Effective Change Management Strategies for HR Professionals

HR professionals are the linchpin for successful change management in the organization.

When managing any change within an organization, your leaders need to communicate the reasons for change, create plans, manage transitions, help employees adjust, and provide training to ensure a smooth transition.

Considering that, HR holds the master key to effective change management whether it happens in one department or sweeps across the entire organization.

Why Change Management Matters for HR

Change is essential to the success of all organizations. Without it, companies will become stagnant and employees will become disengaged. But change management is difficult. We won’t kid you.

Just 22% of companies succeed at change, according to research from the Harvard Business School. More than three-quarters of changes fall short to some degree. But how you go about managing change can make the difference between success and failure, the researchers found.

Effective changemakers “shared a common focus on initiatives that prioritized employees,” the researchers said.

The secret is to focus on employees throughout change.

So HR plays a key role in driving and managing organizational change because HR professionals impact all employees.

Understanding the Role of HR in Change Management

Change management is the process of planning, implementing, communicating and solidifying changes within an organization. It can look different based on the type of company, magnitude of change, speed of implementation and degree of difficulty.

Yes, some changes will be deeply complex and time-consuming. And some changes will be low-key and quick.

But as an HR professional, you’ll likely have a hand in nearly all organizational changes. Your department will undergo changes, and you’ll spearhead those. But you’ll often play a dual role of leading change and serving as a facilitator for changes in other areas of the organization.

The role and responsibilities of HR in most change management will include (but not be limited to):

• Providing initial employee communications about changes and continuing updates.
• Developing training programs to handle changes.
• Preparing and disseminating information on changes and training.
• Assessing readiness before changes.
• Analyzing the impact, results and return on investment.

HR’s Critical Role: Align Change with Business Strategy

Throughout the change process, HR professionals will want to ensure the initiatives are aligned with company and/or departmental goals. Back to the Harvard research: Throughout organizational transformation, you’ll be guiding employees through changes and helping them adapt and overcome.

Effective change management can ensure HR’s ability to execute business strategy going forward. While it might seem you and your employees need to just get through one change at a time, every business change is a stepping stone for strategic success.

When you go beyond managing change — and start to champion it — you help the organization increase buy-in. As HR leaders gather support for change across departments, you:

• Increase the speed of accuracy of adaption.
• Ensure employees and departments stay aligned with the organizational change goal.
• Stand out as a critical partner in the organization’s ability to execute business strategy.
• Maintain a high level of authority within organizational leadership and become seen as key changemakers.

Common Challenges in Change Management

Remember when we said change is difficult? We weren’t kidding. Organizational change sparks a myriad of challenges.

Here, we cover the most common HR change management challenges and the reasons for each:

• Resistance from employees and management. This is the top challenge when it comes to organizational change. Leaders complain that nearly half of employees struggle with change resistance. Meanwhile, according to another piece of research, employees resist change because they fear more work, uncertainty and fatigue. You’ll almost always need solutions to employee resistance.
• Communication breakdowns. Communication before, during and after change is critical to managing change — most especially in cross-departmental teams. But, all too often, when many teams are involved, communication breaks down and changes start to unravel. That’s why HR’s guidance can help create a seamless process.
• Lack of resources or support. Big ideas sometimes don’t come with the budgets, resources and leadership support employees need to push through change. So employees lose interest and desire for making the changes they’ve been charged with.
• Balancing operations with ongoing change initiatives. The everyday work still has to get done as teams and employees work through and manage change. They sometimes struggle to keep up with it or find it difficult to manage priorities. Then they resent the change and push back.
• Managing cross-generational teams during transitions. While different generations in the workplace usually work well side-by-side every day, getting through change can be a different story. It puts new strains on people and teams, and different generations deal with those differently — sometimes with negative reactions. So teams face conflict and fail to manage change.
• Managing remote teams through change. Remote teams sometimes aren’t equipped to handle and manage change as well as in-person teams. They might not have the technology advantages of on-site teams. Or they don’t have the level of cohesiveness and collegiality that teams working shoulder-to-shoulder have. Sometimes, remote teams lack the resources to physically and mentally handle change. Whatever the reason, leaders who manage remote teams might struggle more to get buy-in and adoption — and they likely need more remote workforce transition strategies.

