How HR Can Make a Change Management Plan

HR professionals can manage change through effectively assuring that they assess and create a change management strategy , which aims to analyse the current situation employees face both internally and externally and then support employees throughout all stages of the difficulties that the change presents.

Although to broaden the scope of change management, especially throughout and moving towards post COVID-19, human resources departments have an important need to assess the current situation employees face, analyse their natural reactions to change and likewise work with employees’ behaviours and attitudes to ensure that when employees undergo change, they are still satisfied and motivated to work hard within the organisation they are currently working for.

To extend in detail this blog will highlight some of the specific different ways that HR managers may manage change, going into extra detail to help hr departments are able to sustain effective change management to continually engage employees within the organisation and ensure long term satisfaction levels will be maintained.

Mitigate Natural Resistance to Change

A key role of HR managers in effectively managing change is to mitigate the natural resistance to change for all employee within the organisation. Employees often will resist change when they view the change as a potential threat to their jobs or behaviours. Commonly throughout the change process resistance to change is an extremely common and natural behaviour which in turn means HR managers must have the right knowledge on how to change an employee’s resistance.

In a moment of change some assumption or distinguishing way of doing something is broken, this means that an employee may begin to resist change. There are a large variety of ways to mitigate natural resistance to change, some of the management strategies are included in the following points within the blog. Although to be specific managers may encourage two-way communication to ensure employees voices and issues are being heard, this then will assure that an employee’s feedback is received by people with authority to take action, providing employees with a belief that they shaped the future of the organisation.

Set Goals and Rewards

An extremely useful way in which HR professionals may effectively manage change is through setting goals and rewarding employees for meeting set goals. When employees who are undergoing change receive both short term and long-term goals, they will work in the challenging situation to effectively meet the set goal, although when the goal is backed with an incentive of completion, employees are motivated to overcome change to meet goals and acquire offered rewards.

HR managers should fully consider what the employee is struggling to overcome throughout the change process and then set goals that work to strengthen and push the employee into the development to overcome their shortfalls. Furthermore, the reward offered should be something personalised for the employee. It shouldn’t be a standard reward offered to everyone, but it should be something personal that only the chosen employee may both acquire and wish to acquire.

Personalise the Benefits of Change

Throughout the change management process, HR departments should consider personalising the benefits of change to employees. When an employee views a situation of change as benefiting the entire organisation, this does not lead to employees being overly supportive of the change. Correspondingly, HR managers need to consider personalising the benefits of the change to the employee.

To effectively personalise the benefits of change to the employee, HR managers may consider offering an accurate description of how the change will help strengthen the employee’s professional career. Furthermore, managers may want to highlight the benefits of the change on a personal level, to which, HR managers may express how the change is aligned to the employees desired goals and direction, ensuring that the benefits highlighted will outweigh the employee’s risks.

Encourage Open Communication

HR managers may effectively manage change through encouraging open communication throughout the entire organisation. Specifically, HR managers may want to highlight clearly to employees the reason why the change is occurrent within the organisation. While this is great, open communication should be utilised whereby the feedback of the employees are to be heard. When there is a two-way communication channel, employees are able to better understand the situation.

Correspondingly, the open communication throughout the entire organisation will effectively reduce the ambiguity of those who are unclear of what the change involves and how they are affected. Furthermore, HR managers can critically create a culture of open communication between employees. This allows for other employees within the organisation to work together in overcoming the difficulties of change. Simply employees unsure of what a certain aspect of the change is may find anyone in the organisation to communicate with and overcome their problem in a matter of seconds.

Support Teamwork

A particularly useful way in which HR professionals may effectively manage change is through supporting teamwork. Throughout challenging situations of change when HR managers encourage teamwork, employees are able to have a team to work together and rely on to overcome any challenging situation presented in the change process.

Moreover, when teamwork is encouraged employees have a direct team of individual employees to talk with about any concerns they may have and receive positive reinforcement and assistance to overcome challenging moments throughout the change. Furthermore, when teamwork is supported employees will work directly with other employees when one employee sees another employee handling the change effectively, the employee’s personal motivation and drive will be increased.

Conduct Surveys and Take Action

A final critical way in which HR managers may effectively manage change is through conducting surveys and then taking both corrective and critical action. Surveys are extremely important throughout the change process as employees will be given a platform to express their opinions and feelings potentially anonymously to people with the power to take action and help guide the employees.

Furthermore, when honest feedback is encouraged within a survey and further the business works to take action in implementing feedback received, employees will begin to increase the trust they have in the business they work for. This helps employees overcome fears of change and further allows them to increase their personal level of motivation, fostering new behaviours and dealing with change with an open mindset.