How to keep employees onside during business transformations

The phrase ‘peo­ple are our most impor­tant asset’ has been trot­ted out for decades in the cor­po­rate world, even though they have yet to fea­ture on a bal­ance sheet. But, like any cliché, there is some truth behind it. If a firm can’t win its employ­ees’ minds (if not their hearts), it’s unlike­ly to suc­ceed, par­tic­u­lar­ly when attempt­ing fun­da­men­tal changes.

It’s vital for any organ­i­sa­tion seek­ing to trans­form its busi­ness to ensure that its peo­ple com­pre­hend its strat­e­gy and know how to turn that into action, stress­es Adao­ra Geiger, a part­ner at the Maitland/AMO con­sul­tan­cy. 

Busi­ness lead­ers must explain the ratio­nale for change “in a way that’s clear and acces­si­ble”, she advis­es, not­ing that their lan­guage can be heavy on jar­gon. Using words such as ‘lever­ag­ing’, ‘syn­er­gis­tic’ and ‘piv­ot’ can be alien­at­ing to any­one who isn’t fond of man­age­ment-speak, which makes it hard­er for lead­ers to ‘gain employ­ee buy-in’. One of the more mean­ing­ful pieces of cor­po­rate-ese, this means win­ning enough sup­port for, and com­mit­ment to, the planned changes among peo­ple at all lev­els of the organ­i­sa­tion.

“It’s impor­tant to com­mu­ni­cate the strat­e­gy in a way that crys­tallis­es val­ue beyond the share­hold­ers’ per­spec­tive,” Geiger says. “Employ­ees want to under­stand what’s in it for them. Why should they want to be part of this change, espe­cial­ly if it comes with a cer­tain lev­el of uncer­tain­ty and dis­com­fort?”

If they are to buy into the trans­for­ma­tion, they have to be con­vinced that it’s cru­cial to their organisation’s con­tin­ued suc­cess, says Emma Loizidis, head of peo­ple at B2B mar­ket­ing firm Fox Agency. She adds that, while it isn’t nec­es­sary for every­one to agree with every­thing in the plan, the whole process must be man­aged with empa­thy and trans­paren­cy, reward­ing people’s accep­tance. This can lead to improve­ments in moti­va­tion, loy­al­ty and team cohe­sion, ulti­mate­ly result­ing in bet­ter per­for­mance.

Like Geiger, she stress­es the impor­tance of clear mes­sag­ing, but notes that com­mu­ni­ca­tion must also be a two-way process that “should, ide­al­ly, begin dur­ing the plan­ning stage. It’s impor­tant to talk with peo­ple rather than at peo­ple. This will allow them to feel part of the change, engen­der­ing respect and sup­port from the out­set.” 

Loizidis con­tin­ues: “Employ­ees will have many con­cerns about issues such as a poten­tial increase in work­load, a loss of con­trol or a change of cul­ture, so effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion real­ly is key in help­ing to man­age these.”

Anoth­er poten­tial prob­lem is a fear of fail­ure, which man­i­fests itself when employ­ees lack con­fi­dence in their own adapt­abil­i­ty. It’s there­fore vital to pro­vide the right tools and train­ing to give them enough scope to devel­op new skills before any sig­nif­i­cant changes kick in. This will help to alle­vi­ate people’s fears and increase the lev­el of buy-in.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the HR depart­ment has a cen­tral role to play in busi­ness trans­for­ma­tions. Gior­gia Presten­to, an inde­pen­dent con­sul­tant spe­cial­is­ing in change man­age­ment, observes that HR needs to have devel­oped a deep under­stand­ing of the organisation’s cul­ture. 

“Any trans­for­ma­tion must account for the company’s cul­ture, or it could fail on kick-off. A change that con­flicts with the cul­ture sim­ply won’t work,” Presten­to warns. “The chal­lenge for the HR team, there­fore, is to assess the like­ly impact of the change on the organ­i­sa­tion and work with the C suite to adjust the scope of the change and how it’s to be imple­ment­ed, if that’s required.” 

She adds: “In my expe­ri­ence, HR isn’t real­ly involved in trans­for­ma­tions at the grass-roots lev­el, but it does play an impor­tant role in set­ting the tone and strate­gic direc­tion. The C‑level deci­sion-mak­ers have a larg­er role to play here. The prob­lem is that they often for­get to focus on the employ­ee expe­ri­ence when plan­ning a trans­for­ma­tion. They tend to pri­ori­tise imple­ment­ing new sys­tems, stream­lin­ing oper­a­tions, cut­ting costs and so on. They don’t con­sid­er employ­ee buy-in until too late in the pro­gramme, which can cre­ate resis­tance.”

Sophie Austin, HR part­ner at accoun­tan­cy firm Mon­a­hans, sug­gests that HR chiefs should school their C‑suite col­leagues on why buy-in is cru­cial by design­ing a busi­ness case that illus­trates how neglect­ing to engage employ­ees in the process could lead to fail­ure. 

Once the impor­tance of gain­ing buy-in has been demon­strat­ed, the next step is to cre­ate a struc­ture that enables the desired changes, and, again, to com­mu­ni­cate effec­tive­ly. 

“It’s impor­tant to send a uni­fied mes­sage across man­age­ment. HR may need to liaise with the firm’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ists to imple­ment this,” Austin says. “You will win engage­ment by being clear – about what you’re try­ing to achieve, what scope there is for employ­ees to give feed­back and what they have to gain from the process.”

Keep track of buy-in lev­els by seek­ing people’s views on the trans­for­ma­tion through user-friend­ly pulse sur­veys and focus groups, she sug­gests. Also look at some of the company’s key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors to get an idea of how things are going.

Austin rec­om­mends look­ing at trends in staff turnover, absence rates and the num­ber of griev­ance cas­es, as well as the firm’s finan­cial per­for­mance. “From there, you can gauge whether your strat­e­gy is deliv­er­ing what it set out to do or adjust­ments need to be made.”

Zara Whysall, research and impact direc­tor at man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy Kid­dy & Part­ners, offers a caveat to those seek­ing feed­back from employ­ees. They would do well to heed the words of David Ogilvy, the adver­tis­ing tycoon who once said of con­sumers: “Peo­ple don’t always think how they feel. They don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.” 

Whysall stress­es that it’s “impor­tant to observe people’s actu­al behav­iour. Are they oper­at­ing in ways that are con­sis­tent with the direc­tion of trav­el? Is their behav­iour tak­ing you towards or away from the desired trans­for­ma­tion state?”

Last­ly, remem­ber that new begin­nings often require an end­ing to occur first, advis­es Beth Pope, founder of brand con­sul­tan­cy Fire­haus. She explains that, as soon as change starts, the organ­i­sa­tion will enter a tran­si­tion­al phase known as the neu­tral zone. 

Dur­ing this peri­od, “peo­ple will need time to dis­en­gage from exist­ing ways of think­ing and behav­ing, so that they can reori­ent them­selves”, Pope says. “If the organ­i­sa­tion han­dles this in the right way – by acknowl­edg­ing its exis­tence and pro­vid­ing ‘guard rails’ – this can be a pos­i­tive peri­od of oppor­tu­ni­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty. As peo­ple wres­tle with new ways of doing things, they make them their own. That’s where the secret to a true trans­for­ma­tion lies.”