Change Management Plan Best Practices

All companies should be proactive and have a change management plan. 

If your company is interested in developing a change management plan, here are some best practices you can apply: 

1. Give the Change Time to Sink In—Simply, give employees advance notice. Not “this change is happening tomorrow” or “this change happened yesterday,” but if you can, give people a month. Obviously, depending on what the change is, that window of time for notifying people could be shorter or longer, but at minimum, give people two weeks.
   
   People need time to let change sink in. Some people have been doing the same thing, the same procedure, the same way, for years and years of their life. Implementing change is asking them to jump outside their comfort zone.
   
   If you give them time to let the changes sink in and to consult with the available resources you are providing for them, it will make the change a lot easier.
   
   
2. Be Prepared to Discuss the “Whys”—Anyone who has parented a child will tell you that “because I said so” or “because I’m your mom/dad,” only works as a reason for the first couple years. After that, the child has some individuality and “because I said so” is no longer an effective tool for managing change or getting someone to change their behavior. The same goes for employees.
   
   You have to be prepared to discuss the reasons why these changes are being made. People want to feel like they’re part of something; people want to feel like they’re contributing to the greater good.
   
   If they don’t understand why the change is happening, how it benefits the organization and how it benefits them, you’re going to get a decreased amount of buy-in and you’re going to have to do a lot more damage control on the back end.
   
   And a caveat to that is you need to be prepared to communicate your reasons with passion and enthusiasm.
   
   If people can see your positivity behind the change—even if it’s a tough change; even if it’s something that presents a challenge to your organization—they will be more accepting of it.
   
   If you communicate the change and the tactics that you have in place to manage the change in a positive manner, that attitude will be infectious and will be a lot more likely to be adopted by the rest of the organization.
   
   
3. Document Everything—If there’s a new policy or a new procedure that’s coming into play, don’t just talk about it and ask employees to do it, make sure that there’s a documented resource employees can refer to.
   
   It doesn’t have to be fancy, just something on your company’s intranet or Web site where employees can go and pull up the new policy/procedure and look at it on-the-fly.
   
   Providing some sort of written reference will help employees feel like they have a safety net.
   
   This would be bare minimum.
   
   Obviously, if it’s a larger process/procedure or a larger policy change, then you have to ask yourself, “Does this change require training?” and if so, “What does the training need to consist of?”
   
   There are many effective ways to communicate with and train employees. 

In my next Insight, I’ll detail the fourth and fifth best practices for developing a change management plan.

If your company is interested in developing a change management plan, here are some best practices you can apply.