In December, we introduced our new journey-centric Success Center experience and highlighted a few key learnings from our customer journey workshops. This week, we’re diving a little deeper into change management — what it is, why it’s important, and which best practices we use to ensure users are ready, willing, and able to change the way they work.

What Is Change Management?

Whether you chose a new solution to create a better employee experience, to improve your security posture, or to update your existing technology — to achieve your objectives, you will most likely need your employees to change the way they work. That’s why we’re talking about the people side of change.

To realize the return on investment (ROI) of your new solution, users will need to move from the current state and transition to a future state. But how will you make the transition less disruptive for your employees? How will you ensure your new solution will actually be used when you roll it out? And how will you keep users from falling back on old habits or finding workarounds?

That’s where change management’s focus on the people side of change comes in. There are many change management methodologies, but the common dimensions of any effective change strategy should include:

  • Aligning leaders to shared goals
  • Engaging stakeholders consistently
  • Communicating openly and often
  • Building knowledge and equipping stakeholders with relevant skills
  • Measuring success and acting on results

The key is to take the time up front to understand who will be impacted by the change — and how — so the project team and leadership can effectively engage the right stakeholders at the right time (e.g., through interviews, communications, pilots, training, etc.).

Planning change management activities and defining success measures early in the project will better prepare you to appropriately engage stakeholders before, during, and after the rollout, ensuring your employees are ready and willing to adopt the new way of working.

Why Is Change Management Important?

By following change management principles, you’ll help your employees understand why the change is necessary, what is changing, and how to make the change. The more prepared your employees are for the change, the more likely the change will be adopted quickly — accelerating your speed to value.

Even just a little change management can make an impact. According to Prosci, “initiatives with excellent change management are six times more likely to meet objectives than those with poor change management. By simply moving from ‘poor’ to ‘fair,’ change management increases the likelihood of meeting objectives by three-fold.”

Not only will applying effective change management increase adoption and, therefore, help you meet your objectives, it can also positively impact employee satisfaction. When employees feel they are being supported through a change, they’ll be more satisfied with their experience. It’s a win, win, win!

The Change Management Kit

Now that you have a tiny taste of change management and its benefits, you may be wondering, “Where do I even begin?” You’re not alone.

During our interviews and workshops, many of our customers mentioned that change management doesn’t fall squarely in their area of expertise. Many also said that they don’t have a dedicated resource to fill the change management gap. And while most customers said they leverage end-user communications, nearly everyone we spoke with identified change management as an area where they wished they had more guidance.

The Change Management Kit is designed to get you started with the key components of change management, with examples and templates along the way. Keep in mind, the breadth and depth of how much change management planning and activities are necessary will vary depending on factors like the complexity of the change, the size of the change, and your company’s culture (e.g., how disruptive the change is, how differently the impact will be felt by various roles, how open or resistant employees are to change, etc.).

The Change Management Kit currently includes guidance on the areas below. We’ll continue to grow the kit over time as more best practices, templates, and samples are added to help you build effective change strategies:

  • Why change management matters: Takes a deeper look at the dimensions of a change strategy, the benefits of change management, and how it’s applied to an IT project (including a sample timeline for change activities)
  • Engaging stakeholders in change: Provides guiding questions to help you identify stakeholders, plus a sample interview template to get you started
  • Measuring change: Details different types of measurements used to assess the success or effectiveness of your change plan, and provides a list of example measurements you can use for your own change
  • Communicating change: Outlines key principles of an effective communication plan and contains a sample Citrix Workspace communication plan you can use as a template for any rollout

What’s Next?

We’re excited to add change management to your success toolkit. And we’re just getting started! Keep an eye on the Change Management Kit as additional guidance and resources are added in the coming weeks and months.

The Change Management Kit will empower you to apply change management principles to your next rollout and help accelerate the realization of your ROI. If you have any questions about change management or if you’d like to speak to our experience team and share your own story, please email us at CSM@citrix.com or leave a comment below.

— Lauren Tobon, Senior Employee Engagement Strategist, Customer Success Management