Organizational change management is a people-centered approach to business transitions, designed to ensure positive outcomes. Leaders who want to improve their change management skills should develop competencies in both business management and psychology. To ensure a successful change management process, it is important to clearly define the change and align it with business objectives. A change management plan can facilitate a smooth transition and ensure that your employees follow the change process.
Unfortunately, approximately 70 percent of change initiatives fail due to negative employee attitudes and unproductive management behavior. Utilizing the services of a professional change management consultant could help you join the 30 percent of successful companies. When making large scale organizational structural changes associated with reorganization or acquisition activity, it is important to use change management. Structural changes associated with improvement systems are often ignored, such as the creation of an office, team, or group to take the initiative with a particular methodology or system. This leader can be a human resources (HR) manager with experience in organizational changes or a senior company executive, such as the CEO.
Human resources can also play a strategic role in managing change by calculating the return on investment after implementation by identifying the key performance indicators (KPIs) that should be measured and monitoring and communicating these results. In the preparation phase, the manager focuses on helping employees recognize and understand the need for change. To help employees adapt to changes in the way a role is performed, mentoring or an open door policy could be established in which management asks questions as they arise. Well-developed organizational change management strategies can lead to greater efficiencies, stronger teamwork, and better financial results. When organizational change management techniques are applied, companies can navigate complex transitions more easily.
In addition to the general framework for managing change, change leaders and human resource professionals must also be aware of considerations related to the particular type of change being made. Repeated communication of the organization's vision is essential throughout the implementation process to remind team members why the change is being sought. When a company plans a major transformation, such as going public or launching a key product, it can form a change team made up of executives and personnel managers. Human resources can play a dual role in managing change, initiating and leading change and acting as facilitators of the changes that other leaders and departments initiated. Change management is the systematic approach and application of knowledge, tools and resources to deal with change.
