How do you engage stakeholders in #workplace change? #theworkplacechef 👨🍳
This week, I had a great conversation with an international client of ours. Headquartered here in Europe and a major name in global banking and financial services, they employ around 130,000 staff. This results in a constant program of office fit-outs, refurbishments, office moves, mergers and decommissions. Organic growth and acquisition has generated additional and significant change in the business, resulting in a challenging but exciting and rewarding time in the Real Estate & Workplace business unit.
Amongst all the talk of their experiences and plans for the future, one of the nuggets I noted down was the need for, and ability to, engage as many stakeholders in the process of the change as possible. Engaging focus groups from the general staff in the workplace design process not only garnered some great ideas, but importantly enabled those people to feel invested in the end result, to feel a sense of ownership, to feel heard AND to act as evangelists and advocates for the to-be design, helping to explain to their peers, the benefits, the reasons behind decisions and perhaps justifications and understandable reasons for why certain things can’t be delivered, helping people to appreciate the efforts that have been gone to, to deliver the end results.
I’ve seen this approach in many change projects, whether it’s introducing a new technology to a large group of potential users, to delivering a new office, to a real shake up in a real estate portfolio. I think we all want to feel heard and have a voice. And for those that aren’t participating first-hand in the process, it’s important that they feel represented, and the power of having one of their peers explain or evangelise the future state can’t be underestimated. Preparing people for change can be like a sales process, and there’s not much more powerful in that process than a reference from a peer.
In this client story, the Saltmine technology facilitated interactive workshops where ideas could be played out almost instantly, enabled dissemination of plans and designs to the wider audience, provided for immersive experiences and channeled actionable feedback.
Like a fantastic recipe, the importance of having the right ingredients is only matched by the need to have them brought together in the right way. And effective change management is that binding agent that makes the whole thing work.
I love a Swiss cheese fondue, delicious Gruyère and Emmental cheese, a good dry white wine, fresh and juicy garlic cloves, a splash of kirsch - it already sounds delicious, but all these amazing ingredients don’t tend to like to hold together until you introduce a little cornflour.
I didn’t know how this post was going to end until I got to this point.
I’m now starving and can’t wait for a winter trip to have a traditional fondue 😂
#StakeholderEngagement #ChangeManagement #EmployeeInvolvement #WorkplaceTransformation
