Change isn’t always welcome in the workplace, but within an IT department and tech functions, change often brings greater efficiency and user-friendly services. It may be a struggle to rally your team around the new processes or software, so the right change management process can bring together technology, processes, and people. Many things can have an impact on IT services, and change involves and addition, removal, or modification of an existing process or equipment.
Get Employees on Board
Before you will be able to make the transition, you need to ensure that all employees or personnel impacted by the changes will be on board. This starts with your understanding of the why, the what, and the impact. Ask yourself what you want to achieve with the change and how it could benefit the business. Consider what equipment, software, documents, processes, or combination of these elements will be exposed to the change. Evaluate how the change could negatively impact your daily or long-term operations and what can be done to avoid those consequences. If you can recognize these three areas and address them clearly and concisely with your people, you will find less resistance to the process.
Have the Right Perspective
Implementing change management needs to have a perspective that is wide enough to see the big picture, while still small enough to see the levels and areas of change that need to take place. By identifying why you want to enact change management, you can figure out where the process is taking you. Things sometimes need to change to keep up with the times, the change you are making should have a lasting, positive impact on your company’s operations. Management and leadership need to be on board and back up your IT movements, and they should allow you the freedom to make decisions needed for forward progress. When you can articulate the importance of the move, it will be easier to get support. You may be looking to improve the stability of the company’s IT infrastructure or it could be to improve service quality. This is one of the reasons help desk change management takes place. When everyone has the right perspective, the transition becomes much smoother.
Determine the Right Change Model
The word change means different things to the people on your team and in your workplace. You will need to adopt a change model that can separate the areas of change into areas of scope, urgency, and impact. Your goal should be to make changes are quickly and efficiently as possible while minimizing and risk with costs, lost productivity, and resource availability. To effectively monitor and manage the level of change saturation across your organization, integrating a tool like Change Saturation Management through ChangeAnalytics can be instrumental, offering insights and analytics to guide decision-making during the change process. Start with low-risk changes, and you may see more success and adaptation as your team and company employees adjust. If your company gets hung up on small changes, it could delay some of the more important things that need to be addressed later. Your change model should correspond to the five types of change management found in an organization: standard, minor, normal, major, and emergency changes.
Define Responsibilities and Roles
When you are getting everyone on board with change management, make sure you have clearly outlined the roles and responsibilities that each member of the team will have. Each person should take ownership of their actions and the overall effect their role will have on successful execution. You may need to create central authority positions to oversee smaller teams and areas of implementation since you will not be able to be everywhere at once.
Change management can bring great things to your IT department and company-wide operations. Make sure you have clearly outlined your goals and expectations, then move through each process confidently and thoroughly to ensure the best transitions.
