Change management

As market dynamics, technologies, and customer preferences change rapidly and significantly, employees, managers, and companies can choose to be reactive and be controlled by change or proactively manage change and reduce negative impacts. It becomes necessary to transition individuals, teams, and the organization from a current state to a desired future state seamlessly, and incorporate changes triggered by external forces into the organization – with minimal negative impacts.

Change Management involves three major phases, each with its own challenges:

• Overcoming resistance through empathy: Any attempt at change meets with resistance. Individuals and teams react to change based on their needs and feelings. Managers often find such reactions illogical. Employees coping with change often seek a medium to raise their concerns, ask questions, and share concerns without their managers becoming judgmental. Enabling this helps managers reduce resistance, boost morale, anticipate resistance, and counter it.
• Introducing and communicating change: Organizations often find it difficult to sell change to employees by clearly highlighting and communicating the positives of change and how the change aligns with the organization’s strategic vision or business imperatives.
• Participating in and embracing change as the norm: Organizations implementing change face challenges in focusing on realistic short-term goals that employees can easily achieve. Most organizations look for a means to gradually push change till it is embraced.

How Qontext Helps

Qontext’s social intranet features make it an excellent system for change management.

• Feature the “change vision” on Company News. Post documents that highlight how the change will benefit the organization and all its employees.
• Create a feedback group for the entire organizational unit. Encourage all employees to raise their concerns and questions. Respond to employee concerns and questions. Run polls or surveys to gauge the employees’ mood on contentious issues.
• Use announcements to continually broadcast the change benefits. Target smaller units (groups) for effective dissemination of the message.
• Run success stories of (achieving short-term goals) as featured content to keep the employees motivated. Spotlight individuals to motivate others to be a part of the change.
• Encourage middle-level leaders and employees to blog about their change experiences. Keep the blogs open and transparent to foster dialogue, discussion, and a gradual acceptance of change.