Successful organisations are adapting to a workplace model that is flexible and responsive to fluctuations in headcount, project teams and the external changing landscape without having to make drastic changes to the physical office or outlay significant costs. Other drivers for workplace change include improving employee wellbeing, breaking down silos and facilitating better collaboration. Whatever the reason for workplace change, it is essential to understand your vision and roadmap to the desired solution as well as a having a robust approach to guide all stakeholders along the journey. At Presynct, we look at workplace change at all levels and ensure we are working with stakeholders in a collaborative way to build trust and encourage employees to take ownership of the new way of working.
What is the Presynct approach to workplace change management?
In any workplace change, whether a change of location, a new physical environment, technology uplifts and/or new behaviours, the shift is viewed differently by different people. Some see it as an opportunity for a new and improved space that better supports the way the organisation works, while others see it as a disruption that presents new barriers to the way they work. Therefore, there are varying degrees of buy-in to the workplace change.
Our goal is to leverage those who automatically buy-in as advocates for the change and focus the approach to support the remaining employees to buy-in over time. We recognise that as the leaders of an organisation make key workplace decisions, employees will move backward and forward through stages of the change curve, therefore transparent decision making, and ongoing communications and engagement is critical.
Our change approach supports employees through the transition to shift views by developing a sense of ownership of the future workplace. This is achieved by actively engaging with employees to understand how they work now and determine how they will work in the future to influence workplace design and shape behaviours. Understanding and acceptance of the workplace change is built through clear communication about the purpose and plan. A collaborative approach helps to make the transition as easy as possible by supporting you to develop the new norm through effective engagement: discussion, communications and training.
There are four phases in the Presynct change process:
1. DISCOVER
As workplace and office accommodation experts we have a holistic appreciation for all aspects of workplace and change management. We can draw on extensive experience and collateral to support the accommodation changes occurring at Perpetual and guide employee through the change journey. We understand the key impacts of these types of change projects, have heard a breadth of employee concerns across variety of industries, understand and can interpret workplace design and can identify and support major decisions that are required to be made.
This experience enables us to deliver a proven approach with road tested workshops and engagement activities. We can deliver a custom approach that ensures consistency so that stakeholders and end users get the same great experience.
We will partner with your organisation to identify stakeholders and their key requirements as well as any site specific or unique factors to consider. Our approach includes interviews, surveys, policy reviews, utilisation analysis, space and design analysis, headcount and growth analysis, technology auditing, current occupancy model reviews and behaviour analysis to name a few. This information is used to develop a change impact assessment and stakeholder analysis and directly informs the change plan.
We have experience working with a wide variety of change models and can align with a preferred change model. However, we have also have adapted multiple change theories and models based on our experience to create a simple and easy to understand approach. Our change approach builds alignment and trust with project leaders, champions, representatives and employees about how we are going to successfully support their workplace transition.
2. INFLUENCE
At Presynct, we have a deep understanding of social influence, group norms, learning, change and grief theory which form the basis of many change management approaches. Ultimately the goal for a successful workplace change is to develop a sense of ownership of the future workplace as a shared environment so that positive new behaviours become “the way we do things”. Champions, representatives and leaders play a vital role in expanding the ownership and driving the change through the organisation. Our change approach clearly maps out the touchpoints for each stakeholder group so it is clear when and what we plan to cover with them.
We work with leaders to educate them on: workplace, how they will work, how to support their employees, the importance of alignment around decision roles and transparent decision making as well as the impact of making no change. We provide your leaders with opportunities to talk to some of their industry peers who have undertaken workplace change and arrange virtual tours through relevant workplaces.
We facilitate and support champions, design representatives and key stakeholders to represent their teams or business areas, ensure the right people come to the right events, share information, gather feedback, identify and address challenges and take responsibility for team activities such as clean up days. We know that employees acting as champions or representatives often have their regular roles and responsibilities to attend to, so our goal is to position them to succeed and make it as easy as possible to have confidence in sharing key information with their teams. Our goal is to make sure champions and representatives know they will get prompt answers for their teams and ensure there are facilitated events all employees can participate in. We support champions and representatives through creating materials for them to use and facilitating team sessions to actively participate in.
We also know that different people engage with change differently, so we need multiple channels of communication and different approaches to ensure the message is received. We work with your internal communications team to understand the preferred channels, branding and messaging for communications and can develop content so that it is aligned with the branding and communication standards for the project.
3. TRANSITION
The transition to a new way of working is both exciting and intense. Good planning and coordination are imperative to ensure the logistics of the move is clear and understood. On day one, we focus on making sure everyone can operate and work safely in the new workspace. Our goal is no downtime. Day one we ensure employees can use the technology they need, access the building, access their files and know where to go for events and meetings. Post move, we build further capability around technology set up and ways of working, ensuring that all issues raised are resolved.
As people start to settle into the space, we commence the analysis and start collecting the evidence that will validate the success of the project. We also start developing a workplace community group which will continue to improve and evolve the ways of working. Finally, all project materials are converted to useable and interactive business as usual material – located in the right place for employees to continue to access it.
4. MEASURE
Presynct continue to play a major role in project activities post-implementation. We also help you benchmark the results against other organisations to better understand results and expectations.
We collect data throughout the life of the project so by the post-implementation stage, we have comprehensive data to demonstrate the impact of the change program and the new workplace.
We are data-driven and provide detailed information on perceived productivity improvements, workstyle, collaboration and communications and satisfaction. We also map stakeholders and cohorts to the change curve to understand progress in adoption of the changes. We understand the importance of data and can provide utilisation data and comparisons, ethnographic observations and studies plus other comparative data on space, technology and people.
Finally, we facilitate structured and formal lessons learned and focus group sessions to gather feedback on the outcomes of the change from your employees. We provide ongoing recommendations to help resolve any areas of concern and outline any ongoing risks. We provide comms support to address concerns and reinforce behaviours required to successfully transition to a shared way of working. We produce a final report that is all inclusive of the process and outcomes of the project and ensures that all change material is available in a guide to allow future projects to access the information.
How to start your workplace change journey?
At Presynct, our workplace change approach addresses the physical, virtual and behavioural changes that underpin the new way of working. If you have already established your workplace strategy, our team of change specialists can lead the implementation of the transition. Sometimes there are gaps identified as part of the change proposal phase. Presynct can work with your organisation to adapt our the change journey to answer any outstanding questions around how you will occupy space in the new environment or what the physical and technology components of the space might look like. See what a workplace strategy should include here.
The Presynct team is always happy to share our proven change process in more detail and how we can assist you in implementing a change in your workplace. Please reach out via our Contact Us page.
