Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
You might be like other business owners who have great visions for growth such as to improve your customer base, reduce expenses, implement a lean program, develop green initiatives or invest in new products.
But to make big changes or investments, they often miss a critical step.
In other words, to effectively manage your company’s transformation for long-term profitability, don’t neglect an important step for readiness.
Prepare yourself for the necessity for culture change. First, look at your role.
Organizational readiness
You might have a laudable aspiration for a change program, but you must first assess the skills and mindsets of your human capital.
Your needs might not be readily apparent.
So, start by determining your readiness and what skills are needed.
Take into account both quality and quantity of the current skill levels by observing and evaluating your performance metrics.
Consider all sorts of factors, including comparisons of your competitors in the marketplace – from focus groups and exit interviews to visits to your locations to observe talent levels and query attitudes of employees.
You’ll be in a better position to effectively spot needed employee skills to help guarantee your success.
Employee acceptance for change
Attitude and aptitude are important. So, assess your employees’ current skill levels and mindsets.
Behavioral change is usually needed. Learn which employees are resistant to change and are prone to inappropriate behavior.
Along the way, identify the negative attitudes and behavior, understand the drivers of your employees’ mindsets and educate the coachable workers.
Closing gaps
Finally, figure out how you will close the gap for needed skills, for example:
- Building skills
- Re-skilling
- Employee retention
- Hiring talent for the needed skills
- Identifying current and future talent pools
- Redeploying workers
- Terminations
- Outsourcing
Once you assess your employees’ mindsets and skills, determine how to fill the gaps and take the necessary steps – the assessment stage, which is the most challenging – you’re ready to go the next level.
Now, fine-tune and implement the remaining elements of your strategic plan for change and growth.
From the Coach’s Corner, related strategies:
Human Resources: 12 Errors to Avoid in Evaluations – How should you properly evaluate employees? Make sure you are careful to avoid errors in evaluations. Naturally, you want to praise good performance and discourage bad. What are the best ways? Here’s how to avoid making those classic mistakes.
Management: Coach Your Employees to Better Performance – In talent management, coaching, counseling and giving feedback is of utmost importance. But it’s a difficult challenge if you don’t have a coaching culture
5 Strategies to Make Change Management Programs Work – Management is mostly to blame because most change-management programs crash and burn. Why? It’s up to management to hire the right people, and to invest in the right tools while inspiring employees to accept and drive change. Here’s how.
8 Change Management Tips for an Unpredictable Marketplace – For a business to win in an unpredictable marketplace, there are eight change-management strategies to implement. Among the key concepts to remember: Double-down on effective management.
Strategic HR Management for Retaining High Performers – You must build your organizational capabilities if you want to create an environment that will retain high performers. The way to accomplish it is to be committed to strong results with specialized retention initiatives for your talent.
