Learning and Development: LMS for Change Management
Wisetail | 5 min read
Change is a constant in today’s business environment, but not all change is welcome, routine, or easily managed. It may be inevitable, but preparing for ongoing change is all about your company’s commitment to open communication and continuous learning.
Continuous change
Whether change is perceived as a welcome catalyst for innovation or a monumental obstacle, the business world is learning to accept it as a constant. It might be more comfortable to work in a static, unchanging environment, but limiting change can stagnate innovation.
Digital transformation is both inevitable and essential to future growth and development. Avoiding change — by, for instance, failing to keep up with technology — can cause your business to fall behind — and a few steps lost today could mean a major overhaul down the line.
Get change ready
Begin by evaluating your organization’s change readiness. Look closely at past change management efforts. Review what your company did well and how stakeholders responded to the challenges of workplace transition. How were policies, procedures, and work responsibilities rearranged? Did the results match up with company goals and expectations? Are there new strategies to consider for guiding your business through continuous, occasionally chaotic, change?
Strategizing for change is not as simple as outlining a series of steps. A change management framework is useful, but any plan involving people needs to be flexible, versatile, agile, adaptive, and conducive to continuous, sustained cycles of reassessment and improvement.
Even the best-laid plans are susceptible to disruption. You can’t predict and prepare for everything, but your change management strategy can be designed to respond to the unexpected and adjust accordingly.
Successful change management requires preparation and planning on several fronts. Focus on:
- Creating clear, measurable goals. Clearly defined goals and progress metrics are a strategic starting point. Invite stakeholders to offer input, and consider their feedback when shaping measurable goals.
- Addressing resistance with engagement. Change is disruptive, and poor change management causes employees to react to the disruption instead of responding to the results. Get everyone engaged with clear and frequent communication. Be transparent about the reasons for change, and emphasize benefits for employees and your business.
- Securing leadership support. Successful change management requires commitment from team leaders. Create consistent messaging about the growth value of innovation and improvement. Remind leaders of the need for employee buy-in at every level, and offer them the tools and support they need to create more collaboration within their teams.
- Adopting L&D technology. Change nearly always involves learning and skill development. While lectures and employee manuals offer single-use solutions, they don’t scale easily. Digital L&D platforms — such as a learning management system (LMS) or learning experience platform (LXP) — allow for custom training modules and quick updates.
Providing agility training. Organizational agility is the ability of your entire company to react quickly to change. Agility is a learned skill, and it works best in combination with a flexible, strategic plan. Offer continuous learning and improvement opportunities to establish a company culture in which learning is a consistent part of working life. When L&D is always available, change is simply another opportunity to learn.
Choose your tools
Your change management plan is incomplete without a complementary learning and development strategy. Training is essential to successful change. An LMS or LXP provides effective, dynamic, and versatile L&D tools for efficient change management. Choose a platform with user-friendly features for:
- Custom and curated learning content.
- Brand building and customer support.
- Tracking, reporting, and advanced data analytics.
- Centralized communication and engagement.
Use L&D technology and continuous improvement initiatives to support comprehensive and complete change management.
Read more about agility and learning strategies for continuous change management in Wisetail’s white paper, Creating an Agile Organizational Learning Culture in Economic Uncertainty.
