In 2016, 74% of employees were still willing to support organizational change. This ‘willingness to change’ has plummeted to 38% today. Now that employees experience an average of 10 (!) planned changes a year, they’ve simply become change fatigued, with 73% even reporting increased levels of stress as a consequence [1,2].
These shocking results show that carefully ensuring the change 'lands' with your employees is essential. Especially now. In a time where innovation and digital transformation are almost inevitable to be successful in the competitive business world. We cannot escape change. And that’s a good thing, as it is a positive force that moves us forward.
But, how do you support your people?
Targeted response to needs and sentiment
In our previous blog, no success without a soft landing, we highlighted the importance of focusing on ‘soft’ aspects such as behavior, culture and leadership to make a change successful. To do this well, it is important to set targeted actions that match the employees and their needs. How do you do that? You start by creating a good understanding of how your employees view the change and what they need to go along with it. While one employee sees opportunities and is eager to embrace the change, another sees mainly obstacles and resists, disagreeing with the direction or fearing the impact on their work. And of course, everything in between.
The chances that every employee in your organization has the same needs and sentiments are slim. This calls for a targeted change approach, where you can tailor actions and interventions to the specific needs that exist.
Customization at the persona level
Ideally, you want to provide customization for every employee to optimize the success rate of the change. Carrying out actions and interventions for every employee on an individual level is impossible. Fortunately, there is a solution that balances customization and a generic approach: working with personas. How does that work? It’s simple. By identifying different target groups with specific characteristics and needs (personas) within a change, you enable yourself to respond to these groups of employees with targeted actions and interventions. Customization at the persona level!
Top left: the Engaged Enthusiast; Top right: the Committed Contributor
Bottom left: the Skeptical Observer; bottom right: the Overwhelmed Worker
Personas in practice
Within our Change Adoption approach, we use personas throughout the entire change process. Different personas are identified both at the start and during a change. This allows for flexible and timely adjusting of our actions and interventions to what is needed at that moment. This ensures that the sentiment and voice of the employee are included in the change approach, and we land the change as well as possible. For every employee.
How do you do this concretely? Here are some tips:
Start with an assessment: Ask employees in an accessible and low-threshold way about their sentiments, needs and attitudes towards the change.
Group employees into personas: Divide people into groups based on specific characteristics and describe each group as one fictional person (persona) to illustrate this. This way, you make a simplified distinction between the different groups in your organization.
For example: The ‘Engaged Enthusiast’ fully supports the change and sees the benefits for themselves. They are highly motivated to contribute personally and have full confidence that they possess the right knowledge and skills. In contrast, the ‘Overwhelmed Worker’ does not understand why the change is necessary. They have experienced many major changes in recent years and strongly doubt whether they have the right knowledge and skills to go along with this one.
Create a targeted change approach per persona: Based on the needs of each persona, determine which actions and interventions are needed to optimally guide that group in the change. If we take the two personas mentioned earlier, the approach for the ‘Engaged enthusiast’ will focus on actively involving this person in the change process, among other things.
For example, by first providing training for this group and asking for critical feedback, the training can be refined for others. For the ‘Overwhelmed Worker’, interventions such as communication about the ‘why’ of the change and additional content-specific training will be appropriate. We often hear management say, ‘But we have communicated this so many times already.’ However, this message apparently does not get through to the people successfully. We help management deliver the message differently, so it gets through.
Differentiate between leaders and employees: Use leaders as change ambassadors, those who take the lead in adopting the change. Prioritize them so they can, in turn, inspire and motivate other employees to embrace the change.
Our experience? Person A does not change the same way person B does. So consider the valuable perspective of personas. By tailoring your approach to the needs of your employees, you get a targeted change approach that significantly increases the successful realization of the change.
Authors:
Martine Dellemann
Eline Reurik
Daan ‘t Gilde
Do you want to get the perspective of personas? Reach out to
Peter Hardy
Director Transformation
T: +31650929204
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