GUIDELINE

Change Management
Specific Initiatives
for HR Managers

01 How to support … employees?............................... Page 4

02 How to support … management?.......................... Page 9
03 Checklist for managers........................................... Page 11
04 Things HR should avoid.......................................... Page 16
“ HR managers have essentially become change managers
in the past decade. They help drive innovation

”
and adaptation and are key if successful companies
are to remain competitive and continue to create value.

BARBARA BRAEHMER

Further reading: Barbara Brähmer, Leipziger HRM Blog

01. How to support … employees?

“They don’t want that, they can’t do that.”

It is very common to hear people (or HR) say that employees are scared of
change. But that is not true. People are prepared to change if they understand
the necessity of change and their contribution to it.

What is important for employees is a sense of

coherence, which requires change to be:

• meaningful
• comprehensible and
• manageable

An organization needs to explain to its employees why it engages in change

(meaningfulness). Employees must understand that the organization’s future,
and with it the employee’s future, can only be secured if the change is made. If
change is to be comprehensible and manageable, employees also need to know
which external factors play a role, over which timeframe the change will occur
and, above all, what the employee can do to support the change and what they
can expect. These answers need to be supplied by HR and management.

01. How to support … employees? 4

What can HR Strengthen trust and confidence.
“We have the right people to get the job done.”

specifically This is the attitude HR managers need to have and convey when-
ever there is change ahead. The more diverse viewpoints the HR

do to encourage department collects, the better it will be able to deal with change.
Offer your employees a range of training and learning formats to

a willingness to support their development and ability to handle new tasks.

change?
Promote diversity.
HR should encourage the formation of teams that are heteroge-
neous in terms of gender, age, personality (extroverts and
introverts), etc. and eliminate peer pressure in the process
(for example by HR acting as a moderator).

01. How to support … employees? 5

Promote employee networks.
Use BarCamps, for example, where a topic is set that every
participant may then present on. This encourages dialogue
and promotes collaborative outcomes. Plan workshops where
“People tend to do more
both employees AND managers discuss the chosen strategy of the same when they
and the competences it will require.
are under pressure.”
Support mindfulness.
DAGMAR DÖRNER
“If you start lots of change initiatives, you create pressure.
And people tend to do more of the same when they are
under pressure” (Dagmar Dörner). The goal should therefore
be to specifically help employees specifically to step away
from their everyday operative tasks, for example during
full-day workshops or through mindfulness initiatives.

01. How to support … employees? 6

 Collect feedback.
Introduce real-time feedback to quickly establish how communi-
cation or other strategies are accepted, if at all. Optimize as neces-
sary within a timeframe of days rather than weeks. Feedback can
be collected via various apps, Slack or tools such as waggl.com.

Measure.
You only know if activities are successful if you measure them.
Surveys are one of several options for measuring the success of
change initiatives. Surveys (for example weekly sentiment surveys)
can elicit whether change is perceived and implemented similarly
across all departments, or whether some managers are better
than others in supporting their employees in times of change. This
enables you to make adjustments along the way. Also, if things do
not go according to plan, surveys can provide you with arguments
and justification you can communicate to your superiors.

No force.
Regardless of the change initiative concerned, HR should always
consider whether measures are voluntary or how it can be estab-
lished whether employees accept changes readily. You could, for
example, measure how many employees participate in a voluntary
event or survey.

“HR must have the courage

to look bad at times.”
DAGMAR DÖRNER 01. How to support … employees? 7
 Stages of
Change
Insight
Integration

Surprise Trial and

learning
Surprise

Emotional
Shock Shock acceptance

Rejection Rational acceptance

Rejection

01 HOW IT WORKS
(REALITY) 02 HOW IT SHOULD WORK
(BEST CASE)

01. How to support … employees? 8

02. How to support … management
While you in HR support and monitor change, management has responsibility for
change projects. This is something you should (A) internalize and (B) communicate,
namely to management. Your task is to mediate and coach, and this is the role you
should define for yourself. Otherwise you might be blamed for things that lie out-
side your influence.

01
Reward change.
Encourage management to set fewer rules (for example in the form of a code
of conduct) and to reward changed behaviour instead. If you want to overcome
a silo mentality, for example, you should define goals that give employees good
reason to cooperate across departments. In this case, you would set goals
across departments rather than for each department individually. The same
applies to teamwork. If you want to encourage more teamwork, you need to
base assessments on teams rather than individual employees achieving targets
such as OKRs (objective key results).

02
Create a culture of failure.
While everybody talks about this, HR is in a position to implement such
a culture pragmatically. Instead of suggesting approaches for process
improvements (templates, scenario calculations etc.), ask your management
what sort of a framework you are providing.
And offer alternatives such as having regular, open Friday meetings where
everybody is invited to contribute and discuss ideas.

02. How to support … management 9

03
Communicate early on.
Promote early and personal communication. Contrary to what
management frequently suggests, change should never be
announced by email.

04
Collaboration.
Sit down together with your internal communications team to
formulate messages. Have HR ensure that employee concerns are
addressed. At the same time, HR should not be the ones who step up
in front of employees and announce change.
That is not your job – it is the job of management. HR acts as feelers for employees’
needs (in that you elicit these), as
mediators (by addressing needs) and
enablers (by providing the various

05
Set aside resources. stakeholders with the necessary tools
HR should take on a coaching function and request that manage- for change).
ment make time for change, for example a full day per week, and And, naturally, you also need to look
approach the task with foresight and planning by setting milestones after your own needs by stating clearly
and reviewing progress on a weekly basis, for example at regular what you are able to do and what you
meetings. This minimizes the risk of you becoming overwhelmed by are not.
change or employees disengaging from their work (mental
resignation). In addition, you protect yourself personally in your
relationship with your executive team.

