Change Management Tips for Achieving Successful User Adoption
Projects within your organisation will likely result in a change to the way people work whether the project is implementing a new system, streamlining a process or creating a new solution. User adoption and business value go hand in hand. Adoption and Change Management focuses on the human side of technology and activities to facilitate the change.
Here are change management tips for successful user adoption:
Executive Support
From the beginning of a project, having a senior leader actively communicating the project’s high-level vision and support is critical for the people in an organisation to understand the need and why for change. Executive support can help bring excitement, provide clarity and reduce resistance.
Change Champion
Nominating ‘Change Champions’ is a key for success to provide enthusiastic support of the project at various levels of the organisation to reinforce positive uptake and build awareness. Champions are typically early adopters and subject matter experts. They work and encourage the people around them.
Training Plan
Change can often be met with resistance when having to learn a new skill/system. Include your training and development team/consultant early on in the project and communicate the training plan with the end-users. It will overcome any nay-sayers by making sure your people know what’s going on, and what they can expect.
Celebrate Early Wins
Celebrating ‘quick wins’ throughout the project help reinforce enthusiasm and support for the initiative. It builds momentum and a positive image for your project.
Sustaining the Change
Creating KPI’s and monitoring adoption/usage is essential for reinforcing the change. These tactics help to ensure the change is embedded and staff do not revert back to the old process/system.
Feedback
Ask for feedback! This is one of the simplest strategies that can provide immense value. Sending out surveys via Microsoft 365 Forms can provide immediate insight to gather feedback such as requests for more training and ideas for improvements.