Putting people at the heart of your business transformation to make it a success

Author: Martin McDonnell

Businesses are dealing with a rapid pace of change alongside new technologies and societal trends. Successful businesses are those that are able to continually transform themselves.

Implementing these transformations across your organisation can be challenging. Success requires support, buy-in and cultural change from all of your staff, who tend to be more positive about accepting technology shifts in their personal lives than at work.

So how can businesses encourage employees to embrace workplace transformations?

We at PwC believe businesses should focus on building processes and implementing tech in a way that empowers your people. Bringing together workers from different backgrounds with different experiences and viewpoints will allow you to transform your business and make it what you want it to be – together.

The key to success is to learn from how your people engage and react to change outside of work and then apply those preferences to the workplace. Doing so can make change the strategic differentiator that it needs to be in today’s uncertain business environment.

Here are some ways you can learn from your employees’ personal use of technology to make them more accepting of workplace change.

Find your influencers

When spreading the news of your transformation, rethink your traditional corporate hierarchies for communication. Whilst you need leaders aligned on a common narrative and leading from the top, that’s only half the story. Workers are used to a more democratic approach to communication, as demonstrated by the power of influencers on social media. So, to win over your people, identify influencers throughout the organisation who can advocate the change and encourage them to spread the word to their peers.

These influencers might not be your traditional business leaders. They might even be seen as ‘rebels’ in other contexts. But if you can get them on-side for your transformation, and encourage them to communicate authentically with their followers using their voice and familiarity - it will help you to communicate a message of positivity to your teams.

Create engaging messaging

In crafting your message of change, how you say it can be as important as what you say. Workers are media-savvy and are used to personalised online shopping services, real-time news updates and a wide variety of content formats. If you stick to emails and spreadsheets, you’ll fail to engage employees.

Instead, use blogs, social media, video and even 3D virtual-reality visualisations of how your transformed organisation will operate. This clear view of the future will help staff imagine what their workplace could look like if they view change as an opportunity for real improvement. Also, increase personalisation of messages, and address workers not just at a team or a department level, but as individuals.

Motivate your staff from the heart

Remember that, although the benefits of your business transformation are clear to you, staff might not see it that way. You are causing a disruption to their habitual patterns. To overcome resistance, connect with staff on an emotional level, as consumer brands do. This requires developing a deep understanding of all of your employees and their needs. Use social profiling here and develop personas based on workers’ values and behaviours.

Once you understand staff’s emotional triggers, you can learn to motivate them from the heart. Empathise with the difficulties of the change, and then call attention to the benefits that employees will experience if they engage. Then ensure your messaging is consistent and delivered genuinely and passionately. Make promises and live up to them – this will build authenticity and trust, which are key factors in winning over your people.

Show, don’t tell, what the future look like

When your business allows people to experiment with new systems and processes early on, workers will feel less afraid of change and more willing to try out new processes or tools. After all, ‘learning by doing’ is how everyone gets used to the new iPhone or Xbox. This is especially important when engaging throughout the entirety of your transformation: don’t wait to start giving people a chance to experience the future. They will be more engaged throughout the journey if they’ve had several chances to feel what the future holds for them.

Promote the right behaviours and be prepared to listen

See if you can use ‘nudges’ and rewards to drive desirable behaviours, as opposed to introducing punitive systems that call out only the negatives. Create open discussions of how workers are getting on with a new application or workflow, and listen to and act on feedback - you will be able to support workforces through change more effectively if you can spot challenges earlier on. Only if employees are empowered to make the new ways of working their own, will they stick with them for the long term. Encouraging this open discussion will allow you to hear your employees’ true thoughts about change, so you can respond appropriately. It will also give your people a voice in the process, making them more likely to view it positively and participate in it.

To find out more about how PwC’s Transformation with SAP team can help your organisation drive technology-enabled change using these exciting principles, please reach out.

Explore why we need to reimagine business change

As businesses tackle significant challenges and seek new opportunities in the face of change, the need to adapt will be one of the most important skills for businesses to embrace along with innovative technologies and creative thinking if they’re to build trust and deliver sustained outcomes.

Take a look at our paper exploring why motivating and engaging employees is key to driving transformational change.

Read the paper