The change in the global market conditions and reduced economic growth lead to a complex organizational environment. To overcome such intricacies in the workplace, organizations must handle regular changes. Considering the overall growth perspective of the organization, it has to embrace the change. Thus, a change management plan is considered to be one most challenging concepts to understand.
Change management is quite complex to handle, but designing a plan for the same need not have to be anymore. Thus, it becomes crucial to understand what is a change management plan. In this blog, let’s understand what change management is all about and why proper planning is essential.
What is a Change Management Plan?
In the era of digitization, organizations need to assess what’s provided to the customers, how processes are implemented, and who is responsible for process improvements. Often, the success of an organization depends on trial and error techniques implemented. Thus, businesses have to be agile in adjusting to the change for survival in this fast-paced digital era. In this relate, having a change management plan increases the chances of success in implementing the change process.
A change management plan is defined as a document that elaborates the roles and activities that require improved attention during project execution. The plan also ensures proper control of scope, communication, budget, schedule, and resources. A proper plan in place minimizes the negative impact of change on business, stakeholders, and employees.
“You need a change management plan because strategy and processes are always perfect in their conception, but as time goes on these elements of business become living, breathing, and changing entities. Change management plans help you remain agile, adapt to challenges along the way, monitor success metrics, and track milestones.“
– Amy Kauffman, Founder of Strategic Moxie
How to Write a Change Management Plan?
Change is worth making for a business to reach newer heights; subsequently, it’s equally worth investing your time to craft a desirable change management plan. There are various steps involved in creating a suitable change plan for your organization and preparing the employees for the change process.
Define Change
Before taking up any change management step for your organization, recognize what change you need for your business. What would be the result of change and its impact on the employees? What are the important initiatives businesses need to consider to make the changes happen? The answers to these queries will help everyone in the organization to work towards the same goal.
Scope for Change
The scope for change can be due to scheduling, quality, budget, and still more. Ensure to define these reasons clearly in the change management plan. Also, specify when the change activities will be carried out and who will implement them.
Change Management Roles
People involved in change management roles should support the project goals, good communicators, and share organizational developments. They act as change agents for the entire change management plan activities and authorize it. They should be familiar with the change management models and adapt themselves to the change to make the entire change management process smooth.
Communication Plan
Creating a pertinent communication plan is crucial to keep the employees and stakeholders informed regarding the same. During the process, keep all the employees within the ongoing feedback loop and various communication channels. It would be better to be open and honest during the entire change process else; it leads to insecurities amongst the employees.
Change Request Form
The change request form is about capturing the essential data required for the change and analyzing how it impacts the entire process. Thus, it is essential to have a change request form for a proper change management process. It also ensures that the change process is smoothly implemented without any impediments.
A change request form should be shared with the entire team as it helps to know what type of change your organization is going through, its impact on your project, and its benefit. Having a change plan without a proper change request form is sure to create chaos in the process.
Key Performance Indicators
The significant advantage of having Key Performance Indicators is that they set milestones toward change objectives. So, ensure establishing a proper plan to measure it rather than just what you want to measure the project’s progress.
Activity Log
Activity log helps you identify the changes made, requests documented, and keep track of all the other changes, including change management activities for all the employees. This is an easy way to identify to check the progress of the project.
Must-Known Change Management Plan Activities
Having a successful change management process within the organization is almost impossible without involving the employees. It is essential to involve all the employees in the change process adoption to accomplish a change management plan. Some will embrace the change, others will resist, and few will be upset by it.
Here are a few essential change management plan activities to consider while you implement the one for your organization:
Identification
At the initial phase, categorize the employees affected by the change process and design a different communication approach for each employee category.
Engage
Engaging the employees throughout the process is indeed much helpful in promoting the organizational change management process. Using apt games, exercises, and simulations to demonstrate change will help tackle any resistance and emotional barriers to the process.
Set Goals
To easily track the progress and manage change in a better way, split the entire transition into various activities, phases, and stages. This help to create milestone which can be celebrated by the team.
Conclusion
Change management focuses on people instead of the process. It is contemplative to focus on the process as it’s simpler instead of handling people’s behavior and emotions. Doing so leads to blind spots, which in turn leads to failure in implementing changes. Thus, it becomes essential to have proper communication with the employees regarding how they can shift their focus toward the change process.
You can’t expect a business transformation to be successful until you have a solid change management plan in place unfolding from change announcement to training required to make the change process successful.
