Quite often, organisational leaders assume that HR’s role during change is to communicate and deliver training. But that is a very misleading view.
At an HR breakfast for the Association of HR Professionals, I asked several questions, including these two. And the answers explain much of why change initiatives in organisations fail to deliver as expected.
The first question: “How many changes are currently affecting one of your employees?”
Most of the audience did not choose “one” or even “two to three.” They chose the option that there are more, but they can no longer quantify them. No one is counting those changes. No one is managing them as a whole.
The second question: “When were you, as HR, brought into the change?”
Most people answered: only after the decision had already been made. Or when the project was already underway and communication needed to be sent out and training planned.
An organisation overloaded with change needs someone who understands people, keeps an eye on capacity, impacts, and the sequencing of change. Yet HR often gets a seat at the table only when all that remains is the role of communicator.
Because change management is still too often confused with communication and training.
It is not a communication campaign. It is a structured process that enables people to move to a new way of working sustainably and with measurable results. It has its own lifecycle, from the first day of an initiative through to embedding new habits.
And HR brings the greatest value at the beginning. Before there is even anything to communicate.
By the very nature of its role, HR understands people. It is the voice of employees and a mirror for leadership. Those are extremely important roles and attributes.
I sat in that HR chair myself for ten years. At the time, I managed change intuitively, inconsistently, and without much structure. It cost me far more energy than it needed to. And those changes did not always stick.
When change is managed reactively rather than proactively, change fatigue arrives very quickly. At the same time, many of those initiatives fail to deliver what their sponsors originally expected.
When were you last brought into a change initiative?