Key Strategies for Effective Change Management

Now you know the challenges you’ll face when spearheading and managing change, you likely realize you need effective strategies for effective change management.

We have them here.

Develop a Clear Vision and Goals

Employees can’t and won’t follow change if they don’t understand why it’s happening and where they’re going. A clear vision and specific goals are critical to change management success.

You may not design the vision for change when it comes from other departments or the C-suite. But you’ll be responsible for communicating it and ensuring it stays top of mind so employees always understand and move toward the goal.

When developing a clear vision to ensure alignment and buy-in, define:

• The end goal, drawing a picture of what success looks like.
• How success will be measured.
• The metrics used to measure success.
• The steps employees will take to make changes.
• The resources they’ll have available.

Foster Open Communication

If we haven’t emphasized this enough already, we’ll mention it again. Employees will resist change or plainly not be able to achieve it if they don’t understand what’s going on. Clear communication in change management is a game-changer.

Start the process by clearly explaining why the change is being implemented. Be clear about the vision and goals, and how it all will impact employees. Share the information in several formats — such as on the company communication app, during an organizational or team meeting and via email.

Give regular updates, depending on the magnitude of the change. For long-term changes, that may be monthly. For short-term changes, it could be daily. Be transparent about setbacks. Recognize accomplishments.

Gather employee feedback throughout the change cycle through town halls, surveys and your communication app feedback loops. Listen and respond to feedback whether you can take action or not.

Empower Leadership

We mentioned it above and it’s worth repeating and expanding on. Change management needs champions. If HR professionals are the first champions, managers and nearly everyone in leadership need to follow close behind.

You’ll want to empower managers on two fronts: the actual change and becoming champions of the change. The latter will likely be more difficult! So when you train them to become champions of change, focus on the positive outcomes.

Help them recognize that results won’t be immediate, but they can look for certain incremental improvements as change is adopted. Be specific. For instance, “We will see turnaround time drop by 10% in three weeks. That puts us on pace for a full adoption — and the bonuses promised for increased productivity — by the end of the quarter.”

When you start empowering managers, they’ll take the lead on change and pull up employees’ morale and performance.

Provide Training and Support

We can’t emphasize the importance of training and support throughout change enough. Obviously, employees will need to learn about the change and the skills and knowledge they have to sharpen to master it.

More so, you’ll want to offer training on a variety of levels. That’s mostly because different employees learn best in different environments and/or structures. For instance, these days, many HR pros appreciate a Learning Management System (LMS) where you can deliver, track and measure employee learning. And while that is ideal for everyone to at least try, it might not be the best way for some to learn. So add classroom or one-on-one sessions to the employee training pot.

Beyond your skills-building sessions, give employees easy-access tools — ideally part of your LMS system — to get updates, refresher tips and best practices to ease the transition.

Monitor Progress and Adapt

How will you know if your change management practices work? Well, if the change fails — and remember, most organizations fail at change more than 75% of the time! — you’ll know change management fell short.

But, you’ll want to track adoption and identify obstacles throughout the process so you can adjust strategies as needed based on feedback and what you monitor. In this day and age, most HR pros will want to lean into their technology tools, such as your LMS and human capital management (HCM) software, to support change management.

Measuring success will ultimately go back to the vision and goals you set early in the change management process. Continually use your HR technology tools to gauge success based on the original vision, goals and plan.

Real-World Examples of HR-Driven Change Management

Don’t let those statistics scare you. There are plenty of organizational change success stories — from small businesses needing to make attendance policy changes to large organizations wanting to make digital transformation changes.

Here, we have three HR case studies:

Case Study: Workforce Restructuring to 4-Day Workweek

Exos is one of many companies that thought a 4-day workweek would be ideal. But it’s one of only a few that successfully made the change.

