Keeping Talent Through Effective Change Management
As we all know, IT and Data Projects change everything for employees sometimes for the better or for worse?
Why worse? Well, the job requirements could completely change for them and it’s not exploiting their strengths anymore.
However.
Then you start to see the operations breakdown, company revenues drop, and disagreements among once friendly employees.
Well…
It’s likely due to lack of people engagement as a result of job roles and responsibilities changing that no longer use the natural strengths, talents, gifts, and interests of the person.
When I was kid my parents talked about my father’s job one day. My father said he didn’t want the promotion and to make more money. I, being a kid, said why not? He said, he didn’t want the promotion or to make more money because of politics. I thought to myself republican and democrat? Huh? Puzzled and not understanding or having a clue, I went back outside to play and climb the trees.
Later I realized my father protected his passion and interests by sticking to what he loved and that led to a great reputation, great work, and happy family man.
But what if his job changed on him and he didn’t have a choice. He might have left or been miserable on the job. This could have cost taxpayers more since he worked for the government or risks the lives of the Army since we worked for the United States Army Research Lab.
What I’m saying here is it’s all too often the company change the job of our employees and then wonder why the information technology project didn’t make a suitable return on investment. Well, it points back to, did the project change the job of our best employees and turn them into the monster they didn’t want to be?
To prevent these situations from occurring, one way is to have strength assessment for employees through the information technology project implementations as part of your change management strategy to ensure the people have their strengths utilized at optimal levels in the new role and responsibility that they will have once the technology, data, and process future state is implemented.
It is also important to consider keeping certain employees out of high technology roles in the implementation even though they have the company domain knowledge if it jeopardizes their peace of mind, interest and passion that brought them to the company in the first place.
Most times, these subject matter experts are made into super users and enjoy having more information technology skills and capabilities but there is a fine line here.
Knowing the employee strengths, the new job requirements of the employee once the future state of the technology, process and data is implemented can be the key to keeping your talent around for the long-term. Furthermore, having the end in mind can help make the leap of faith to make sure employees’ job design fits what employees’ unique design is best fit to do.
Call it like it is, people are one of the major catalysts, propellers or wrenches contributing to the success or failure of any project or organization. Making sure employees’ job fits them in the future state is key to change management success!