leadership team, the inability to explain in very simple terms that mean something to individuals why the change is occurring and the miscalculation in timing of the change interventions whether they be key messages or engagement strategies.  To find out more about how to implement change and engage employees click here.

Today we’ll explore a few case studies that illustrate how this can be implemented regardless of your industry sector.

Healthcare Sector Case Study:

The Objective:

This hospital wanted to cut costs whilst at the same time ensuring that its patients were not adversely affected by the changes.  The hospital was also a major provider of healthcare in a small community, so it was essential that its reputation of high-quality care was not reduced.

The Method:

The hospital wanted to ensure that its personal care remained at the highest standard.  So they sought feedback through focus groups, telephone surveys and directly contacting the carers.  Three key attributes in patient care emerged as the main contributors to patient satisfaction.  The hospital staff concentrated on improving these three areas while simultaneously reducing costs. Cross-functional teams were then established with employees who volunteered to take part.  An employee with strong project management skills was selected to lead each team.  They then presented management with a list of options to improve the experience of the patients, with details of costings and timeframes for implementation.  Agreement was reached on the changes and the senior management team ensured line managers were not barriers to the implementation.

The Outcome:

As a result of the changes implemented, patient satisfaction rose to 98%.  This significantly high score contributed to a great lift to employee morale and increased motivation despite the cost-cutting activities. Employees were directly involved in implementing the improvements, and a staff survey indicated greater levels of job satisfaction.

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

STEP 1:

Identify whether your customer research can indicate top three factors that will have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction.

STEP 2:

Involve employees in the implementation of some of these changes.

STEP 3:

Measure customer satisfaction and communicate this to employees.  It will be an endorsement of their efforts and thus improve staff morale.

Media Sector Case Study:

The Objective:

This media organization was concerned that as it grew, the level of customer satisfaction varied considerably across the businesses.  The organisation wanted to dramatically improve its service levels and to become more customer-focused, but they also needed to involve employees in the process.

The Method:

The first aspect of the project was to survey employees in focus groups about what they thought the level of service was.  The survey highlighted interesting results:  most employees felt that red tape hindered customer satisfaction; half the employees commented that excellence in customer service was not recognized; and, a large number of employees felt that managers did not focus on customer satisfaction.   The focus group results highlighted the areas for improvement.  The first was putting together cross-functional teams to identify opportunities for eliminating red tape and improving customer satisfaction.  Then, the employees designed what they felt were appropriate reward and recognition for excellence in customer service.  And finally to address the issue of managers not being focussed on customer satisfaction they were integrated into the cross functional teams and had accountability for making them successful.  The approach was driven by the CEO and the executive management team.  It created a focus around customer satisfaction that permeated every aspect of the customer experience and was the main driver of the organization.

The Outcome:

Over 150 ideas on ways to enhance customer satisfaction were received from the cross-functional teams. Nearly all the suggestions were implemented, which reinforced the support the organization had for the project.  Continued focus on customer satisfaction reinforced it as the key driver in the organization’s culture.

STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

STEP 1:

Conduct some focus groups and find out what employees think about customer satisfaction levels.

STEP 2:

Implement cross-functional teams for employees to address some of the issues raised in the focus groups.

STEP 3:

When designing a rewards and recognition programme, give employees the opportunity to indicate what would be a motivator for them.

Strategic employee communication is so much more than updating intranet sites, organising CEO forums, company blogs and sending out information via email.  The true value is in finding ways to engage employees by doing something differently and seeing the direct impact of the decisions and actions that they take at work.  For more case studies click here.

Basically groups of 8 – 10 people are selected with the same selection parameters such as job level, type of job, or with customers of the market segment they represent.   When interviewing employees using focus groups you need to compare the outcomes of different groups, i.e., sales managers, sales representatives, call centre sales staff. This will provide a more accurate indication of what all levels of employees who interact with a particular customer segment consider an accurate reflection of customer opinion.

