Implement Change Management
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Define change management.
- List essential elements of change management.
- Explain the benefits of a “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM) approach.
The People Behind the Project
Every team is affected by change during an ecommerce implementation or the launch of new initiatives. Ecommerce doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and people want to know how their day-to-day roles and responsibilities will change before, during, and after the launch.
It’s important to understand how each team is impacted and anticipate resistance—even before your launch. Planning early for change management helps you minimize risk, boost productivity, and get valued employees on board.
What Is Change Management and Why Is It Important?
For every major project that a business initiates, change management is the framework that helps prepare, support, and equip employees to succeed with the inevitable change.
Without proper change management, ambiguity can lead to low employee morale. This, in turn, results in both direct and indirect costs to an organization: declining productivity and efficiency, turnover of valued employees, and lost revenue.
So what are the key considerations when it comes to ecommerce change management? For starters, it’s important to get employee buy-in. Here’s how to do it.
Tap into Personal and Social Motivators with a “What’s in It for Me?” Approach
When it comes to getting teams on board with your new ecommerce initiative, it’s important to answer one single question for every employee: “What’s in it for me?” (also known as WIIFM). Ecommerce implementations affect every individual, so focusing on the unique ways each team and person benefits from the launch helps motivate and drive successful change.
The WIIFM approach should be the backbone of your change management strategy and the center of your communication with employees. In fact, employee needs and benefits should be one of the first things you consider—well before your build or launch.
During your discovery phase, meet with key stakeholders on different teams (sales, service, merchandising, marketing, and so on) to determine their priorities and wishlists. Do service agents want a more holistic view of customers and more intuitive tools? Would your merchandising team benefit from AI? Take note of their requests and refer back to these points in subsequent phases. This helps demonstrate that leadership is listening and ensures that teams know the new ecommerce experiences benefit both customers and employees.
Now that you have the backbone of your strategy, let’s dive into a few other key elements of ecommerce change management.
Essential Elements of a Successful Change Management Strategy
Define Your Change Strategy
First thing’s first: You need to outline your change strategy from the get-go. Planning your approach helps you stay on course and anticipate any bumps in the road. During this stage of the process, it’s crucial to envision how people will think, feel, act, or speak about your upcoming ecommerce initiative. A successful change strategy includes:
- Forecasting how front-end employees will react
- Planning how you’ll approach and mitigate resistance
- Defining clear criteria for successful change
For example, one common concern for sales reps during an ecommerce launch is the idea that online channels will displace their team. To address these concerns early and ease your sales reps’ minds, you can schedule discussions around how ecommerce can help them become more strategic partners, make their day-to-day work more enjoyable, and automate their more mundane tasks.
Build a Change Management Team
This team is critical to your ecommerce success, so you want the right people to help drive change. Choose a team based on their communication skills, flexibility, and experience with change management. Here are the key roles to fill.
- Change manager/coordinators: Supervise and coordinate the change process on both the consumer-facing and employee-facing side.
- Project managers: Responsible for coordinating the process, holding team members accountable, and helping to determine timelines for specific tasks.
- People managers: Support employees and communicate key messages directly to their teams. They also manage resistance and serve as liaisons between their direct reports and the project team.
Create a Communication Plan
We’ve all heard it before: “Communication is key.” That’s especially true when it comes to organizational change. Morale and productivity hinge on the clear communication of your ecommerce vision and giving employees critical updates to keep them in the loop.
To do this, develop a strategic vision that describes the purpose of your new ecommerce initiative along with the risks of not implementing it. To make your vision more concrete, explain what this change means for specific roles and people.
Coach and Train Change Agents
Coaching is a top-down approach to change. It works best when you aim to drive change in your managers, who in turn inspire change in their teams. Managers wear many hats when it comes to new ecommerce implementations. On any given day, they act as liaisons between employees and leadership, are the voice of your communication strategy, and advocate for their teams. They are also on the front lines managing any resistance.
To prepare managers for the task at hand, create role- and team-specific training materials. Make it as easy as possible for managers to demonstrate the importance of the new ecommerce experience you’re building. Hold training sessions to ensure that managers can explain to their teams precisely how the change will affect each employee individually.
Collect and Analyze Feedback
The most critical part of a manager’s job? Collecting honest feedback from employees and delivering it to leaders. Managers are your eyes and ears, and creating a feedback loop with everyone involved keeps morale strong, increases efficiency, and helps you build a better product.
To do this, you need to define program success metrics and ask for feedback in a systematic way (for example, in monthly emails). Evaluate effectiveness continuously and keep in mind that you’ll likely need to revise your approach more than once.
Ready to Make a Change?
Now that you’ve explored the key elements of change management, test your knowledge! Take the final quiz to earn an awesome badge, then get started with change management at your organization. We can’t wait to hear about your success.