Empower employees to give honest feedback Not only does listening bring out the creativity in most people, it helps engage them and get their commitment during the early stages of the process rather than trying to haul them and their resistance on board once all the decisions have been made. However, hand-in-hand with keeping staff informed, is to hear what ideas and suggestions they have about the future of your (and their) company. They are stakeholders after all, and in our experience, people at every level of an organisation have useful and sometimes hugely innovative ideas around change. Some companies seem to have an allergic reaction to asking staff for their ideas and input while big changes are being made. Keeping them informed treats them as mature, equal participants in what is going on in the organisation. A comprehensive overview and regular updates will reap huge Benefits later on.

Keeping information back infantilises your employees. If youre leading change in your organisation, you don't have to tell everybody everything, but if you want to bring people on board you have to let your employees know whats going on and why its going on, even if it means announcing that there may very well be redundancies in the pipeline.

While all that silence is emanating from the leadership, people are then making up what they think is going on they might be half right, but rumours and gossip abound and anxiety is rife. Of all the difficulties we have seen in organisations around change, lack of communication ranks at the top. While the leadership is working out what to do, there's usually a deathly silence coming from their offices and computers. Rarely is a word mentioned of what the plans are going to be until the changes are presented as a fait accomplis from on high. At that point it can feel like a take it or leave it proposition (well, it usually is). This all sounds very dramatic, doesnt it? For the people experiencing the big emotions, change can indeed feel dramatic. This is what managing change is all about facilitating a process that gets the majority of employees on board so that productivity and morale dont suffer. This is true in all walks of life: people for the most part resent imposed change and immediate reactions include feeling disempowered, defensive and critical. Thats when the very opposite of what the leadership intended happens: staff get demotivated and productivity can and usually does drop, sometimes dramatically.Ĭhanges that are undertaken are usually imposed on employees and when there is imposed change there's usually a concomitant loss of trust and a suspicion of the leaderships motives. However, the trouble with all this change is that it can cause huge stress and anxiety within organisations for a number of reasons.Ĭhange by its very nature breeds uncertainty. People become wary if too much change happens around them uncertainty breeds rumours rumours breed more uncertainty.ĭuring this uncertainty, the decision-makers tend to spend all their attention and focus on the logistics of survival or the mechanics of their mergers or acquisitions. What they tend to ignore is the impact any change will have on the majority of their employees. They dont mean to, but people on the receiving end can feel ignored, taken for granted and marginalised.

What we have witnessed over the past eighteen months are more mergers and acquisitions, more redundancies, more downsizing and outsourcing. Its probably wise that organisations are looking at how they could better manage themselves leaner and meaner might make for more efficient, competitive businesses. Getting through the recession and beyond becomes the top priority and many things companies used to hold dear just arent given the same consideration as previously.Īll well and good, you might say. Adapting is exactly what many organisations are doing even as you read this they're adapting and changing how they operate even changing what their vision, values and goals are.

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