As companies make changes to improve profits, efficiencies and quality of the products and services they offer, these changes most likely will impact the day to day work of a company’s staff. Many companies use consultants to complete such projects. Some benefits of hiring outside consultants is the availability of expertise that may not be in-house. Also, the use of consultants allows a majority of a company’s full-time employees to continue to run and operate the business. But one key component that many times is not covered as part of organizational change is the resulting impact on the full-time staff. Does the new change reduce the amount of work an employee must do? If so, the employee may share his worries about the changes to his or her job with other employees. Worries in the workplace lead to rumors and reductions in employee productivity and performance. Does the new change mean new interactions with other departments that have never worked together before or are in a different time zone? These types of changes can make a seemingly technically good project a disaster to the overall organization.

When a business goes through such  changes, some commonly heard sentiments might be along the lines of, “people will figure it out” or “we’ve got this, what could be so hard.” Whatever the size of an organizational change, the impact on staff often causes unnecessary confusion or downtime.

One way to mitigate any negative side effects of an organizational change is to provide solid staff training. Training should always be included in new system and process rollouts. However, if that training only covers what button to push when, then full-time staff will find adoption of these changes challenging in the day to day life of running the business and might consider the change a failure.

A well-run OCM initiative leaves employees excited about the change, supportive of the change, addresses common questions, rumors and leaves employees feeling their company values the employees and their work. When netlogx managed the extensive changes that came with the Neuro Diagnostic Institute, we knew that OCM was going to be the key factor in the project’s success. Take a look at the types of changes the new hospital went through and how we helped manage them.

OCM work is not always easy. It requires strong support from the leadership team, because OCM is often viewed by many as non-value added. Persuading leadership about the importance of investing resources into an already expensive organizational change can be challenging. However, in post go-live reviews, clients have been exceptionally happy with OCM initiatives sharing thoughts such as:

  • Expressed relief about the small number of unhappy employees
  • Noted the smooth transitions from old to new processes
  • Gained a better understanding of how different areas of the company work and impact each other

OCM work not only provides logistical benefits, it demonstrates that a company cares about the morale of the team, and that leadership is willing to invest in its people to make the project a success.

netlogx can help you manage all aspects of organizational change. Contact us today.