How change management could enhance workplace culture change.
Anne Shoemaker and Jacqueline Kerr
Many CHROs have been tasked with being agents of change for creating a new workplace culture and employee experiences. A recent Gallup poll revealed that 97% of HR leaders believe they are making real change but 63% of employees disagree. Only 23% of employees remain engaged at work. Research from Qualtrics showing that CHROs do not prioritize change management skills may explain this gap.
Change management is often used when workplace product changes impact employee processes. For example, introducing new software company wide that results in change management of a digital transformation. Transforming workplace culture will also impact employee processes and a similar approach to change management can be applied.
A change management expert first asks:
How will the change impact processes, systems, or tools that the employee is accustomed to using?
What impact will the change have on an employee’s job role, behavior, and mindset?
What changes can the employee expect to experience in their reporting structure?
How will the change impact their performance review and compensation?
For example, when a large technology company moved to using AI for customer billing, employees were concerned about the impact on their processes and jobs. Proactive change management identified a new critical role for employees to play downstream from the AI process which resulted in stable employment, a smooth digital transformation, and increased revenue from the improved detection of missed billing opportunities.
The same successful transition management processes can be applied to workplace culture change efforts. We provide here 3 examples of changes that could positively impact workplace culture and how to use change management processes to ease their introduction.
Changes to the promotion process to reduce bias
Changes to management practices to improve engagement
Changes to meeting practices to improve productivity
Changes to the promotion process to reduce bias
Research shows that current promotional practices, which designate a single manager as the decision maker alongside employee self appraisals, result in fewer women being promoted. This system bias is a major cause of burnout and turnover in women.
New promotional practices would instead include objective criteria for promotion and a diverse team of decision makers.
Employing a change management approach to the rollout of this new process would introduce the new promotional criteria to employees and provide managers with new tools to assess candidate’s advancement more objectively. Best practices for convening a decision making team would be shared. Change managers would help stakeholders implement the new system by anticipating obstacles such as changes in behaviors or mindset that could disrupt adoption and threaten long-term sustainability. For example, managers may resent that their authority to decide promotions is being undermined, decision teams may not agree on a promotion outcome, or unconscious bias towards male candidates may still affect decisions. A change management facilitator could highlight bias and help teams navigate these initial challenges.
Changes to management practices to improve engagement
Research shows that authoritarian managers, who micromanage employees to be present and on task, are contributing greatly to a toxic workplace culture. Instead, managers are learning to be coaches where they trust employees to problem solve and manage their own work.
Employing a change management approach to this new style of managing employees would include teaching and practicing coaching skills for the managers, providing managers with on going feedback, and potentially new job performance criteria to reflect the effective use of these new skills. Employees would also need to understand new expectations and would need to know how changes in their own behavior as a result of changes in their manager’s behavior. For example, being more accountable for deadlines would be recognized in their own performance review.
Changes to meeting practices to promote productivity
Since the onset of remote work meetings have increased by over 200%, meaning employees often don’t get started on their work tasks till the end of the day and focus time for creative work is limited. Also the benefits of flexible work hours, for example for parents, are reduced if meetings can take place any time of day.
There have been many changes to work meetings that have been effective in companies like Slack including: reduced collaborative hours, meeting agendas ahead of time, meeting purposes limited to discussion and decisions, and meeting free weeks to weed out redundant regular meetings.
Employing a change management approach to new meeting practices would include clear expectations around processes, systems, and tools a team will utilize to streamline collaborative hours. A designated internal change manager could help keep the team accountable with new team agreements on meeting attendance and agendas. If the team plans to utilize alternative modes of communicating information so meetings can focus on discussion, a change manager can work alongside all stakeholders to ensure that asynchronous information is viewed in a timely manner. A change manager could also provide outside perspective on meetings that are less productive to identify meetings to cut.
Utilized in this way, change management plays an important role in supporting culture change. CHROs could outsource some of these activities where a third party can play an independent role in challenging situations, or CHROs could increase capacity for managing change internally through professional development that includes change management skills and certificates. If change management approaches were employed to improve accountability in culture change efforts and used to communicate and support challenging transitions, employees would be more connected to their culture, leading to potentially 5x more customer satisfaction.
Dr Jacqueline Kerr is a world-recognized behavior change scientist, community advocate, and TEDx speaker. She is in the top 1% of most cited scientists worldwide. Her federally funded and peer reviewed research empowered leaders to create healthier schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and even government policies with the goal of reducing health disparities. She founded Leading Real Change to apply this evidence based approach to business leadership to create thriving workplace cultures for all.
Over 20 years in leadership in roles such as Chief Operating Officer and General Manager, Anne Shoemaker has designed, built, and scaled programs and business units in support of organizational success and employee development. Her professional experience spans all aspects of operations, change management, and marketing & communications with global and US-based businesses. As the founder of a WBENC-Certified WBE (Women Business Enterprise), Anne offers strategy, advisory, and coaching services towards supporting and elevating women into positions of influence in their careers and communities.
