Beyond Implementation: Driving business value with Human-Centered Change Management

In our previous blog we introduced the concepts of Business Design and Human-Centered Change Management (HCCM) – emphasizing the importance of empathy and collaboration in driving successful transformations.

Building on that foundation, this post will focus on how to achieve the business and financial goals using a proper change management approach.

Human-Centered Change Management is not a methodology but rather a strategic approach that secures the value of your investments. It focuses on the human aspects of change, drives higher adoption rates, ensures better usability, and thereby achieves improvements that are more sustainable.

The Challenge to ROI: It's Not About the Technology

How do you actually benefit from investing in new solutions, such as a €400,000 CRM system? The greatness of any chosen technology doesn’t guarantee how well it will be adopted and used by your employees. If that doesn't happen, even the most progressive systems will never be able to provide the expected outcome or have the wanted business and operational impact.

Similarly, the success of external, customer-facing digital services hinges on how well customers adopt and engage with the service. For instance, a retail company might invest in a state-of-the-art e-commerce platform designed to enhance the shopping experience. However, if the platform is not user-friendly or fails to meet customer expectations, it may result in low adoption rates and poor sales performance.

Human-Centered Change Management: The Key to Unlocking Value

HCCM addresses these challenges by focusing on the human aspects of change. By ensuring that employees are engaged, supported, and empowered throughout the change process, HCCM maximizes the likelihood of successful adoption and utilization of new systems.

Here's how to ensure adoption and lasting impact:

Create leadership and vision

• Leadership Commitment: The success of every change initiative requires effective leadership. It is the leaders who should clearly articulate the vision and goals of the change, inspire and motivate the employees, and lead by example.
• Example: In a digital transformation, a tech company saw remarkable improvements when its leadership team actively participated in training sessions and communicated the strategic importance of the new systems.

Create a supportive culture

• Psychological Safety: Creating an environment where people can share concerns and provide feedback without fear of retaliation is a critical success factor for change.
• Example: A financial institution introduced a new risk management system and openly discussed challenges, which ensured the issues were resolved more quickly and the system was assimilated more smoothly.

Leverage change champions

• Change Agents: Find and empower the agents of change within the organization who can advocate for the new system and help their peers.
  
• Example: A healthcare provider identified key staff as change champions for a new patient management system. These champions helped provide peer support and assisted in the resolution of queries, thus greatly improving adoption rates.

Link change to organizational objectives

• Strategic Alignment: The change initiative must be aligned with the wider organizational goals and strategies. This helps in securing buy-in from all levels of the organization.
  
• Example: A manufacturing company aligned its new ERP system implementation with its strategic goal of improving supply chain efficiency, which helped in gaining support from stakeholders across the organization.

Monitor and celebrate success

• Recognition and Rewards: Monitoring progress against milestones regularly will help in sustaining momentum and morale. Rewarding employees who contribute to the success of the change initiative may lead to a positive atmosphere.
  
• Example: A retail company that was implementing a new inventory management system celebrated each phase of the rollout with team events and recognition awards, which kept the team motivated and engaged.

Remember that the main keys to making HCCM work for your business practices revolve around collaboration, support, and iteration. In this way, you will maximize your business' impact while building a robust, innovative organization ready to take on whatever challenges that may come.