Ways to Effectively Handle Change in the Workplace

TIPS FOR MANAGERS

1. Understand how people think

Managing change effectively in the workplace requires that you firstly understand how people think.  Taking a step back and assessing how people think, how they perceive their current situation and how they will perceive a new change could be really beneficial to the process.

When announcing change spend a lot of time considering how your people will perceive the change, plan and structure your communication accordingly before announcing.

2. Understand how change affects people:

Understanding both how readily they will accept the change and the emotional ‘pain’ that always accompanies change.  After all everyone handles change differently.  Sometimes how it affects people is all in how it is delivered and explained to them.

3.  Be able to answers three questions: 

To effectively lead change, managers must help people satisfactorily answer three questions that people will ask themselves when it’s introduced:

• What is the change?
• Why is the change being made?
• How will the change affect me?

TIPS FOR EMPLOYEES

1. Stay positive:

Whatever you do, keep your emotions in check. You may feel like having a mini melt down but try to keep negative emotions under control.  Avoid freaking out so that you can ultimately process what’s happening and craft a plan of action.  You may feel tempted to complain and get caught up in the emotions of others but take a step back, pause, and remind yourself that you are the only one that matters and that you need to be able to see things in a positive light.

2. Recognise that change happens: 

Change is constantly happening and throughout your career you’ve no doubt experienced small subtle changes that you’ve accepted and dealt with.  You will have change happen to you whether you like it or not so you must accept that reality. The good thing about change is that it challenges you to work on projects and in roles that you haven’t before.  It will take you out of your comfort zone and test your capabilities.

3. Ask Questions: 

When it comes to change in the workplace there are no bad questions and no stupid ones unless you ask something that has already been dealt with or explained.  Give your questions some thought, write them down.  Getting as much information as possible about why things will be done differently can help you to better understand why the change is happening. Equally important is making sure that you’re getting information from the correct sources, go straight to the horses mouth and don’t act on tea room discussions. Make sure to ask and receive answers to these three questions:

• What is the change?
• Why is the change being made?
• How will the change affect me?