The Importance of the Human Factor
When it comes to technology, change initially seems limited to configuring a new tool and implementing its features. However, configuring a tool and training its users does not necessarily mean it will be used properly!
Supporting change means getting teams to buy into the project of adopting the new tool. This requires a culture of change that places users at the center and a transformation process that keeps sustainable adoption of the new tool in sight. Concretely, how do Althéa’s teams support organizations and their teams?
Impact Assessment
In the initial design phase of the solution, the change management team focuses on the actual accessibility of the solution for its future users:
- Intuitiveness of the new solution,
- Integration into the work environment (physical and/or digital)
- Integration into an overall change landscape consisting of all ongoing projects to which future users will be exposed.
- Analysis of the impacts of the planned evolution on employee practices:
- Favorable changes (automation of low-value tasks, improved UX, functional introduction…)
- Unfavorable changes (functional loss, reinforcement of certain controls slowing down the process, new process steps, reduction of decision-making autonomy…)
These analyses are necessarily conducted at the “micro” level because certain teams/certain individuals will gain from the change, while others will lose. And it is also common for certain users to experience both situations simultaneously during the transformation.
Personas and the Change Management Plan
This in-depth analysis phase allows us to determine Personas (archetypal profiles of application usage) and assign to each of them a quantified view of the efforts they will need to make to fully and confidently embrace the new solution.
From there, we are able to define for each Persona:
- The information they need to act confidently at the time of transition (neither too much nor too little),
- The specific skills or concepts, given their actual role, that they will need to quickly regain their ease in their new work environment,
- All the means to be implemented to support the sustainable adoption journey of the solution (support, user documentation, feedback on change requests)
Based on this information, the change management team develops a concrete Change Management Plan with measurable effects, aligned with the core activities of the deployment project.
Althéa to support you
Althéa is a management consulting firm with over 250 consultants offering triple expertise: consulting methodology, IS solutions, and business processes.
In 2023, we achieved €28 million in revenue.
We support our clients in their transformation projects across HR, Finance, Procurement, and Supply Chain, from defining the transformation roadmap to the operational deployment of projects.
Given these challenges, Althéa can support you—indeed, we have an offering dedicated to Change Management
To learn more: https://althea-groupe.com/expertises/conduite-du-changement-rh/
