The modern business landscape moves quickly. It’s highly likely that you will experience many changes to your business over the course of your career. These include small changes such as valuable team members moving on to new companies or having to adapt to new technology as your industry evolves. Larger changes may include massive layoffs or fluctuating market conditions that require you to find a way to do more with fewer resources.
Whatever the change may be, it is a constant part of life. Learning to be adaptable will help you weather these changes and even see them in a positive light.
The Nature of Change
According to Prosci, a change in business involves any solution an organization implements to improve its processes, solve problems, or take advantage of opportunities. While they're often positive in nature, all changes impact the ways in which workers do their jobs.
Your business will undergo changes as you aim to be more competitive in a shifting market. When changes are not managed efficiently, they can lower employees' morale and impede their ability to learn new skills. Some of your team members will also be resistant to change.
Overcoming Resistance to Change
The first step to addressing resistance to change is to find out what's causing it. Perhaps your team is confused by the new software you recently installed. Maybe employees are distrustful of management in general. It’s also possible that your team felt it wasn't included in the decision-making process and is hesitant to adopt new procedures it didn’t ask for.
Before these frustrations fester and employees' morale drops, you can take steps to address the resistance.
Communicate the Benefits of the Change
When you’re talking to your team about changes to processes and procedures, carefully explain how these processes will benefit everyone involved. Highlight how workers' jobs will become easier as a result of each change.
Involve and Engage Stakeholders
Resistance to change is often caused by employees who think they have no say in how they're going about their jobs. You can overcome this resistance by involving your team in the process from the get-go. Involving your employees gives you the ability to see workflows from their point of view and improve the parts of the process that directly impact them.
Provide Support and Resources
Some people don’t catch on to new processes and software as quickly as others. Instead of expecting everyone to get on board right away, make sure you have resources in place to train people who may not learn the same way as others. Showing your team members that you support them can help keep them from getting frustrated.
Create a Positive Change Mindset
During your hiring and onboarding process, communicate that your organization is dynamic and flexible. Be transparent and communicate with your staff every step of the way. When you offer an open door through which anyone can ask questions and better understand changes, they may be less resistant.
Adapt to Technological Advancements and Navigate Career Transitions
Advances in technology and personnel issues are two of the biggest contributors to change. Prepare ahead of time with a standard protocol for communicating and managing organizational change.
Highlight the Benefits of New Technology
If you have team members who are hesitant to adapt to new technology, highlight the benefits of lifelong learning. Show how skill development helps your team members become more agile in the marketplace. Communicate how the new technology can help them build skills for their resume.
Some of your employees may want to transition into other areas within the company. Communicate how new technology can help them prepare for these shifts. Use personal anecdotes and case studies to demonstrate how embracing change helped other staff members grow in the past.
Embracing Change in Business
Adopting organizational standards for change management will help your company adapt more effectively. Change management helps you identify resistance to change and mitigate it quickly.
Being flexible makes your organization more competitive, allowing you to quickly pivot based on shifting market conditions. Maybe one of your competitors just developed a better process, or your industry is adapting new technology to better manage operations. Being able to adapt helps you keep your footing in the marketplace.
But you need to manage change effectively to truly be adaptable. Do so by clearly communicating changes to your team every step of the way. Involve stakeholders in the process to identify the parts of your organization's everyday workflow you can improve and to make your entire team feel like it has a role to play in change management.
Foster a culture of continuous improvement by recognizing your team’s performance with new systems and processes. Highlight success stories of companies that achieved positive results with new changes in the past.
Keep Adapting to Changes in the Workplace
Changes of all sizes can be scary. If you don’t have solid change management practices at your workplace, your team will likely be more resistant. This makes it harder to implement changes and can lower morale. Involve your team and create an adaptable culture to thrive in a fast-changing world.