CHECKLIST FOR IMPLEMENTING FOCUS GROUPS

When implementing focus groups for an employee communication strategy you need to do the following:

• Be aware that focus groups are not the same for each organisation, they need to be tailored to suit individual circumstances

• The focus groups should be held in like groups, for instance managers in one team, supervisors another, employee groups by department in others

• You should interview 10% of the employee base where possible to form an accurate sample of employee views, alternatively if you have a large number of employees, then at least a representative sample will provide the data to form the basis of a questionnaire

• When focus groups with employees are held there is a perception that something will happen as a result.  Therefore you need the support of the CEO and reinforce that the reason for the focus groups is supported at the highest level in the organisation.  For instance you maybe about to implement a customer focussed strategy and the focus groups will provide you with the data you need to set the platform for the project.  The worse case scenario is setting expectations amongst employees and then not delivering and with focus groups as the employees have taken time out from their work and participated in discussions they will expect to see an outcome

• Greater objectivity is achieved when the focus groups are conducted by an external firm as participants are more likely to open up and express the way they really feel

THE MAIN STEPS IN FOCUS GROUP RESEARCH

1. A planning meeting to identify the objectives, problem areas and scope of the research
2. Guideline timetable to develop the selection of focus group participants and timetable for interviews
3. Individual management interviews
4. Preparation of the employee communication strategy
5. Presentation of findings to senior management
6. Implementation of recommendations

STAGES OF THIS RESEARCH

Management Interviews

A minimum number of individual half hour interviews with management are held to find out what they think about the issue you are researching and what level of employee involvement they would support.

Employee Focus Groups

Ten percent of employees from all areas of the company are interviewed in focus groups, eight to ten participants in each group.  Each session is of one and one half hours duration and rather than a structured questionnaire being used, a subject outline is introduced and questioning follows on from this point.

Focus Group Research Interpreted

When interpreting the findings from the management interviews you need to identify what they will support in terms of employee involvement programs and why or why not, opinions on the business issue you are researching and the basis for that view.  The focus groups will provide you with trends in answers and also indicate which areas of the organisation are most supportive and enthusiastic and will be a good starting point for your strategy.  Focus groups of employees will provide you not only with information about what they know about a new initiative but also on what basis they have come to that conclusion.

The most important piece of information for any employee communication professional is to find out why employees have a certain view on a particular topic.  Once you know this you can start to put together the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle and will quickly identify the key pieces that are missing.  It is on this basis you then put together your employee communication strategy for any new initiative, whether implementation of an IT system to major business transformation.

1. Implement team briefing.

Ensure that regular meetings take place with consistent messaging that incorporate change with business as usual activities. You can easily dovetail messages about the system changes and the reason why they are happening by connecting to the everyday business transformation that is going on.  By ensuring consistency in messages team briefing allows you to ensure the focus remains on change and most importantly the reason why.

2. Link to customer service feedback and measures.

There are some powerful ways of linking the customer experience to innovation and change at the workplace. Access to market research on the customer experience can be a great starting point for wider business as usual transformation.  The changes implemented are then measured for improvement in the customer research taken again six months later.

3. Connect with the wider business strategy.

What else is happening in the organisation, what is the bigger picture of what is changing and why and how will the system change enable some improvements in achievement of the organisation’s vision.   By always connecting to the why the rest of the story will fall into place and the momentum for change will continue because there is always something happening.

4. Identify what employees know about the changes.

Measure feedback via focus groups to find out what employees are actually saying about the changes, what they know, identify what they don’t and what they want to know.  You will only ever find this out by conducting the focus groups – questionnaires will not give you the answers you are seeking. Once you have this information it is easy to continue to plan your strategy to keep the momentum for change going.

5. Celebrate milestones.

It is important to keep reminding leaders as well as employees of the milestones in any change process and why they are significant.  By integrating the general changes in business as usual activities and the specific system changes, this constant recognition of progress will keep the focus on movement towards the desired business goals.

If you keep the focus on business as usual and integrate messages about change and the project’s achievements then all you need to do is a subtle shift in balance when you get into implementation phase after the quiet of the build phase of your Information Technology system change.  To have all the detailed information at your fingers tips on how to do this visit http://www.marciaxenitelis.com/products.html and scroll to the end of the page and order the complete employee communication kit and save 10% on the purchase price.