5 types of organizational change you should know about

No matter who you are or what industry you’re in, change is an unavoidable part of life. Especially as we adapt to the ever-changing digital world, it’s essential to understand the types of organizational change.

Though change might be as inevitable as the shifting seasons, it doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to ensure a successful organizational change in your enterprise. Read on as we discuss the types of change and ways to ensure they are success.

Your guide to the five types of organizational change

By definition, organizational change management refers to a program or an event that an enterprise wants to implement, which usually causes significant disruption to daily operations. Many factors lead to change within the organization, such as keeping up with the industry, your competition, or simply to increase production and progress on a company level.

To reduce friction and resistance to change in your workplace, it’s important to make sure that your employees understand why change is vital to the future of the company. Let’s discuss the importance of change and then dive into the types of organizational change.

Why is organizational change important?

Organizational change is essential for survival in today’s dynamic digital world. New corporate developments happen so fast that if you’re not up-to-date, you’re likely to fall behind your competitors. As trends and technology evolve, so will the needs of your customers. If you can’t deliver on efficiency and accuracy, then you might lose out to those companies that can.

From installing new software, reorganizing your company to make it more efficient and streamlined, or merely adapting to customer needs, leaders should be aware of the positive impacts change can have on your organization. Though seemingly disruptive, successful organizational change will ultimately improve employees’ productivity and boost sales success. Any business’s goal is to satisfy customers, which means your company needs to be ready to adapt if your customers are changing.

Each of the following types of organizational change comes with the opportunity to learn and grow. Employers must assess their employees’ skills and tools and look for gaps that organizational change can help improve. Let’s discuss the types of change so you can decide for yourself what is a top priority to focus on for training.

5 types of organizational change

The first step is to understand what change management models exist so that you can adequately decide which best suits your company and team.

Here are the five common types of organizational change that enterprises go through.

1. Company-wide change

The first type of change is company-wide, a large-scale transformation that affects the whole company. It often includes introducing a new enterprise technology, restructuring leadership, or implementing a new policy.

This kind of organization-wide change affects every single employee, but after some time, you’ll be able to see the improvements. Organizational change can help enlighten leaders to which policies have been outdated and how the company’s identity will transform.

To achieve a successful organization-wide change, you’ll have to spend time coming up with a comprehensive plan that includes open and frequent communication. For software specifically, a digital adoption solution like OnScreen Guidance is an essential tool for implementing organization-wide changes.

2. Employee change

When a company experiences hyper-growth or layoffs, it causes personnel change. Any type of company-wide change can trigger a shift in both employee engagement and retention. The threat of layoffs can evoke fear and anxiety in the entire corporation, so leaders should expect that overall employee morale will suffer. The company must move forward in a way that motivates employees to continue working through the changes, even when they are difficult.

On the other hand, mass hiring seems better for a company, but it is not without its challenges. Though hiring is a sign of growth, companies are susceptible to cultural changes and disorganization without proper training and onboarding practices. If the transition isn’t handled correctly with ongoing support and training opportunities, it could lead to chaos, inefficiency and might even deter the path to successful growth.

3. Unplanned change

Following unexpected events, unplanned change usually comes into place. While it can’t be predicted, the unanticipated change should be dealt with in an organized matter. Companies who experience unplanned changes can make it easier by setting basic organizational change strategies in place.

Have your teams develop policies and procedures for minimizing unplanned risks so that when something happens, your company remains more adaptable and resilient.

4. Transformational change

Transformational change is the type of organizational change that specifically targets a company’s strategy company-wide. Companies that are adaptable and prepared to transform their overall plans are best suited to withstand rapid change in their industry. Leaders should consider cultural trends, social climate, and technological progress when building strategies to guide transformational change. They should also account for their current direction the company is headed towards to make sure it’s aligning with the transformational change goals.

Mature digital businesses integrate digital technologies that improve the company into their transformation strategies. In contrast, less-mature digital businesses are focused on solving business problems without thinking of overall digital strategy.

Companies can set themselves up for success if they incorporate digital adoption platforms into their transformation strategies. OnScreen Guidance can help with this.

5. Remedial Change

Leaders implement remedial changes when they specifically need to address poor company performance or deficiencies in the workplace. Financial distress might be due to lackluster performance. Rolling out new software, creating a position that fixes a pain point, or introducing a better employee training program can be examples of remedial change.

Reviewing strategies that have been in place for years might be a good place to start when it comes to corrective action, especially when those strategies prove to no longer be profitable. Remedial change efforts require tailoring to the problem on hand, but they also benefit from effective organizational change strategies. For example, a newly hired leader who turns out to be a poor fit for the company or a training program that costs more than it’s worth might call for remedial change.