Exos’ Chief People Officer and other C-Suite execs rolled out the initiative as an extension of their Readiness Culture Code. More importantly, they created guidelines — such as, it’s not an extra day off, it’s an additional “rest day” after a 40-hour week in four days — and brought on a researcher to keep an eye on the results. Then they tested the change for six months.

Of course, there were trials, errors and learning. And their “You Do You Fridays” were different for everyone nearly every week. Sometimes people worked. Other times they played.

But their calculated approach to this big change paid off: 90% of employees said they’re more productive now. Reports of burnout dropped from 70% to 36%. And the sales pipeline grew 212% year over year.

Case Study: Cultural Shifts for Policy Adherence

In some cases, companies need to use organizational change to ferret out bad habits or lackadaisical policy enforcement. For many companies, attendance — especially in the days of the return-to-office debate — was a big concern and an eventual change that had to be managed (rather than handing down hard edicts).

But what works best? Two-thirds of companies trying to increase adherence to attendance policies found the best way to manage change was through leadership role modeling. Similarly, more than 55% found success in training managers to set new norms, habits and routines. So sometimes, the best practice is practice!

Case Study: HR Becomes Partner in Digital Transformation

Bristol-Myers Squibb wanted to bring their medicine to market faster and develop individualized treatments. Doesn’t necessarily sound like an HR initiative, and that’s what makes this the perfect example of HR aligning itself and its goals with business initiatives.

HR leaders became embedded partners, first viewing themselves as business leaders who happen to lead HR; talent; learning and development; and culture. That change in perspective was crucial for gaining influence and driving strategic decisions within organizations.

From there, HR aligned its learning and development initiatives with the organization’s strategic priorities (bringing medicines to market faster and developing individualized treatments). That ensured HR was deeply integrated in the strategic direction of the entire business.

HR Tech Tools and Resources for Change Management

While there are dozens of project and change management tools designed to support and facilitate organizational change, your existing HR tools or HCM tools for change just might do the job you need. After all, your software tools assist in planning, implementing, communicating and tracking HR functions. So you already have a systematic approach to change management.

Note: If you aren’t going to rely on your HR software to handle change management, you’ll want to ensure your software is compatible with your organization’s project or change management tools. Work with your IT experts or hr tech vendors to integrate, if necessary.

Lean into your HR software for change management to:

• Manage the project. Lay out the change plan, including the vision, goal, timeline, project steps and responsibilities so everyone can see progress in real time.
• Communicate. Use your technology tools as the hub for information. Send updates, post alerts, share successes and give employees opportunities to recognize each other for good work. Make sure employees know that this is the central and most accurate location for up-to-date communication.
• Track employee sentiment. Continue to use your HR technology and employee feedback tools throughout the change. Gather feedback like you normally would, but prompt employees to share concerns, insight, setbacks and learning from the ongoing changes.
• Track results. Use your performance management tools to gauge the change’s effect on productivity. And adjust as necessary.

From Plan to Action: HR’s Key Role in Change Success

You can’t underscore HR’s strategic role in change management enough. Your thumb is on the pulse of the people, processes and progress of the organization at all times. While change can happen, it likely won’t happen effectively without the guidance and oversight of HR.

To that end, HR pros want to be the first to embrace organizational change as an opportunity for growth and improvement. Effective change management starts within HR and includes:

• Understanding your role. HR will need to align with leaders in planning, implementing, communicating and solidifying changes within an organization.
• Recognizing the challenges. One of the most effective HR strategies in change management is defense: You must understand the obstacles ahead to defend against them and the problems they could cause.
• Being prepared. You can only manage change with an overarching plan.
  • Develop a vision and goal.
  • Communicate constantly.
  • Empower your leaders.
  • Provide training and support.
  • Monitor progress and adapt, using the technology tools at hand.

HR leadership in organizational change is critical to business success. Regularly evaluate your current strategies and adopt best-in-class practices such as those outlined here — and you’ll always be ready to succeed at change.