Change can often be viewed as discomfort by some people. Therefore, it can prove beneficial for change managers to adopt a researcher’s attitude and try to understand the employees who will be the users of the new solution. An essential part of this research is understanding the experience these users go through while interacting with the current systems or processes. Having a clear understanding of the user experience can not only make the adoption phase faster and smoother but also ensures sustainability. Let’s understand a little more about the benefits of UX in change management and how it can be used to ensure the success of your change plan.
How does UX impact Change Management?
As a change practitioner, when you make any changes in the organization, whether it’s at the individual level or at the process level, there will be an impact on the workforce. Unless you gain an understanding of not just the impact but how the workforce is going to live through that impact, and what their experience is going to be. A deep understanding of people’s mindsets can enable you to put in place proper tactics and strategies to ensure that change adoption is as smooth as possible for them. Therefore, it is critical to pay attention to the user experience to make sure that the user transitioning sees the change as a development instead of as a challenge or a threat to their existence in the organization.
How to incorporate UX into your Change plan?
There are various tactics to include user experience in your change plan like stakeholder interviews, change impact assessment, identifying personas, etc. These are all ways to be able to kind of segregate these different groups of people and understand their different experiences. User experience also acts as a vessel for communicating the change. Engaging end-users early not only improves the discovery and the design of the solution but also acts as a way to communicate that change is happening.
How can a positive user experience help avoid resistance from individuals undergoing changes?
The question is how we get them to have a positive experience. It is essential to study and understand each persona carefully as every different persona has different needs. For instance, someone in accounting versus someone in human resources, are all going to different interactions with the change. So, it is critical that change managers understand that each persona or group of people could expect a different user experience. And then once you understand the user experience, find answers to questions like, how are they working today? What would the change be bringing in? How is that going to impact them? What’s their experience today? When they come into the office, and then what’s going to be their experience tomorrow when the change is made? These are the assessments from the user experience standpoint that help change managers ascertain a user-friendly experience for the employees undergoing the change.
Involving end users in the change early on in the project can give them an opportunity to voice their opinions, goals, and vision for the system and generate user awareness, and a sense of inclusion which leads to a desire to change. This approach can certainly increase acceptance where changes are considered the new normal by the employees and the business can actually start benefiting from the transformation project.
