“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” 

…So said ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. As someone who sees change as an opportunity to grow both professionally and personally, that quote has always struck a chord with me.

However, it’s important to realise that not everyone has the same outlook. For many employees, change can be daunting. Whether your company is transforming to the digital workplace, introducing unfamiliar technology or even altering roles, transformation in the workplace can cause major disruption to the employee experience, impacting everything from productivity to mental health. As such, managing change against these challenges requires an empathetic response.

Here are some ways you can address some of the common questions and concerns around change to put your teams at ease and help them embrace the opportunity.

1. My role in the digital workplace is changing, and I don’t know what to do

All organisations undergo structural change. Dealing with the cut and thrust of modern business demands becoming lean, agile, and flexible. With it comes the introduction of the empowering nature of technology that has or will transform everyone’s role – from caretaker to CEO.

The initial reaction to this is involuntary, and can often be one of resistance. However, don’t try to fight it.

In my experience, your employees must process this in their own way. If they’re upset, allow them to be upset. If they’re optimistic, embrace that optimism. If they’re angry, help them channel the anger into something positive. There’s no specific, codified way employees should act in these situations, but it’s not healthy to suppress all emotions.

After the initial shock of hearing about change, it’s time to support employees in seeing the opportunities. If the change means joining a new team, what new things could your team learn? What new advice can be gained from a new manager? If the change means moving companies, help your people imagine where it could lead and support them through the process.

2. They’ve introduced new technology and I don’t know how to use it

Learning new technology can be tricky. It’s time-consuming and often involves a lot of  admin during the set-up process. Just when you think you’ve cracked it, you might hear about a new technology being introduced to replace it.

D’oh!

One major challenge is understanding the different technology suites a new company uses.

When I first began stumbling across this, I used to resist. I started doing work on my home device, so I could carry on using the old software I was familiar with. This was arduous, clunky and, to be honest, a bit childish. A case of “I want to use what I want to use and don’t care what you say”.

However, I’m glad to say I left that stage behind quite quickly. Now, when presented with new technologies, I wholeheartedly embrace them. Learning the different capabilities of each has opened my eyes to new ways to use them and new ways of working that are more suited to the digital workplace.

It’s the same for your employees – using new technologies means gaining new skills. That might be on a grand-scale, like learning how to create engaging presentations using PowerPoint’s built-in AI capabilities or it might just be finding a few fun life-hacks and shortcuts that make work even easier.

To help your employees get to grips with new tech in the digital workplace, start by figuring out how they learn best. Some of your team will be textbook titans who prefer to sit and get all the background reading under their belt before tackling a new project. Others might be on-the-job supremos who learn by interaction and embrace a trial-and-error mentality.

Understanding where they’re most comfortable is important to ensuring success.

3. I need to make changes to my team, but I’m not sure how people will react

“You need to lose headcount.”

Five dreaded words no business leader wants to hear. You’ve spent time recruiting a team to help realise your lofty ambitions, working hard to develop a close-knit culture. Now, you need to put them at risk.

I’ve seen managers react in different ways to this in the past – some go for the blunt “it is what it is” method. Some go decidedly down the other track of “if I pretend it’s not happening it might not happen”. I’ve managed the communications for these changes on several occasions, and the best advice I can give during these times is…

Be empathetic in your delivery. Be proactive in your support. Be confident in your justification. And don’t forget, change affects the whole team, not just the leavers.

There’s a heavy emphasis on getting the correct terminology into organisational change communications. There are legal implications to consider and the wording needs to be accurate. However, one thing that’s under your control is the tone of delivery.

Think about your people. Understand how and why they might react differently. Remember, it won’t be the same for everyone, so tailor your approach.

Next, before announcing these types of changes, consider the support mechanisms you need to put in place to help employees at every level. Offer career coaching and support sessions. It might be that people would rather deal with the change on their own, but it’s better to have these things in place than to have people feel abandoned. Proactive support is critical. It’s where positive change lives or dies. As an employee, there’s nothing quite as demoralising as feeling like you’ve received bad news, then being left to deal with it alone.

When it comes to confidence in your justification. What this means is that, before you move to the digital workplace, it’s important to be certain as to your reasons for doing it. Whenever changes are made, there will inevitably be questions, comparison, and issues. As long as you are sure why you’re changing, and are happy to openly and honestly justify them to employees, people will feel a greater sense of understanding. It might not make them happy about it, but at least they’ll be reassured by the fairness of the situation.

Lastly, and importantly, when it comes to company culture, the impact of organisational change can be felt greatly by those remaining. I’ve seen people feel guilty, wondering why they’ve kept their job when others didn’t; I’ve seen people in tears over losing the friends and connections they’ve made in the workplace.

Don’t assume your people will automatically bounce back. Support them, offer ongoing guidance well after the point of change, and bring them on your journey. Culture doesn’t grow itself; nurturing it is the only way to get through difficult change.

About the author

Adam Renshaw works as a Communications Lead within the UK Services business unit. His role focuses on landing key strategic messaging, sharing best practices, and celebrating business achievements. Adam’s passion for communications stems from his love of all things creative. When it comes to creating videos, storytelling or developing impactful digital designs, he just can’t get enough. Communications gives him the opportunity, quite often with a blank slate, to share his passion with other people.

