Our top 7 tips to bring your people on your journey
Many businesses are looking to technology to help them achieve better operational efficiencies and engage with customers in more targeted ways. Business automation can be a very effective means of improving your business processes and seeing where new technology (or tweaking your existing ones) can result in better performance.
Make no mistake: many of your people will be excited about finding workplace efficiencies (or have the potential to get there). After all, getting the right technology and processes in place means they could spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on other things.
But business automation can still make many people nervous. That’s pretty normal. Any change to the status quo is likely to unsettle some who might be wondering: what does it mean for me?
There are a number of things you can do to maximise your chances of bringing your people with you.
Here they are: our tips to bring your people on your business automation journey
- Be clear and open from the outset. If you’re looking at ways to introduce business automation, don’t do it behind closed doors. Let your people know as early as possible and give them clear reasons for your actions.
- Make sure your people understand why you’re doing it. The case for change should be an open and honest discussion. Why are we doing this? Why now? What does it mean for our people, our customers, our suppliers? What are the consequences if we do nothing? Where possible, talk about live examples to illustrate, either from within the business or from somewhere else.
- Focus on the positives, but be open about some of the perceived negative consequences. The key here is honesty.
- Involve your people in the project. They know their roles better than anyone else in the business, including the steps they take to do their work, what their biggest frustrations are and where there is scope for improvement.
- Communicate often. Without regular updates, people will start making up stories for themselves. That rarely ends well.
- Make yourself available to talk to anyone who might have concerns. No exceptions.
- Give your project a timeframe and do everything possible to keep it on track. Many people will interpret delays as bad news and will start worrying. If delays are unavoidable, communicate why – don’t just let it drag out and hope people won’t notice. They will.
Bring it all together through your project manager
If introducing business automation is high-stakes for your business (and very often it is), choosing the right project manager is essential. The project manager should be someone who can navigate your business and technologies available, but make sure they give enough consideration to the people elements of the project as well.
The project manager could be from within the business if you have someone with the right skillset and capacity to make the project a success. If not, an external project manager might be worth considering. We’d be happy to help you explore your options, please just let us know.
Positive engagement with your people is critical to the success of any project. But business automation can get personal and these tips will hopefully help.
How can we help you?
Carnac Group advises clients on ways businesses can embrace automation and process optimisation to enhance performance and improve the customer experience. If you’d like some help on how to tackle this in your business, please get in touch, we’d love to help.
or email info@carnacgroup.com