Benefits of Change Management in an Organization

There’s no avoiding change. The world is in constant flux, and that shifting context requires that businesses change to keep up. However, humans resist change, and the humans in your team and using your products are no different. Encouraging shifts in behavior requires a solid plan before the change is introduced, as well as the stamina to sustain ongoing attention to the people and processes transforming. In other words, change needs to be managed.  

A thorough understanding of what your team will need to do differently and the empathy to recognize why they’re resisting is essential to catalyzing business transformation. Your team or your customers will be required to learn new things and approach their work in new ways, often with the expectation that their productivity won’t reflect sometimes dramatic shifts in workflow.  Ultimately, your role in managing organizational change is to set them up for success at every stage, from the initial announcement to realizing your vision. Recognizing that new expectations are destabilizing and countering fear with a steady drumbeat of inspiration is the key to overcoming otherwise insurmountable resistance. 

Here is an overview of how change management works, why it’s important to your business, and how your teams can benefit from it.

Why Change Management is Important

Change management is essential for any organization looking to implement new processes, tools, or strategies. It helps to ensure that changes are introduced smoothly and efficiently, minimizing disruption and resistance. Effective change management improves the adoption rate of new initiatives and enhances overall organizational resilience and adaptability. By managing change proactively, businesses can avoid common pitfalls such as decreased employee morale, reduced productivity, and project failures. This proactive approach fosters a positive work environment, where employees feel supported and engaged, ultimately driving the organization toward its strategic goals.

What is Organizational Change Management?

Moving your business from Point A today to Point B tomorrow is a quest, so you’ll want to map out a series of defined steps to walk your team through this transition more effectively. This process, known as change management, can help you more effectively implement changes. Many business processes benefit from change management strategies, from changes in software and platforms to new terminology or collaboration models to completely rebrand your entire organization. Change management ensures that everyone impacted by your organization’s change receives thorough and transparent information about what is happening, its importance, and what to expect moving forward. 

Change Management Benefits for Individuals, Teams, and Organizations

Many benefits of change management apply at all levels of an organization, but some are distinct to individuals, teams, or the company itself. 

Individual Benefits

Change management benefits individuals by helping them understand why a change is being made and how the work they personally put into the change upfront will improve their work lives in the near and long term. Benefits of change management to employees include:

• Fresh Perspective: Communicating that a change is coming–and getting feedback from employees along the way–will help ensure that you’re addressing any concerns and prepare them to see their role in a new light, not just as what they have done in the past but how they could more meaningfully contribute in the future.
• Developing internal champions: A change management process allows you to identify internal stakeholders who see the value of the change and are happy to help champion it. Developing internal champions across different teams and in other roles can help ensure company-wide buy-in when you roll out the change and allow your team to demonstrate leadership potential.
• Increasing efficiency: A change management process can help your team anticipate potential roadblocks or points of resistance (and devise a plan to overcome them) so that the change rollout goes smoothly and everyone can work efficiently. This is an excellent opportunity to examine workflows more closely and eliminate inefficiencies or legacy processes that no longer serve your organization.

Team Benefits

Teams can also benefit from the improved productivity, focus, clarity, and efficiency that come from overhauling processes and working together to achieve an internal goal. 

• Improving alignment: Ideally, everyone should receive the same information about the change. That way, everyone can work towards the shared goal of the new vision, and it sets the tone for more transparent internal communication and a stronger team identity.
• Improving collaboration: Your change management process should help people across different teams understand their roles and any expectations for new behavior after the change rolls out. Getting everyone in an organization on the same page can help teams collaborate more effectively as they all play their part in making the change a success. It also helps ensure that everyone knows everyone else’s processes are in flux and resets expectations around timing and workflow.
• Facilitating informed decision-making: Clear communication across the organization reduces the number of repeat questions leaders have to answer and the misinformation that spreads when people receive conflicting or partial information and have to sort things out themselves. Giving everyone the same message at the same time means everyone stays focused on high-priority activities and can make informed decisions.

Organizational Benefits

The most significant benefit to organizations that deploy effective change management strategies is that the change actually happens! However, companies often find that effective change management techniques also help them improve employee engagement, boost overall efficiency, and achieve collateral strategic goals by encouraging teams to think and behave like actual teams. 

• Improving employee engagement: When people understand the “why” behind the change and the direct impact on their work, they’ll feel more involved and invested.
• Increasing overall efficiency: A change management process gives you a clear step-by-step plan to optimize some aspects of your business. Clear communication helps everyone understand where and when they play a role so the change implementation goes smoothly and your organization benefits sooner.
• Achieving strategic goals: When rolling out a change, it’s essential to define specific, measurable business goals and communicate those goals broadly. This helps ensure you get the outcome you want from the change and reinforces its value by tying it to a specific business impact.

Tools and Resources for Implementing Change Management in Your Organization

There are many different tools and resources that can help your organization effectively implement change management. The examples below are ones our team has seen help move organizations from ideas to impact.

Developing A Plan

The most critical component of managing change is planning.  A traditional change management process consists of five phases that take any change from an idea to a finished product: Planning, Preparation, Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation. Ensuring leaders are equipped to motivate their teams to move through each step of a change management process is critical to maximizing the positive effects of change management for your organization. 

Project Management Software

Project management software can streamline milestone tracking and keep your change management team working together in one place. This can be a valuable tool for keeping every project team member on the same page, especially when everyone is working on different project components in tandem. 

Survey Tools

Surveys are a helpful tool for regularly gathering feedback from your team throughout the implementation of changes. Even well-planned changes are not always easy for your employees and customers, and knowing what is going well and what future changes they might like to see can help you adjust your changes to make them work even better for everyone involved. Although you can use software solutions explicitly created for conducting surveys, free resources like Google Forms often work just as well.  The most important part of designing surveys is writing thoughtful questions and allowing participants to explain their thinking.

Training Courses

Courses can help your team stay on top of emerging trends and best practices in the change management industry. They can help teach new hires basic techniques and keep team members informed about new ideas as they develop. It is imperative to consider if your organization is change-resistant. Creating a culture of learning works in the background to make changes less threatening to your team over time.

Unlock the Benefits of Change Management for Your Organization with Knowledge Management Software

Knowledge management software allows your organization to document new processes and share updates about changes in one central location. All content becomes searchable so that employees can refer to it anytime.  In a platform like Bloomfire, you can also create a custom homepage to display information related to an upcoming change front and center. Change management team members can also send notifications about the change in the platform over email or in Slack or Microsoft Teams to reinforce new workflows. 

Having one centralized, searchable place to share information about an upcoming change helps keep everyone on the same page. It establishes a sense of transparency, essential for maintaining trust and avoiding resistance.

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About the Author

Betsy Anderson

Betsy leads the customer success and implementation teams at Bloomfire. Passionate about the people side of knowledge engagement and knowledge sharing, Betsy shares real-world experience with the challenges faced by companies with a knowledge management problem.