Employee experience: The driving force behind effective change management

When employees are engaged, empowered, and supported throughout the change process, organisations can reach their potential and achieve successful and progressive transformations.

Personalised experiences promote buy-in for change

Change can be unsettling for employees, especially when it disrupts established routines or processes. To foster acceptance and buy-in, organisations must provide personalised experiences that address individual concerns and demonstrate the benefits of change. By tailoring communication and training to each employee's role and needs, organisations can emphasise how the change will positively impact their work, career growth, and job satisfaction. This type of personal touch creates a sense of ownership and engagement, leading to increased support and buy-in for change initiatives. According to Forbes and Segment, a data management firm, 71 percent of consumers feel frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal. Imagine how employees feel experiencing impersonal change in their workplace.

Leadership transparency improves experience

Transparency is a cornerstone of effective change management. Open and honest communication ensures employees trust their leaders and understand the reasons behind the change, its potential impact, and the desired outcomes. Transparent communication establishes trust, reduces resistance, and enables employees to align their expectations with organisational goals, providing the opportunity to embed goals more deeply into elements like performance management, increasing alignment. Additionally, involving employees in decision-making processes and seeking their input cultivates a sense of empowerment and unites leadership teams with their workforce. When employees feel heard and valued, they are more likely to actively support and embrace change. An effective example of encouraging involvement could be as simple as holding regular hybrid ‘Town Halls’ with Q&A opportunities. This type of forum provides an open and collaborative way to share strategic or operational direction that’s available to all, but importantly led by a transparent and often (positively) vulnerable leader given the setting. This promotes trust, empowers colleagues’ intrigue, and ultimately improves change experience.

People-change-impact analysis transforms experience

Change is not a one-size-fits-all process, it affects employees in unique ways. Conducting a comprehensive change-impact analysis, but with a very specific ‘people’ lens, allows organisations to anticipate and address the specific challenges and concerns individuals may face during a transformation. By understanding the varying impacts on different teams, departments, and individuals, organisations can tailor their change management strategies to provide the necessary support, resources, and training. This analysis helps reduce disruption, fosters a smoother transition, and ensures that employees feel supported throughout the change journey. We recently worked with a defence organisation on their workforce relocation strategy where we implemented an ‘employee impact assessment’ enabled via PowerBI to model the impact on workforce relocation by talent segment and skill, down to the specific employee. This considered cost, impact to programme, and personal impact to employees’ sense of belonging, family needs and wellbeing.

Experience design enhances change and transformation initiatives

Experience design, an approach that focuses on understanding and improving the end-to-end employee journey, plays a vital role in successful change and transformation initiatives. By applying design methodologies such as Design Thinking, Service Blueprinting, and Lean UX principles, organisations can identify human-centric pain points, barriers, and opportunities within the change process, whilst building detailed processes and fostering incremental feedback. This empowers them to develop targeted interventions, such as intuitive training programs, user-friendly digital tools, and supportive feedback mechanisms. Through experience design, organisations can optimise employee experience during change, ensuring a smoother transition and greater acceptance of new ways of working. We recently worked with a global bank focusing on their recruitment experience to accelerate time-to-productivity and maximise a positive experience from brand engagement through to day one. By focusing on specific design dimensions such as artefacts, capabilities, and opportunities, we were able to significantly improve the candidate experience through technology integrations, automation, knowledge management and personalisation.

Change management is a complex and multifaceted process that requires careful attention to employee experience. By personalising experiences, fostering transparency, conducting people-change-impact analyses, embracing experience agility, and leveraging experience design, organisations can cultivate a positive and supportive environment for change. When employees feel engaged, empowered, and supported, they become champions of change, driving successful transformations and propelling organisations towards their desired future. Prioritising employee experience truly places them at the heart of change management, creating a path to sustainable growth and success.