Develop a company culture for planning and change enablement

With the world facing disruption and uncertainty in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think we can all agree that we’re likely to experience continuous change at an increasing rate. This is highlighting the growing need for planning and change enablement for all organizations. In this new age for business, many companies will find themselves asking, “How do we create a culture of change?”

Planning and change enablement

Our customers’ projects have wide-reaching impacts across their organizations, significantly affecting the way people work. Transformational projects like these need a careful change strategy that incorporates all the planning and changing necessary to make sure people, processes, and technology are aligned.

Planning and Change Management is now a pillar of best practice in many organizations, and thought leaders have developed step-by-step models for change adoption and facilitation. These models provide a valuable framework for managing major change events with a clear beginning and end; however, organizations also need to develop skills, practices, and habits to help people adapt to ongoing incremental change.

3 key actions for creating a change culture

Successful organizations can adapt quickly, and the key to this is a culture that enables change. These three actions can help create a culture of change in the workplace:

1. Prioritize continuous learning and development

Recognize that learning takes time, effort, and practice. Create opportunities for personal and professional development that trigger insights about innovative new ways of doing work. Encourage your people to share what they have learned and continuously refine and adjust through collaboration.

Prioritize learning through recognition programs that reward people for developing new skills and training others, celebrating learning as a core element of the organization.

2. Encourage participation and collaboration

Uncertainty created by ongoing change is much less threatening when you invite people to contribute input, collaborate, and work together in a supportive environment. Obtaining diverse perspectives leads to better decisions, and acknowledging people who make meaningful contributions leads to higher engagement in planning and change outcomes.

Consider establishing cross-departmental teams responsible for identifying actions that address your current challenges and making sure leaders are connected to these teams so that ideas and insights can inform decision-making processes and work to change organizational culture.

3. Promote individual ownership

People often feel they have little control over the changes they face at work, but everyone has a role to play. Essential information needs to be clear, but when it’s not, or when it’s not understood, you should support people to seek out the answers they need proactively.

Show leadership and gather feedback

One effective method for promoting individual ownership is coaching managers to gather feedback from their teams actively. Asking simple questions like “What information do you need?”, “What tools can help you?” and “What training would be valuable?” demonstrates that it is okay to ask for what you need and encourages people to take ownership over their situation.

Learning, participation, and individual ownership all work together to create a culture of change enablement and people enablement, letting you successfully set your organization up to succeed despite shifting scenarios and unforeseen events.

Developing and embedding habits in an organizational culture requires more than simply declaring a set of values and intentions. For each of these three concepts, you must formulate visible actions that help people practice them regularly for change enablement to become a reality.

An organization set up for better planning and change enablement is well-positioned to leverage technology to facilitate process improvements, making your people more engaged, efficient, and productive.

How can Unit4 boost your planning and change management?

Our specialty is helping you put that technological infrastructure in place so your organization’s processes can evolve and empower your greatest asset – your people. Unit4 HCM lets you engage, support and inspire your people through a seamless blend of our advanced Payroll Management system, core HR system and Talent Management software, with easy integration for other essential third-party ecosystem applications.