Overcoming Barriers to Employee Buy-in

June 29, 2016

Category: General

Employee engagement is critical to business success.  A study by The Conference Board in 2006 showed that engaged employees outperform disengaged employees by 20-28%. Engaged employees are more productive and have far fewer absences per year, and an engaged workforce experiences less turnover and churn. A 2008 study by Towers Perrin found that organizations with engaged employees showed a 19% increase in operating income over a 12-month period. Clearly, having a motivated and inspired work force is not just good for employee morale, it’s good for your bottom line.  

Never is there a more important time for employee engagement than when there are changes to your operations. You can make all of the plans you want, but if your employees aren’t motivated to follow through from a practical standpoint, little will be accomplished. Whether they are big changes such as an evolving strategic plan or small changes such as switching to electronic faxing, you must work to obtain employee buy-in and get employees aligned with your vision.  

We’ve seen this many times:  The management team will be extremely excited about the opportunities our software present to the company and then be really surprised to experience pushback from the front lines. It’s so clear to the executives that the software is going to improve the lives and productivity of their employees, and they can’t understand why employees would hesitate. But resistance to change is a powerful force to be reckoned with.

When you’re implementing a new software program – especially one that will change the daily lives of your staff – you need to be prepared and proactive about employee buy-in.  Properly engaging your staff will help ensure a smooth implementation and long-lasting, positive change.

Here are the three most common reasons why employees are resistant to change, and our recommendations of how to handle them.

1. Authoritarian Approach. Springing a change onto an employee – making a grand announcement that comes seemingly out of the blue about how things will be done from now on - will cause defenses to spring up and skepticism to set in. If you want employees to be engaged on the back end of a strategic shift, you need to have them engaged throughout the entire process.
   Now, this doesn’t mean that you have to take a majority vote when selecting a software provider, but it does mean letting them know that you are investigating change and soliciting their input where appropriate.  Your employees have expertise that they want to share, and soliciting feedback will help them feel like they have skin in the game. Even if you don’t take their suggestion, just being heard can be meaningful. Involving your employees and keeping them updated with progress reports will be a good reminder that you value them. And, you never know how their feedback may actually change your own perceptions and affect the decision of which supplier you want to select.
    
2. Lack of Understanding. Few organizational changes happen in a vacuum. Sometimes a change on its surface may seem counterproductive, but when placed in the context of the overall business or industry environment it makes a lot of sense. You need to connect the dots for your employees about why this change is happening and what you hope to accomplish. Paint a vision of what the new and improved operation will be like.
    
3. Fear. Change can be scary. Ultimately, no employee comes to work every day out of the goodness of his/her heart – they are there for their own benefit and livelihood. When people perceive that to be precarious they can have an adverse reaction. Uncertainty is unsettling and the status quo is familiar and comfortable. If this is the case, the best thing to do is to spend time with your teams and explain how change is going to affect them and how it will benefit them. Explaining the WIIFM (What’s in it for me?) of the proposed change can be incredibly powerful to disarm resistant employees. Once you break down the changes into how it will impact them directly and reassure them along the way, the fear will dissipate.

Change management is an important part of any kind of organizational evolution and employee engagement is the most critical component. For your enthusiasm for a new project or program to catch on to your entire team, you need to spend the time to listen to them, explain your reasoning and coach them through the process. 

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