Facing lingering supply chain issues and constantly changing consumer behaviors, retailers today are looking to large-scale transformations to better understand what customers want — and to deliver on those demands more quickly.
But while most leaders readily accept that they need to spend money on things like system configurations, vendor contracts and project managers to oversee product rollouts, they’re often hesitant to invest in the change management resources required to accelerate transformation and ensure adoption. And when belts are tightened, change management is often the first thing to go.
In many cases, that’s due to a lack of awareness of the return on investment (ROI) of change management and how to measure it. Despite the fact that change management plays a critical role in helping employees understand how their work ladders up to the overall company vision; in ensuring that changes actually stick; and in maximizing the benefits of any change initiative, there’s a tendency to conflate change management with communications and training. Leaders may think it’s enough to send a memo, offer training or build a job aid, but this approach overlooks the critical strategic role that change management plays in increasing value creation and overall ROI.
It’s not always easy to show how having change resources involved in a project will help the initiative be more successful in the long run, but a few key steps can help you measure change efficacy and adoption, as well as engage and activate all levels of employees to solidify change across the organization.
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Here’s how to get started.
Align Around a Shared Vision and Goals
Ensure that senior leaders and sponsors agree on the business case and desired outcomes, including the anticipated ROI. This is a crucial step that often takes quite a bit longer than you think it will. It is often also the first step in which change management plays a key role; leaders’ differing visions need to be married together before you can move forward.
Set Metrics at the Beginning of the Project
You need to set and gain buy-in on the metrics you will track as part of the initial planning phase. If you wait until the project is underway, you won’t have a reliable baseline to measure against, and you may not have designed the tools needed to support what you are trying to measure.
Use Qualitative as well as Quantitative Metrics
Together, soft and hard metrics will allow you to measure the effectiveness of your transformation. Consider the following categories and the associated data points:
- Engagement, as measured by things like sentiment survey responses, interview or focus group data, meeting polls, meeting attendance and interaction or the open rates of change communications;
- Learning, as measured by knowledge checks, training completion, training or simulation scores, beta environment data or downloads of job aids;
- Behavior, as measured by productivity and efficiency, tool utilization, system logins, time in system, help desk tickets or Q&A submissions; and
- Business results, as measured by job performance, attrition rate, cost and time savings, reversion rates, employee engagement scores or customer satisfaction scores.
Measure Over Time
Ensure that you are collecting and analyzing data from your different stakeholders at various stages of the project. Different personas, types and levels of employees will need different types of check-ins, whether it’s a one-on-one check-in, a working session or monthly meetings, so ensure that your data points reflect the individuals involved. If change is being managed effectively and comprehensively, you should see your metrics improve over time as people become aware of and interested in the tool, product or change.
Be Ready (and Willing) to Pivot
Be nimble along the way as things change and take an agile approach to rolling things out rather than a big bang approach. As you get feedback along the way, you can shift and evolve to ensure that the path you are taking is aligned to the outcomes you are trying to achieve with the transformation, rather than the steps taken to get there.
Change is hard, but investing in change management can make it easier. As change increases in velocity — it’s now more of a firehose than the constant drip of the past — we’re starting to see significantly more change management departments and external change consultants taking the lead in managing change.
But you don’t have to dive in headfirst. If your organization is new to change management, consider starting with a pilot project to build the case for adding change management resources as a consistent part of any transformation; it can be as simple as tracking a single metric over time with monthly pulse surveys. By proving out the value of adding change management resources as a consistent part of any transformation, you can position your organization to achieve a desired future state where employees are engaged, processes are clear and impactful, the adoption of change is high and change is sustained.
Allison Torpey’s passion for creating and maintaining high-performing teams, keen ability to make the complex seem simple and refined business acumen led her to the role of Managing Director of Propeller’s Denver office. A natural leader and coach, she has 15+ years of experience working in growth-focused roles across business and people strategy, program and project leadership and change management for a variety of industries, including the public sector, healthcare, consumer products and retail, and energy and utilities. Torpey excels at aligning divergent stakeholder groups around a shared vision and driving teams forward to consistently exceed expectations while ensuring an exceptional client and employee experience.
