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by Traci McMillan Beach
on February 14, 2019

4 Ways to Engage & Inspire Your Team During an Organizational Change

Change is inevitable, necessary and commonplace in business. Positive and worthy change usually comes with some growing pains.
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What specific situations constitute workplace change? When we reference organizational change, this covers a whole spectrum of common scenarios: hiring a handful of new employees, internal layoffs, updating team processes or protocols, or establishing new company guidelines, to name a few – any situation that shakes up the current state of your business is the change we’re talking about. We help businesses with these various change management initiatives; making transitions more seamless and the associated growing pains less impactful. 

The best way to make sure your team is on board and engaged during these inevitable periods of change, is to make them part of it. Here are a few actionable recommendations:

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Invite Employees to Participate in the Change

Encourage your team to be part of the discussion. Invite them to submit their process improvement ideas or send an email as a heads up that you’re seeking volunteers to participate in rolling out this change. Letting your employees in on the evolving change early gives them some ownership and pride in the process. Don’t forget to ask for your employees’ feedback once a change has been put into place; their input is valuable!

Deliver Quick Wins

It sounds easy – because it is! Taking some time to compile some kudos-worthy announcements can go a long way toward making your team feel excited about the growth and change happening around them. Delivering quick wins doesn’t have to be formal either. Simply sharing some progress on a daunting quarter-long project in your next meeting, or sending a short email to deliver a piece of good news that strides are being made will make your team feel inspired. 

Pro Tip

Email your team a short bulleted list of digestible quick wins. Call out the person or people responsible along with a tangible measurement of the quick win. For example: “Kudos to Jane for putting in extra hours this month to help drive up sales an additional 10 percent!”

Put your Team at Ease

If closed-door meetings are a near daily occurrence, you can bet that employees not included in these meetings are worried and filled with uncertainty. Why wasn’t I included in the meeting? Is my job safe? What changes are happening within our company? It takes no time at all for someone to jump to untrue conclusions.

You can easily calm these feelings of worry and anxiety by looping your team in on post-meeting discussions or by providing a summary of the meeting notes (assuming that it’s not confidential information). A quick debrief giving your team a heads up that leadership been in talks of implementing changes to a process can disarm their fears.

Offer an Incentive

Have some fun with your team and encourage some healthy competition by putting together an incentive program, or consider hosting a celebratory team get-together at the end of a big project. The incentive prize or hosted event doesn’t have to come at a huge cost; allocating a small budget – a $100 gift card for example, or an in-house catered lunch to celebrate a job well done is a nice way to reward your team during a time when your business is undergoing a lot of change. 

Want to discuss other ways you can engage your team during change? Reach out! We’re happy to help.