How to ensure successful change

Organizational change has many benefits, but without the proper implementation can lead to misalignment and company-wide confusion. If you want to ensure success while you execute organizational change, here are a few ideas to help your business.

1. Develop a strategy with clear goals

Organizational change often goes out to multiple departments and includes several different job functions, especially when stakeholders are involved, as they likely want to guarantee their interests are heard and met. A lot of change initiatives fail, and it’s generally because the company in question has a weak implementation strategy.

If you want to achieve a successful organizational change, then a digital strategy must be created with clearly defined goals. This strategy should determine the vision for what the company should like after the change rolls out. Management will develop this vision by gathering information and opinions from those affected by the change. Inclusive strategy building like this encourages employees across the company to buy-in to the change and make sure the strategy is carried out as intended.

2. Overcoming employee resistance and encouraging staff engagement

All types of organizational change can be difficult, but it can be made even more so when your employees don’t see anything wrong with the way they currently do things. They might even be resistant to change if it disrupts their daily work life. With new technologies to learn and digital adoption platforms to navigate and changes that might automate some of their existing tasks, employees may feel threatened by company-wide change.

Communication is crucial to overcome employee resistance and encourage staff engagement. Make sure you get their opinions on proposed changes in the initial stages so that they feel included in the process and feel like the changes will make a difference for the better. Explaining the purpose of necessary changes and showing them how their day-to-day work will improve might alleviate fear and reduce resistance.

3. Implement digital adoption platforms for new technology

With any organizational change, there will inevitably be new tools to learn and understand. Especially with digital transformation, training requires employers to provide contextual learning techniques. Outdated training methods just won’t cut it for large enterprises. Contextual learning that comes with a digital adoption platform like OnScreen Guidance will help employees retain information that comes with change by personalizing their training experience.

Our platform provides assistance tailored to the user’s individual needs. We help you create on-screen training inside the software you’re implementing that prompts users to complete their tasks and give them the insight they need right when they need it. This saves a lot of time and works much better than traditional lecture-style training, which doesn’t have great retention rates. Instead, our platform helps employees learn on the job instead of wasting time searching for the answers to their questions.

4. Provide management support

If you want organizational change to be successful, it needs to be adopted company-wide, from C-level to managers and everyone in between. It might be the case that the CEO has a vision for change, but they aren’t on the ground level executing those changes. That’s why the company’s vision should be shared so that everyone involved knows their role in helping reach goals and maintain success.

Help your employees invest in change by having management demonstrate a commitment to the change. You can also help gain support across the board by having a consistent message of why the change is essential. Management support can be in the form of open lines of communication, updating employees on progress and next steps, as well as feedback throughout the process. Having support from leaders can help your employees navigation through the change and perform better.

5. Consider ongoing agility training

Organizational agility is the ability to react quickly to changes in business operations and strategy. It’s something that must be learned within an organization as efficiency doesn’t always come naturally. Agility training has three different areas an enterprise can focus on. The first is fostering change management skills that can be both individual and organization-wide. From personal resilience to networking and coaching, teaching your company to be ok with change on every level helps facilitate successful transformation.

The next thing to focus on is productive time management. Ongoing training can help your employees learn how to evaluate what is essential versus what is crucial so that they can effectively prioritize tasks. Time management training can help employees feel more equipped to tackle any upcoming or current organizational changes.

Finally, when an organizational change takes place, there is a lot of onboarding information that goes along with that. Continual learning and development opportunities can help build healthy habits so that modifications to workflow feel less daunting and more manageable. The proper agility training can enable your business to change position when the need comes up quickly. Instead of an impossible challenge, any type of organizational change will become just another task they can tackle, which is vital for organizational health.

Set yourself up for successful change with OnScreen Guidance

These types of organizational change require different actions. Your enterprise will fare best during transitional periods when you are adaptable to change, even when circumstances don’t seem ideal. Having the best strategies in place can help guide you through all transformation efforts. We think that when it comes to company-wide change, preparation is key. Today’s most ambitious companies consider digital transformation as part of the foundation that increases efficiency, agility, and overall company performance.

Learning Pool’s digital adoption platform, OnScreen Guidance, is specifically designed for project teams implementing significant organizational change to a green user base.

We offer ERP guidance to support users when they need it most. Our DAP shortens the release cycle that comes with training and ensures faster user proficiency. Your power users can develop and publish step-by-step guides directly into your digital transformation application in much less time than creating and sharing screenshots.

We help empower users to solve problems independently, which reduces support tickets and accelerates the time it takes to become proficient in the new system. Let us help you successfully conquer organizational change. Request a demo today to learn more.