Organizational Change: Managing The Impact Of Workday®

Organizational change can feel overwhelming, even insurmountable, but when executed properly with the support of an organizational change and training professional, those feelings can be largely mitigated. Change is inevitable and necessary. This white paper will discuss why change occurs, a common barrier to change, and steps to NAVIGATE THE PROCESS OF CHANGE as it relates to Workday®.

CHANGE IS INEVITABLE: WHY IT OCCURS

Companies make organizational changes for many reasons, large and small. Not only is change important to maintain a company’s vibrancy, but it’s also inevitable. Reasons for change can be as varied as the companies themselves—to improve workflow, processes, and profitability; to maintain a competitive advantage; to keep pace with emerging trends and technologies; or to offer new and better products and services to their customers.

Often, change at the organizational level involves a software product, such as Workday®. When used to its full potential, Workday® will increase productivity, streamline workflow, and improve the overall functionality of your organization.

The challenge for you and your employees is to accept and embrace change in order to make the software work for you as opposed to struggling with less-than-optimal configurations in order to avoid change.

While change is inevitable, anxiety doesn’t have to be. IJA holds a passion for truly getting to know your business and your unique needs. In doing this, we can connect your technology to your people and processes, making organizational change a smooth and enjoyable transition. We’re proud of our process, and we’re confident that it will work for you.

COMMON BARRIER TO CHANGE: CHANGE FATIGUE

Employees, even the very best of them, often resist organizational change. This is especially true when the change is poorly managed. It can even lead to what’s called change fatigue, one of the most common challenges we witness.

organizational change fatigue:

a general sense of apathy or passive resignation towards organizational changes by individuals or teams.

If you think that sounds ominous, you’re right. It can be. Change fatigue can be extremely detrimental to an organization, leading to plummeting employee morale, a decrease in productivity, or, at the very least, a pretty sullen breakroom. The best news is that it’s completely avoidable. At IJA, we focus on understanding the root causes of change resistance and how that resistance manifests itself in your organization. “People resist change,” is a dismissive statement some executives fall back on, often with a shrug or an implied acceptance that it “is what it is.” That’s not good enough in our world. We firmly believe that the best offense is a good defense. The most effective way to combat change fatigue is to not allow it to happen.

Next, we’ll walk you through FIVE STEPS that will give you the tools you need to achieve organizational change without change fatigue, emerging as a stronger, more successful company.

change fatique is one of the top 2 challenges leaders face

NAVIGATING CHANGE:

Five Steps To Success

Plain and simple: if you’re facing a Workday®-related challenge, if organizational change is coming and you’re ready to meet it head on, this five-step process is a roadmap to your success.

STEP 1: Executive Sponsorship

Organizational change has to come from the top down. Leadership must be visibly on board and express enthusiastic buy-in for the change to come. By REMAINING ENGAGED THROUGHOUT and acting as an unabashed cheerleader for the process, executives not only demonstrate necessary leadership, but also model successful behavior. Top executives must talk the talk, walk the walk, and provide frequent updates and calls that highlight the positive benefits of the changes to come. Furthermore, creativity and fun shouldn’t be overlooked—consider holding employee pep rallies, sponsoring friendly contests between departments, or surprising employees with lunch. Leadership will need to be demonstrated in many ways throughout an organizational change, and some of the smallest gestures can have the largest impact.

STEP 2: Clear Communication

It’s not just communication that’s important but the right communication, at the right time, tailored to the right audience, and coming directly and honestly from the right person. How you communicate with middle management will be different than how you communicate with rank and file employees, but both messages are equally important and critical to get right. Understanding which ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MESSAGE is most important to reach which audience is a hallmark of successful communication.

STEP 3: Training

There are many ways to train employees for organizational change, but we believe there is only one best way. We see it as an absolutely critical step to get to know your company, and more importantly, your people, so that a CUSTOMIZED TRAINING REGIMEN can be developed for your team. Additionally, change is best executed when you engage internal stakeholders and involve them as an integral part of the process from start to finish.

Even with perfectly designed technology, if you don’t train the employees to use it and be comfortable, they’ll find workarounds to the company’s detriment.

SANDRA LANGLOIS, Sr. Analyst, Change Management

STEP 4: Coaching

There’s a reason professional sports teams have a head coach and position coaches for support. If your company’s senior leadership represents the head coach, then mid-level managers are your position coaches. Often, a great deal of change resistance comes directly from those mid-level managers. A critical piece of the change process is to ENGAGE YOUR MID-LEVEL MANAGERS at the appropriate times and clearly communicate the importance of the information you’re sharing. If they are well-informed and confident about what’s happening, they will be able to share their enthusiasm and knowledge with the employees they manage. Once you have solid buy-in from your position coaches, you’ve won half the battle. Think of it as coaching the coaches.

said their organization was effective at inspiring employees in this era of ongoing transformation

STEP 5: Resistance Management

Finally, and inevitably, there will be some resistance to organizational change. It’s important to have a partner in place that can quickly identify source(s) of resistance and provide a game plan to mitigate that resistance.

Once problem areas are uncovered, it’s important to ensure employees feel like they are prepared for the coming challenges. We can all acknowledge that feeling prepared makes us feel more comfortable, and change at work is no different. If your employees understand both the reason for the change and that they are being given the tools they need to be successful, resistance is much less likely to derail your efforts.

By asking the right questions, we can help solve problems our clients may not even know they have.

SANDRA LANGLOIS, Sr. Analyst, Change Management

PARTNER WITH AN EXPERT:

Next Level Service With A People-First Focus

As a women-owned, independent firm specializing in Workday® consulting services, IJA Strategies has a SECRET WEAPON when it comes to helping your company implement and fully utilize everything the software has to offer. Yes, we understand every facet of the technology, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle. At IJA, we have a people-first focus. We believe that technology should serve people, not the other way around. We consider the needs of our clients and their people first, then configure the technology and form a customized plan that supports those needs.

We do that by asking the right questions and listening carefully to the answers. We do that by being strategic, but also relationship focused. We get to know our clients, to understand not just their motivations and successes, but their fears and frustrations. This focus, this way of doing business, comes from a personal place. In the words of Andrea Chudy, founder of IJA

This commitment extends to the entire IJA family. We are tenacious problem solvers working together as a team to help your people embrace change and unleash the full potential of Workday®.

More than ten years ago, I found myself in tears before work one day because I was so frustrated with Workday® and didn’t know how to fix it. I felt defeated. I felt inadequate. I felt like a failure at my job. I vowed that day that no person should ever feel the same. For over a decade I have dedicated myself to becoming a Workday® expert, and in 2017, I founded IJA Strategies to help others.

ANDREA CHUDY Founder of IJA

If you’re ready to get the most out of Workday®, contact IJA Strategies.

Let’s Connect

Sources
www.ccl.org/blog/change-fatigue-continual-evolution
instituteforpr.org/nine-business-transformation-stats-you-cant-afford-to-ignore-in-2019
capacity4health.org/change-management-statistics

ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE: Managing The Impact Of Workday®