Organizations evolve throughout their life cycle the same way that people do. According to Gartner, business evolves from and ad-hoc company in chaos towards managed and optimised organizations. By and large, the most common platform for the implementation of large scale corporate change is a project.
The intrinsic nature of a project is to accomplish this change in as little time and with the least amount of money possible. This alone can leave team members and employees feeling as though they are being swept up in a whirlwind. In like fashion, projects have their own momentum that is more often than not, a world apart from the corporation itself.

With this in mind, it would be easy to understand why change management teams have their work cut out for them. Strong overall strategies and effective consistent communication throughout the process of implementation can result minimal impact on the corporate culture and employees. Nonetheless, there will be some degree of fallout.

Champions of Change

For instance, when the coercive strategy is utilized and compliance is the only available option, detachment, politeness and courtesy are of the utmost importance so that in time, as the employee becomes more comfortable and versed with the new policies, they will feel that they have regained control and yet not lost any dignity during the whole experience. Surprisingly, they may even become the champions of future changes. However, in order for any future changes to be considered, we have to review those most recent and learn how we can improve on the process in order to ensure that new changes are implemented as seamlessly as possible.

Forensic Assessment

During the process of change, we have the opportunity to learn more about the employee base from their perspective, and the technical side of the project (the tools and approaches that worked best).

From the employee perspective, the change management team needs to assess the level of empowerment and buy-in, overall comprehension of the change itself, how were their roles and duties affected and moreover, what was their level of individual participation in the process? Technically speaking, the team needs to assess the tools they used both to communicate with the employees and implement the change. Part of the assessment of the implementation tools used, is documentation throughout the process and the other part is to review that documentation afterwards to find what worked best. For example, how often and what kinds of information was accessed from the project website?

In order to fully review the project from the employee perspective, the change management team can use tools such as follow-up meetings, online surveys and mining data from the project website, statistics and information tracked during the process. The most comprehensive project review will utilize a combination of these tools in order to reach as many employees and obtain the most amount of feedback as possible.

Communication as Change Facilitator

Change, in one form or another, is an inescapable part of corporate life as it represents the organization’s ability to advance with social and economic change and its ability to respond to the needs of its employees and customers. In order to better understand the implications for future changes to the organization, we need to understand the changes we have made to date, how they affected things like employee and customer loyalty, and what the long term ROI (return on investment) will be. This understanding is simply not possible without two way communication.