As the industry evolves with the rapidly changing times, your practice will have had to adapt to big and small, internal and external pressure to transform.
Change is constant and relentless and requires your employees to change how they communicate, learn new skills and transform their perspective on their work. In addition to adapting to new ways of working, your employees will have had to maintain focus on the day job and remain calm and professional.
What to do with an IT change
One change that might leave businesses feeling anxious is a software change or full suite migration. It’s easy to underestimate how much behavioural change is needed to successfully implement software or process changes. It is more important than ever to manage change when IT is at the heart of the transition.
Managers tend to focus on the software and logistics rather than people who will be operating the new systems.
To succeed you need to:
- Invest time and resources in training for your employees on how to use the software or new processes and how it will improve the way they operate.
- Spend time explaining the new processes and bring people onboard as change ambassadors.
- Develop your employees’ collaborative capability both with the software provider and colleagues who may be help with the transition.
- Create regular opportunities for employees to feedback on the progress of the transition.
- Ensure that you’ve managed expectations of employees, particularly during transition phase as some might expect immediate success.
- Ensure that everyone is using a common language so that the transition plan is fully understood by all.
- It is helpful to appoint one project manager to oversee the process from beginning to end. This person will be responsible for pulling together all the different processes and ensuring that it keeps on track.
Taking the plunge
If you are about to initiate a change in your practice, it’s important to remember that change can take many different forms and there isn’t a one size fits all plan to ensure success. Before hitting the ground running, businesses should analyse what other changes are taking place within their business and whether programmes dovetail or detract from each other.
Communication is key
Designing a communications strategy should be central to your change programme planning. The key to communicating change successfully is to create a story that demonstrates a vision, reduces uncertainty and creates a deeper understanding of the journey. Doing these three things could be the difference between a change which achieves its targets and one that fails.
Empathy and culture
Change and an organisation’s culture go hand to hand. When leading change, you need to bring people with you on the journey. Your aim is for your employees to feel valued and empowered through the changes, rather than disinterested and irritated. The true secret to success is considering your organisation and the most important assets, the employees, in context.
If you are considering changing your software suite, visit Wolters Kluwer at Accountex Stand 1060 for more tips on how to manage change in your practice.