02. How to support … management 10

3. Checklist for managers

Decision-makers often believe that change should be managed externally or by a task force. But this
is a risky strategy, as change can only be successful if everybody works towards the same goals.
Everybody. And because managers act as role models, they should know precisely which steps
need to be taken.

Provide managers with a plan such as the one below (which is addressed to managers directly).
Management should follow these steps:

“HR managers sometimes

Eva Stock has many years of experience in HR and blogs
need to challenge views”
about HR matters at: hrisnotacrime
EVA STOCK

03. Checklist for managers 11

01 Make a business case.
Where would you like to take your company, where do you currently stand, what means are available to you and
what obstacles stand in your way? A business case is essential and needs to be supported by facts and figures.
Discuss it with others to test its feasibility.

02 Build a coalition of decision-makers.

You will need to engage not only HR and colleagues from your communications team, but also “middle-of-the-road”
employees. The more diverse the coalition is, the better, as integrating a wide range of perspectives makes it more
likely that your case will be realistic.

03 Involve stakeholders.
(Employees, investors, partners, etc.). Stakeholder management with good coordination is another essential
aspect, otherwise you might create a mess. Assign moderator and decision-maker roles for reporting to the
executive.HR managers can support the process by mediating between the various stakeholder levels.

04 Ensure timely, targeted communications.

Managers need to be informed earlier than student interns, and they need different kinds of information. This is
no “one size fits all” situation. Get support from your communications team and from HR, who work closely with
employees and are able to assist in formulating messages.

05
Ensure implementation.
You will need people within the company to implement initiatives. These may be in HR to initiate workshops, for
example, or in your legal team to draft contracts. It is important to include this in your overall plan to ensure that
all steps are implemented in sequence, as initiatives are often interdependent (if you relocate your company, you
can, for example, only form teams once you know who will stay).

03. Checklist for managers 12

06 Measure and fine-tune.
Make sure you know in advance how success will be measured. This may take various forms, for example X
employees move with the company; Y employees leave; department X successfully implements a new IT
system; department Y transitions to working fully remotely, etc. Ideally, you will have defined intermediate
goals and measurements so you can make adjustments as required.

07 Evaluate.
This means that you not only verify the extent to which goals have been reached but also assess the mood
among your employees. This is where HR comes in. HR can conduct feedback meetings to find out how the
company’s changed course is being received by employees and what obstacles still lie ahead. This information
is then reported to the executive. It is also important to evaluate the collaboration between change agents or
within the change taskforce. This provides important information for the next change, which is bound to come.

13
Successful Scenario
An example: Company X wishes to reorganize its structure and move from team

Stakeholder leaders to department heads. It intends to introduce an additional level in the pro-
cess: an Engagement Manager who leads together with the technical manager but

Management in focuses on figures and people. So far so good. You, on behalf of the company’s
employees, request that a clear reporting line should be defined, as your experience

Times of Change has shown that misunderstandings easily arise where this is not the case. The man-
agement does not agree, creating an impasse.

You then suggest involving an organizational coach and a workshop with employees
to shed light on their perspective. A decision can then be made on this basis.
This weighing of options, understanding of both sides and development of potential
solutions is precisely the job of HR during change projects. This is not an easy task,
as you will need to fight for resources (for example workshops) and may need to
challenge others’ views.

03. Checklist for managers 14

 Recruit Change
Agents
Internally

Encourage employees to become change agents.

Some may already be qualified because they have relevant training
or experience. For others, you can offer training events that
employees can apply for. Such events can be organized via an
external service provider or institutes such as Quadriga. This
motivates employees to do further training, and their expanded
expertise in turn benefits the organization.

Change agents can then organize team, introductory or welcome

events in collaboration with you or other departments such as
Communications, as required. This prevents new employees
feeling or being perceived as intruders, for example in the case of
acquisitions.

03. Checklist for managers 15

04. Things HR should avoid

Talking too much about change.

Doing, not preaching, is what change is about. Try things out rather than say
that it is important to “engage people”. Take the example of OKRs: You could
write a plan about rolling out OKRs, that you need to implement a mindset
shift to do so etc. – or you could talk to an executive and ask whether they are
prepared to trial OKRs for three to six months. And then you measure how it
worked compared to the old system. In the best case, you will arouse curiosity,
and others will also want to try.

Setting specific targets for mundane tasks.

“Management meetings should be conducted in a quiet environment…”
Don’t go there. Trust your colleagues.

Gap analyses.
Take your employees’ current situation as your starting point and act accord-
ingly. Look at Amazon, for example: If there is a problem with parcel delivery,
provide for parcel pick-up from petrol stations. In HR terms, this means looking
at questions such as, how often is a questionnaire being downloaded? Do I need
to make adjustments? It is all about user focus, not about best-case scenarios.

Focusing excessively on executives.

Make sure you represent the interests of all employees. For example, test
employee responses to the introduction of a new tool. Take employee feedback
seriously and pass it on to management with the same level of seriousness.

04. Things HR should avoid 16

Core points:
You are actively involved in shaping change, but responsibility remains with management.
• Tell management what the HR department is NOT there for.
• You need allies, not only in management.
• Ask employees how they are doing and what they need. Again and again.
• Deeds, not words. And fine-tuning.

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