Organizational Change Management (OCM) Meets Workforce Management: A Guide

As businesses and enterprises contend with the constant drive for technological innovation, economic turmoil from geopolitical tensions, and multiple generations working side by side in the workforce, no one would argue that this era is characterized as one of “maximum change and unpredictability.“  Similarly, few would challenge the notion that this operating landscape brings challenges and opportunities, with the latter being enjoyed by those businesses that excel in one competency area in particular: managing change or the domain commonly known as Organizational Change Management (OCM). 

Why OCM is Vital for Large Enterprises

A recent Boston Consulting Group study revealed that during the past two decades, only 26% of corporate transformations successfully created value in both the short and long terms. Then, we have the oft-cited McKinsey findings that only 30% of organizational change initiatives are considered highly successful afterward.   

Effective change management is even more vital when more stakeholders (e.g., employees, managers, HR and Ops staff, and external partners) are involved or impacted. This is certainly the case in all deployments of new technology that touches or is used by many or mostly everyone in an organization. This includes core HR and Human Capital Management (HCM) technology platforms for automating the hire-to-retire employee lifecycle and enhancing the employee experience throughout.   

It also deeply applies to systems for enabling and automating Workforce Management (WFM) functions impacting the journey and everyday experience of hourly paid workers. These are classic examples of technology used by the masses within a business where OCM is most relevant.  

These are just a few of the benefits an effective OCM strategy has for large enterprises:  

• Promotes successful adoption of new workforce management technology  
• Minimizes operational disruptions  
• Strengthens employee engagement  
• Enables continuous improvement  
• Improves organizational agility  

Understanding OCM 

Very fortunately, at the beginning of my now 40-year career of operating on all sides of HR, HCM, and HR Technology I reported to CHRO’s in Fortune 500 companies wanted the person leading major HR Tech initiatives to be very conversational in OCM and serve as an OCM expert within the organization. This set the stage for me to become a voracious reader and learner of anything that was even modestly OCM-relevant.   

There is no shortage of change management literature, for example Kurt Lewin’s Model of Change Theory, Dr. John Kotter’s “Leading Change,” or Dr. Spencer Johnson’s “Who Moved My Cheese.” And there are many others that generally all share these common steps/stages:

^Source

In the interest of making this guide easier to consume, here are two approaches or frameworks that worked quite well across five companies—U.S. and Europe—as my various teams and I were charged with leading the rollouts of many HR tech solutions on a global scale. They’ve worked, given the natural resistance to change that typically occurs.    

These are two examples of the best change management strategies I have personally experienced and leveraged that led to successful enterprise transformations: 

1. View OCM as having two bookends — the frontend being the assessment of readiness for change and the backend of the process should emphasize “sustaining the change.”  

I’ll add, regarding assessing readiness for organizational change (whether changes in people, process, or technology), that the obvious factors or considerations usually relate to the following:  

• The skills and resourcing level needed  
• Training around skills gaps, and just as critical 
• Degree of support for the change across all relevant stakeholders—direct or indirect, (i.e., influencers)

In my experience, a less obvious but equally important factor is the timing of the change program or event in relation to other things going on in the organization or even external to the organization that might serve as distractions to desired progress.

2. We also used an OCM framework developed and evangelized to this day by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) called the “Ready, Willing and Able” model.

• Ready refers to people understanding why the change was viewed as necessary  
• Willing refers to the state of being personally supportive of the change; and finally 
• Able is the optimal situation of having individuals believe they will play a vital role once the changes are enacted 

OCM in HCM and WFM Tech Deployments

Managing new Workforce Management technology adoption to automate and integrate processes or activities around workforce scheduling, forecasting, time and attendance, and absence management absolutely requires effective OCM to ensure desired outcomes are achieved. Logically, it all starts with adopting new processes, tools, or systems. This means having stakeholders actively participate and become champions for the new operating model’s tools and processes.   

Individuals are much more apt to get involved when they see personal benefit, versus using something new or participating because of a company mandate. The best way to avoid major operational disruptions is to ensure a successful OCM program when widely implementing cloud and/or mobile-based enterprise systems like new WFM technology gets implemented, and data feeds to/from (or integrations with) other enterprise systems are foundational to the rollout.   

The last things any business needs are to have employees not paid correctly due to improper recording of hours worked, not have their work schedules or availability visible to their management, or for the business to not have appropriately skilled and deployed workers on a key day such as the opening day of a new retail store or manufacturing plant. These are all typical use cases involving integrations with WFM systems or direct use of the same. Furthermore, any of these issues will likely cause downstream issues in employee engagement, retention, and productivity and potentially adversely affect the employer brand, thereby impeding the ability to hire the best talent available. It’s hard to overstate the importance of that consideration. 

5 OCM strategies I have employed 

Here are five OCM tactics I’d recommend because they served my teams and employers quite well:

1. Acknowledge all feedback, even commonly perceived negative aspects of the change and address them by framing in the context of the net benefits of the change. Re-organizations, job changes, as well as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are the three most common changes that cause anxiety about job security. When that manifests in discussions or behavior, it should be acknowledged rather than minimized. Leadership should reiterate the benefits of the change for both employees and the enterprise.  
2. Prioritize and emphasize dependencies as much as desired outcomes. As we’ve seen across decades of prominent industry research on business transformations, inadequate attention to dependencies, such as effectively communicating the “why,” ensuring the right skills to execute, or the involvement of change conduits and champions will impede outcomes. 
3. Create and celebrate short term wins as each helps sustain the change team’s effort and momentum. This is simply because most material change efforts take many months or longer, and the team shouldn’t have to wait to the end to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. 
4. Trust employees to be a part of the process rather than just at the receiving end. Employees, often the constituency impacted the most by change, should ideally view themselves as key architects of the change program even if they are not on the change team. 
5. Filter through the “must-dos” as an ongoing critical activity during the OCM program. It is typical to discover tasks and activities that are needed but that didn’t surface during the planning phase. This can easily stretch out timelines, so one way to offset delays is to ensure a collective mindset of prioritization. 

Real-World Examples from WorkForce Software’s VISION 2024 Conference 

Two of the many impressive customer stories I heard at WorkForce Software’s recent customer event involved major global brands Sun Chemical and Novartis.   

In 2020, Sun Chemical set out to streamline and unify its global workforce management processes, targeting a seamless, optimized experience amidst the challenges of acquisitions and a global pandemic. Partnering with Accenture, using WorkForce Software’s technology platform, and focusing the workforce management system’s use on the international compliance aspects of OCM, they successfully navigated hurdles and created a more efficient, cohesive, global workforce model.  

The Global Head of Time Service Delivery at Novartis shared the company’s vision for the future as context for their focused and prioritized Organizational Change Management work. It centered around technology automation to prepare the workforce for upcoming challenges, particularly in production plants. They were looking to enrich the entire journey of their associates, including empowering them by using tech from WorkForce Software to easily do things like shift substitutions from their mobile devices. 

OCM Benefits Realized 

The benefits of a productive and engaged workforce are well chronicled, as are the benefits of leveraging a proven OCM approach as operationalized in a well–communicated and reinforced program. The need to avoid operational disruptions is just as critical given their potential, if not likely, impact on customers, e.g., revenue, and profits. WFM tech platforms such as the one offered by Workforce Software achieve both these business imperatives by helping organizations build around flexible scheduling, accurate payroll processing and compliance assurance.

Suggested reading:

• Change Management Insight: “The Neuroscience of Change Management 
• ASHP: Ten Key Frameworks for Effective Change Management 
• Forbes: Most Change Initiatives Fail — Here’s How to Beat the Odds 

The Author: