How do you know the changes you’re witnessing in your organization are the right changes, changes that support your corporate goals and culture? As you implement your training program, knowledge, performance, and culture will all start to shift. To ensure this shift supports your mission, you’ll need to understand organizational change management strategies, as well as identify the right metrics (key performance indicators - KPIs) to measure those results. So, what are the types of change management strategies?

What Are The Types Of Change Management Strategies?

Understanding the basic types of change management strategies, or at least the types of organizational change can help leaders manage change. You might notice this change happening without a strategy around it. That will help you make necessary plans to guide the changes in your organization and make them purposeful. 

The basic types of change in an organization include the following:

• Transformational Change: Transformational change purposefully guides the business in a new direction to adapt to an industry or market change.
• Organizational Change: Organizational change affects the whole company. This change may occur with the existing team, or with a large structural change, including a merger or acquisition, bankruptcy, or downsizing with mass layoffs.
• Personnel Change: Personnel change happens when people are hired, let go, and/or moved to new positions or departments.
• Remedial Change: Remedial change addresses deficiencies or poor performance within the business.
• Unplanned Change: Unplanned change happens without any leadership intention and can have significant effects on the business. It is important for leaders to identify these changes and create plans to address them.

Effective Change Management Strategies

Once leadership identifies the type of change needed for the business, there are several strategies for effective change management that will facilitate change and get better buy-in from employees.

These strategies include:

1. Put The Team First: Your people are the ones who will drive this change; therefore, it is important that they are at the front of planning and execution.
2. Transparency: Communicate the change plans, expected outcomes, and expectations. Building this into your Learning Management System is a great way to ensure transparency.
3. Choose A Model: There are several models out there for organizational change management, including Kotter, McKinsey’s 7-S, ADKAR, and the Kübler-Ross Five Stage model.
4. Honesty: Along with transparency, be open and honest with employees. Honesty, when change will be difficult, will solidify their overall trust and in turn will get them on board.
5. Communication: Begin by sharing the plan with your team and getting their input. Then, follow up with regular updates and solicit feedback from the team during implementation.
6. Training: The way to ensure desired outcomes from your organizational change is to document it in an effective training program. This will make the changes fun and exciting, as well as provide feedback to leadership as to the progress.

What Are The Metrics To Measure Change Management?

In order to measure the results of your change plan and strategy, it is important to identify some key metrics and have a system in place to track and report those metrics. A great tool to accomplish this, of course, is a Learning Management System, as it will also be the backbone for the training needed to make the desired organizational changes.

Here are some metrics -- key performance indicators (KPIs) -- that you can track in order to measure your organizational change:

1. Adoption Rate: Track the percentage of your team actively engaged in the training and resulting change. You can also track progress within the training program, including utilization and usage.
2. Employee Feedback: Regularly gather feedback from employees on the change, including simple surveys and requests for their ideas on continuing to improve the plan.
3. Training Tests: Ensure that knowledge and understanding of the new changes are sinking in and becoming part of your business.
4. Corporate Goals and ROI: Use the financial and performance metrics you have in place to measure business performance to ensure that the change continues to support and improve that performance.
5. Time: Your change plan has a desired timeline. Track progress and measure it against that timeline.

Organizational Change In Your Business

Organizational change can be an exciting time for a business. It begins with planning. Measuring and tracking progress during and after execution is the key to a successful change strategy. A great way to track your metrics and know how things are going is by using a Learning Management System to train the team and measure the result.

Talk to our team about building a custom solution for your organization, including reports that will keep you updated on your efforts.