Managing Workplace Change: How To Keep Employees Engaged

Whether it’s the introduction of a new strategy, a migration to a new employee experience platform (EXP), or a structural reorganization, workplace change is inevitable.

Heraclitus wasn’t wrong when he said “The only constant in life is change”. The corporate world can sometimes feel like a neverending rollercoaster of change programs, announcements, and launches. And while many of these things are positive initiatives that aim to improve the organization and enhance the employee experience, they can be received negatively by employees if not managed carefully.

We’re all humans, after all, and we’re pre-programmed to be cautious of change. Our evolutionary drive to protect ourselves by resisting the new or unknown is the reason that many employees feel uncomfortable when presented with a change to the status quo.

But all hope for an engaged and productive workforce – despite ongoing change – is not lost.

There are some tried-and-tested things that you can do to help employees feel more comfortable with workplace changes and ensure your new initiative, program, or platform lands positively.

1. Communicate transparently  

The first and, in my opinion, most important thing that you can do to keep employees engaged throughout periods of workplace change is to communicate transparently.

Effective internal communication during organizational change is often the factor that determines how engaged, aligned, and supportive your workforce will be.

Draw up a plan detailing when, how, and with whom you will talk about the upcoming changes. Be honest, open, and totally transparent about planning and proposed timelines. Think about your different internal audiences, your cascade plan, and your approach to delivering early briefings for key stakeholders.

The organizations that are most successful at communicating change create internal advocates who support the process and offer information and reassurance to their colleagues.

These internal advocates might be formal ‘change champions’ who have been involved in early briefing sessions and are tasked with supporting the implementation. They might be more informal ‘internal influencers’, who are more likely to have been organically nominated by their peers as an independent and trustworthy source of information. Or they might even be team leaders or people managers who employees look to for clarity and reassurance.

Whoever you identify as your internal advocates, make sure you keep them engaged and informed throughout the process.        

2. Take a strategic approach

Whatever the change is, taking a strategic approach and demonstrating how it connects to the ‘bigger picture’ is a core part of helping employees feel more comfortable.

For example, you might be introducing a new EXP that replaces an outdated system and enables remote employees to feel more connected and included. Or you might be rolling out a new three-year roadmap that will set the organization up for success in new markets. Whatever the program, be sure to help your people connect the dots.  

The key to success is to effectively position the change as part of the organization’s overarching strategy, no matter how small it might be. Without clearly articulating ‘the why’, you will struggle to get employees on board with the changes and engaged with the new way of doing things.  

3. Focus on integration  

So, you’ve finessed your change communications plan and you’ve demonstrated how it connects to the bigger picture. The next thing to think about is how effectively you can integrate it with your other messaging and approaches.

It’s much harder to gain support and buy-in for a program or initiative that feels isolated or separate from other workplace processes than it is for something that’s fully integrated and part of the daily employee experience.

Consider how effectively you can weave messaging about the new program or initiative throughout the organization, integrating it with the broader corporate narrative and pulling through your other comms channels.

If you’ve launched new corporate values, for example, have you aligned your recognition program? Have you integrated into your new employee onboarding documentation? And have you reviewed the performance management approaches to fit with the new values?  

The objective of this step is to think about workplace change as an integrated part of the organization rather than a separate project or program that will be communicated and then forgotten about.

4. Create space for employee feedback  

Every IC and EX pro knows that employee feedback and two-way communication are critical to the success of every workplace change program.

You need to proactively create space for the employee voice to be heard, throughout the change process.

Change communications should never be a one-way ‘push’ exercise. Even if you’re rolling out something like a reorganization or a change of leadership, it's still important to invite and encourage employee feedback so that you can adapt the communication approach to best serve your different internal audiences.

Invite input and feedback via different channels to ensure you present all employees with the opportunity to participate, such as face-to-face drop-in sessions, live Q&A webinars, digital community spaces, or leader update calls.