The post 3 ways to help your employees adjust to change in the digital workplace appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Good communication is the difference between a speech so stirring you can’t help but believe, and an article you skim-read just to get to the end. It’s the difference between leading people on a journey and leaving a room full of scratched heads and blank faces. And it becomes even more crucial in the digital workplace.

Skilled communicators empower audiences, while poor communicators sow confusion.

And for some, it can be a tricky balancing act. How often have you had to ask, ‘Why isn’t that department aware of your project?’ Or overheard a colleague wonder out-loud, ‘How we can share and celebrate our latest completed project with the business?’

Unfortunately, as businesses grow, the challenge to be heard – all while employees are buffeted by workplace emails, IMs and other digital distractions – grows with it.

Working as Communications Lead for Microsoft Services UK, I align our vision to help everyone achieve more. That means ensuring my communications are clear, concise, and, above all, empowering. The right message has a major impact on peoples’ productivity and performance.

That’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly.

These are my five top tips for helping your communications rise above the noise in the digital workplace, so the next time you’re asked how best to share and celebrate your latest project, you’ll know exactly where to start.

5 ways to stand out in the digital workplace

1. Be bold, be different

I’m frequently asked how to help business communications stand out in the workplace. My first piece of advice is pretty straightforward: don’t be afraid to try something new. The status quo quickly becomes wallpaper, if it hasn’t already.

Take internal videos as an example.

Video consumption is on the rise both in our personal and working lives, so it makes perfect sense to use the medium as an opportunity to be heard – the value of a short, powerful video that can be watched by staff on the go is high. However, while there’s a place for a short piece to camera to get a message across, if you’re looking to win hearts and minds you’ll need to get creative and deliver an experience.

Entice the goose-bumps of your viewers by incorporating music. Film from different angles to create an emotional connection. Visit different environments. Involve different people in the process. Include bloopers.

You don’t need to be Spielberg, but if you’re willing to try something new, people will naturally stop and pay attention.

2. Know your audience

It’s impossible to stand out without understanding what makes your audience tick. Are they an email army or Yammer champs? 9-to-5 office lovers or flexible, on-the-road heroes?

Getting out and talking to people on a personal level about what they want to hear and how they want to hear it is an important first step, and one that has to be taken before you can think about how best to move on.

Of course, there will be lots of different ways people like to consume their information. With such a wealth of technology available, they’re spoilt for choice. The key is identifying themes that help employees achieve more without stepping over the line into spamming every method available.

3. Use channels for what they were designed for

Most people have logged into multiple platforms and seen the same message peppered across the screen. To be fair, I can understand the logic behind this – “if it’s on every channel, I can be sure employees are more likely to see it”.

In theory this might make sense, but in my experience it has the opposite effect; overloading a workforce with the same messages turns them off.

Have confidence in your digital channels, take advantage of the different technologies, and understand that everything has its place.

Use Teams for smaller collaborative projects where you need to share documents related to a specific goal or for instant messaging colleagues. Use Yammer to broadcast and share at large. Use email to bring together key messaging into aligned notes, so you deliver one note rather than twelve.

These are just examples of how you might decide to use your platforms, but it’s crucial to breed a culture whereby people know where to find different types of information. Don’t feel the need to litter every channel.

4. Speak like a human

When I say speak like a human, what I really mean is

drop the jargon, drop the acronyms; be conversational and be authentic. Nobody in the workplace has ever been inspired by the thought of a ‘2Q45NNCFPWU’. It’s just never happened.

A friend once asked me how I manage to take complex, technical messaging from stakeholders, then deliver it in a simple, understandable way to a wide audience who may never have come across the project (and now I’m writing this down, I’m starting to think I need to either get out more or get new friends…).

For me, it comes down to three ‘takeaways’:

When receiving your message, what is it that you want people to think, feel and do?

If you can nail those in a succinct, understandable, human way, then you’re well on the way to success.

5. Don’t lose sight of the fact that employees are people too

This may sound obvious, but it’s something I come across a lot. It’s easy to get so close to a project that you genuinely feel you should be sharing every detail with everyone you can.

You don’t.

Trust me when I say you can’t underestimate the value of taking a step back and remembering that in a busy digital workplace, you’re likely to only get a snippet of attention if your message isn’t directly related to your recipient’s working life.

It’s important to go high level – deliver key facts in an easily digestible way, and, honestly, if they want to know more people will ask, transforming a monologue into a conversation.

If I could leave you with one piece of advice for when it comes to your next opportunity to communicate with your colleagues, it would be this:

What would grab your attention? Figure out the answer and do it.

Find out more

Drive employee engagement in the digital workplace

Download the employee engagement guide

About the author

Adam Renshaw works as a Communications Lead within the UK Services business unit. His role focuses on landing key strategic messaging, sharing best practices, and celebrating business achievements. Adam’s passion for communications stems from his love of all things creative. When it comes to creating videos, storytelling or developing impactful digital designs, he just can’t get enough. Communications gives him the opportunity, quite often with a blank slate, to share his passion with other people.

The post 5 tips for standing out in a crowded digital workplace appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.