The business landscape has changed so much in the past decade there are several jobs today that did not exist just a few years ago.
“Organisations are living entities, operating in a very dynamic world, so they need to evolve all the time,” says Clifford Taylor, vice-president of HR at Mead Johnson Asia. However, change is not something organisations should walk into blindly, and Timothy Boxhall, regional HR M&A integration lead for APAC at Pfizer, says it is important to embrace change in a “strategic, forward-thinking and organised way”.
In an environment where change is the only constant, leaders need to manage change initiatives smoothly to keep businesses moving forward.
Yet the one thing that has remained the same is people’s fear of change. “The only person in the world who really wants to be changed is a baby with a wet nappy. The rest of us are just fine the way we are,” Taylor says.
One of the biggest concerns HR has to address when undertaking a change initiative is employees’ uncertainty – but even then, there are certain nuances leaders have to look for. “You need to be able to identify the concerns of different stakeholders at different levels,” says Lyndith Goh, global organisational development and change manager at Huntsman Textile Effects division.
“It could be as different as an operator who has mortgage loans and is the sole breadwinner versus a manager who is losing his luxurious lifestyle or a country club membership.” Therefore, the onus is on HR to be clear in communicating the impact of the change to all levels of the organisation, says Boxhall.
“Ultimately, employees want to feel that HR leadership is being transparent with them, and providing them the information that is available in a timely manner,” he adds. Goh says HR leaders have to also remain humane during a change process, and while it can be a struggle to balance between delivering business objectives and catering to the needs of staff, one of the easiest ways to help employees is to “give employees time to minimise the black hole and uncertainty”.
Pete Baker, director of HR at Maersk Line for the Asia Pacific region, says it is exactly why business and HR leaders need to always have their finger on the pulse. “Try as much as possible to categorise employees to see who will be positively and negatively impacted. You cannot get it perfect, but if you have got leaders who know their organisation, you can do some contingency planning and reduce the element of surprise,” he says.
Not all smooth sailing
Baker says HR has to be prepared for the group of employees who will be resistant to change. “They are those looking for short-term evidence that it is a bad idea, and if things go wrong, they will spread the news really quickly,” he warns.
But he says the best way to combat such negativity is simply by celebrating the positive. “Managers and HR leaders have to be the reverse of that and say, ‘OK, how can we plan for some specific short-term wins?’” he says.
A change initiative is usually a massive undertaking for the organisation, but Baker says breaking down the project and identifying achievable short-term goals will not only silence pessimistic employees, but help monitor the progress of the change.
Dr. Will Thomas, executive advisor of the corporate leadership council at the Corporate Executive Board, says monitoring the change as you are going along is as important as having a plan to start with.
He says keeping track of the progress will help HR identify red flags that point to a potential gap or shift in dynamics. “Circumstances around you will continue to change. Monitoring the process and evaluating yourself against your metrics are imperative because you may have to change your process.”
Organisations have to be “willing to change your change”, he says, and Boxhall adds identifying the hiccups early will help better address them.
Another way to provide better foresight to a change initiative is to involve those resistant employees in the development of the programme.
“If there are people you believe may resist a change, draw them in during the planning stages and make them part of the steering team so they will have ownership. It also makes sure the real concerns they have are addressed formally,” Baker says.
While change management can be a messy and drawn out process, Thomas says one good strategy is to start at the end.
“You need to start with your end state in mind and then work backwards to that to establish a set of milestones that can be measured,” he says.
“We have found through our research that two thirds of change initiatives do not achieve their desired results because of poor planning.”
The devil’s in the detail
Change management often causes casualties. It is expected employees will leave an organisation during a major restructuring. However, Goh says it is important not to neglect those who remain behind. “Do not assume those who are staying back do not have any concerns. They may be worried about taking on the responsibilities of team members who are leaving because of the change,” she says.
HR can also not neglect the informal relationships that may be affected.
“People are comfortable with the relationships they currently have and many of those are not on the organisational chart,” Thomas says.
“That informal set of relationships are going to change and people are not often sure how that is going to change, so they tend to stop to see what happens and that slows down the process.”
Bringing visibility on those informal relationships and getting those affected to understand how the relationships will evolve, and coming to agreement over new work flows, can go a long way in reducing uncertainty.
Thomas also says HR can do more in terms of helping managers deliver unfavourable news as a result of the changes to employees.
More is always better
For many managers, Thomas says the only reason that conversation is slowed down is because of fear.
“One of the things that helps companies a lot is for HR to create a conversation guide – almost like a template – for how those conversations should happen. The more you can prepare your managers to have that conversation, the better off they will be,” Thomas says.
Baker agrees it never hurts to over-communicate when involved in a change initiative. “People need to hear the message in many ways from many forums to understand the message. It is natural human behaviour that people have to hear a change many times before they become truly engaged,” he says.
Boxhall adds HR should ensure the “consistency of change management initiatives takes place across the entire time line”.
“Never underestimate the importance of good change management and its ability to remove noise and pain across programmes of work,” he says.
Lessons from Iraq
Sabrina Zolkifi finds out how Dr Will Thomas applies what he learnt on the front lines to the office today.
Before Dr. Will Thomas, executive advisor of the corporate leadership council at the Corporate Executive Board, pulled rank in the corporate world, he served as a strategic planner with the US military.
“When I was serving in Iraq in 2004, we were developing the Iraqi security forces, and that was obviously a huge change from a dictatorship to a free country,” Thomas says.
“The way we measured the effectiveness of the Iraqi military was how many people went through basic training. It had nothing to do with how skilled they were when they graduated, or whether we were teaching them the right skills to create a more peaceful environment.
“It did not account for all the people who left the military after basic training and either went back to their families or to join the insurgent forces.”
He shares that because they only measured the input and not the output, it slowed down the process in Iraq significantly, but was “ultimately overcome by addressing the effects rather than the input”.
So how does this relate to HR?
“If you are going through change that requires training on processes or techniques to get people ready for a new environment, what you need to look at is not how many people have gone through the course, but what they are able to do with those skills coming out of it,” Thomas says.
“If all you are looking at is who has graduated from that training, you will not get a sense of how appropriate that is or how prepared your workforce is for the new environment.”
