Tweet

Re-Tooling Your Employees for Change

Guest post by: Suzanne Simpson

Article Overview: Change is a fact of life. Successful organizations must have employees who can adapt to changing market trends, new technologies, new ways of doing business, an increasingly global market and heavier demands for higher levels of skills and education. They must constantly strive to meet and exceed customer expectations, while doing more with less. Managing change and assisting employees to adapt to change is a must for the long term survival of any organization.

Re-Tooling Your Employees for Change

If you don't know where you are going, how will you know when you get there?

A plan is needed to manage change. A plan is simply a road map designed to provide direction to where you want to go. The first step is to determine your “destination,” or the vision and goals for your organization. Defining your organization’s vision and goals will involve addressing questions such as:

• What type of business will your organization be doing; how much business will you have?

• How will the work be organized; what kind of service should your customers expect?

• What values must be in place to achieve your goals?

Once these questions are answered, it is then possible to determine how the organization is going to achieve that vision.

What Kind of Employees are Needed to Achieve the Vision?

Employees are the key to making the change a success. Unless employees are equipped to participate in the change, your goals likely won’t be achieved. The next step therefore is to determine the “ideal” employee group needed to achieve your vision and goals. A number of questions will have to be addressed:

• How many and what types of employees will be needed?

• How adaptable must they be? Will they need generalist or highly specialized skill sets?

• Will special educational, certification or licensing requirements have to be met?

• Will they operate independently, or as part of a team?

How do current employees measure up?

Having defined your “ideal” employee group, the next question to ask is how your current employees measure up. To be successful, this must be done in a very systematic way. The needed skills, competencies, knowledge and educational requirements must be clearly defined, and your current group of employees evaluated against these requirements. This can be done through an employee skills inventory completed as a collaborative effort between employees and their managers.

Getting from Here to There

The results of the employee skills inventory can be used to create individual action plans for addressing any gaps in skills identified. Options include:

Train/Develop

The employee has some of the skills to meet the goals of the organization, but there are gaps to be addressed through training, development or coaching.

Re-Assign

The employee may have many of the skills needed to meet the organizational goals but is in the wrong job, or the employee’s current job will no longer exist in a re-designed structure, yet the employee is valued and capable of contributing to the organization’s success.

Offer Support Tools

Some employees may require additional resources or new equipment to perform to their full potential.

Release

The gap between current skills and future requirements may be so great that it cannot be resolved through the means identified above. Therefore it may be necessary to release employees. This, however, should be the option of last resort. Many organizations that have used large scale employee cuts and lay offs, in some cases indiscriminately, have put themselves out of business, since no talent pool was available to bring them back to profitability. This option also sends the message to employees that the organization cannot be trusted. Finally, replacing the employee with a new hire can be much more costly than anticipated. Hiring the right person the first time has been estimated to cost between $10,000 to $30,000. If a mistake is made the cost will be much greater. A lot of retraining can be done for $10,000.

Group Trends

Finally, the individual skills inventory results can be analyzed for group trends to determine where there is a common need. This will allow the organization to put in place cost-efficient action and training programs to address common needs among employees.

Managing the “Fear Factor”

Change of any sort can be stressful. It is important therefore that employees be kept up to date about the change underway, and be treated with respect and dignity. Present the change in a positive light and point out the benefits for both employees and the organization. The aim is to come out of the process a better organization, prepared to meet the challenges of the future and to achieve the organization's vision and goals.

Related Articles
  Finding and using your Talent with T.I.M.
  Defence Loan and Technical Assistance (DELTA) Program
  Change is a Fact of Life --- Six Keys That Make a Difference
  Job Redesign
  Reminders on Engaging Employees in Change
  4 Ways To Get Employees Excited About Their Work
  Improving Organizational Effectiveness in Turbulent Times
  Don't Support Outdated Rules
  Quality is Not an Action, It is A Habit
  Making Business Change Normal
  If you employ more than 50 people are you complying with the ICE Directive
  The Power of Employees
  Icebergs, Polar Bears, and Change Management
  What is a “Meta” for? (Make that Metaphor)
  Change Management
  Twelve Strategic Leadership Actions To Fire Up Your Employees During Change
  RESPECT
  Seven Change Management Secrets to Creating a Winning Culture of Change
  Change Management
  People Are Not the Problem: Eight Tips to Effectively Manage Change

Article Tags: competencies, competencybased management, human resource management



Related Forum Posts
Re: Ways to Boost Productivity - 1. Give Employees More Than a Paycheck 2. Provide Better eSupport Channels to Promote Self-Service 3. Complete your most dreaded tasks first thing in the morning. 4. Outsource as much as possible 5. . Turn off the TV.
Re: Spellcheck? - [quote="TheAnonymousMan":2f894q6j]When discussing the majority of people I would definitely say that most people hit the "Change" or "Ignore" button without thinking too much about the correct spelling of a word. All bosses are concerned about is getting the report to the Directors meeting on time.[/quote:2f894q6j] That probably depends on what the "majority" are trying to accomplish. I have word set to alert me about misspellings and grammatical problems, so I fix most as I go. But I also add names etc to the dictionary because I get tired of seeing the red and green squiggles when I know the info is right. If you're only going to click "Change" or "Ignore" then why bother to take the time to use spell check????? Business people that I work for want the info compiled in a timely manner and they want it right - which is fine because that's the way I strive to do any project. Sending out a memo, letter, report etc with obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes makes the person and the company look bad as far as I'm concerned. Shri
CEOs and Email - Slaves? - I wonder if the emails they are responding to are filtered thru their assistants first 'cos they seem to spend a lot of their off hours responding to them. True they are successful but I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay that price. I'd be interested to know what's the in the typical day planner of Entrepreneurs on the Forum. Entrepreneurs are a different breed than Paid Employees- so it would be interesting to view the contrast.
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers - Hi GT It is only fairly recently that people in South Africa have been able to get full use of Paypal as we were only able at one time to make payments but not receive them. Fortunately this has now changed. I have received money through Global X Change for one of the affiliate programs that I promote and have found them pretty good as the money is normally transferred directly into my bank account within 2-3 days and I have not had any problems with them. MichelleJ
Where I want WSI to be in Dec 31 2007 - Here are my goals for end of 2007 Employees - SEO specialist - admin assistant - sales rep - designer/data entry - copy writer (may be outsourced) Target market (client base) manufacturers 10-50 million in revenue looking for integrated marketing solution ranging from 10k - 30k Systems - crm fully utilized - project management smooth process - sales and marketing to continuously generate leads SALES (My big Goal to focus on ) Last years sales revenue was $220K This year we want to hit $500K - approx 40k per month


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

The State of the Sustainable Furniture Industry

Adjusting Your World

Presenting Yourself With Impact at Work

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.