1. Driving user adoption
A people-first approach for a great
employee experience
Howard Thain, Account Director, CompanyNet
2. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
From Intranet …
•Centralised, one-way
•Communications
‘pushed’
•Passive users
Howard Thain, CompanyNet @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
3. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
•Centralised, one-way
•Communications
‘pushed’
•Passive users
From Intranet … to Digital Workplace
•Decentralised,
two-way
•True communication
and collaboration
•Active users
Howard Thain, CompanyNet @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
4. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
New Ways of Working
???
Document
lifecycle
Yammer
Collaboration
Knowledge
Management
Skype for
Business /
Microsoft Teams
Document
libraries
Communities of
Practice
6. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
• …really??
• Users are people!
• People are intrinsically averse to change
Build it and they will come!
7. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
• …really??
• Users are people!
• People are intrinsically averse to change
• What’s in it for me? (WIIFM)
• People need help to engage with New
Ways of Working
Build it and they will come!
8. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
People Change
Current Transition Future
Technical side
People side
Design
Develop
Deliver
Embrace
Adopt
Use
Successful change requires both sides
9. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
5 Building Blocks for Successful Change
AwarenessA
DesireD
KnowledgeK
AbilityA
ReinforcementR
10. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
AwarenessA
DesireD
KnowledgeK
AbilityA
ReinforcementR
Individual outcomes Individual responsesChange management
Plans & Deliverables
Communications Plan
Sponsor Roadmap
Coaching Plan
Resistance Management
Plan
Training Plan
I understand why…
I have decided to…
I know how to…
I am able to…
I will continue to…
11. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
Practical Application – some Takeaways
1. Plan User Engagement from the outset
12. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
Practical Application – some Takeaways
1. Plan User Engagement from the outset
2. Identify and engage a Senior Business Sponsor
13. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
Practical Application – some Takeaways
1. Plan User Engagement from the outset
2. Identify and engage a Senior Business Sponsor
3. Embrace your Early Adopters
14. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
Practical Application – some Takeaways
1. Plan User Engagement from the outset
2. Identify and engage a Senior Business Sponsor
3. Embrace your Early Adopters
4. Practice Continuous Improvement by default
15. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
Practical Application – some Takeaways
1. Plan User Engagement from the outset
2. Identify and engage a Senior Business Sponsor
3. Embrace your Early Adopters
4. Practice Continuous Improvement by default
5. Use Metrics & Feedback to drive actionable
insights
16. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
Practical Application – some Takeaways
1. Plan User Engagement from the outset
2. Identify and engage a Senior Business Sponsor
3. Embrace your Early Adopters
4. Practice Continuous Improvement by default
5. Use Metrics & Feedback to drive actionable
insights
6. Celebrate Successes!!
17. Howard Thain, CompanyNet @howardthain @CompanyNetLtd#IntranetNow
Thank you
Want to talk more about managing people change?
Come to our Table Talk session this afternoon.
howard.thain@company-net.com
company-net.com kira365.com
Editor's Notes
Thanks Wedge / Lisa.
I’m Howard Thain, Account Director at CompanyNet.
We’re going to spend the next few minutes exploring how we can engage our employees in new ways of working, to promote successful user adoption.
Once upon a time we had the Intranet.
It provided a centralised, one-way push of information to staff.
But the user was a passive participant in the process, frequently in ‘receive mode’, consuming communications and information, but rarely contributing to it.
Now we have the Digital Workplace – and a fundamental shift in the role of the user and their expectations.
Users want to be engaged in communications – for it to be a two-way process; a conversation.
And users want to be able to collaborate with colleagues – sometimes informally (through chat and adhoc conversations); sometimes more formally (through structured content such as documents).
Users are now contributors, actively providing content rather than passively consuming it.
Information Management and Knowledge Management are now completely at the heart of the Digital Workplace as we provide new channels for users to engage with. Tools like Yammer and Microsoft Teams; concepts like co-authoring on documents and complete document lifecycle management which move us away from old-fashioned fileshares.
But these are new ways of working. And our users need our help to engage with them.
It isn’t just a case of switching on workloads and hoping for the best. Users need help and guidance in what to use and when.
We haven’t spoken yet about the role of the IT department in the Digital Workplace.
The conventional wisdom of a ‘build it and they will come’ attitude has repeatedly shown itself to be misguided. The growth of Shadow IT and BYOD provides the clearest evidence of that.
Users turned their backs on what they were given, because they were not consulted in the design. And, as a direct result, the implementation was not well aligned to their needs.
Let’s also not forget that users are people – with all of their brilliance and all of their flaws. And most people are inherently averse to change. The majority will instinctively seek out the path of least resistance, and that usually means carrying on doing what they’ve always done.
So, we need to tap into individual motivators to engage our people with what’s being changed. We need to help them understand the change, and articulate the benefits in language which will resonate with them – to answer the question ‘What’s in it for me?’ And that may mean different things to different people.
We want to provide our users with a rich digital working environment. And we want them to contribute to it, to put it at the heart of their daily workplace experience.
But it’s a two-way street. We need to engage with our people to understand their motivations. And at the same time, we need to give them guidance and a framework to allow them to engage with the environment in a coherent and consistent way.
So how do we do that?
One option is Prosci’s change management framework.
As we move from a current state, through a transition state, and into a future state – the technical delivery of the change needs to be counter-balanced by an effective people change strategy.
We need to consciously and actively embrace our users and their needs from the outset if we are to deliver a solution which is well adopted by them.
One component of Prosci’s methodology is known as ‘ADKAR’.
It provides 5 building blocks for promoting successful people change – Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement.
At an individual level (remember, “what’s in it for me?”) our people change strategy needs to build sequentially towards the 5 change outcomes. [CLICK]
We’ll know when we’ve achieved each by the responses we start to hear from our people.
If we’ve managed our communications effectively to build Awareness, staff will understand why the change is happening.
If we’ve aligned the change to tap into ‘what’s in if for me?’ to build Desire, our people will have decided to get on board with the change, rather than resist it.
If we’ve provided the right level of training to build Knowledge, our people will know how to participate in the change.
If we’ve provided appropriate guidance and support to develop Ability, our people will be able to execute their role in adopting the change.
And if we continue to Reinforce the change, our people will continue to implement the change, rather than falling back into old ways of working. [CLICK]
Prosci provides a range of templates which underpin ADKAR, but let’s shift it back from the theory and into the practical for the last couple of minutes.
First and foremost, make sure that your user engagement is deliberate, authentic and informs any decisions you will make.
Focus on understanding your users within the context of how they actually work.
Tools like surveys are great to understand ways of working and prioritise user needs. Card sort activities can be used to understand users’ ‘mental models’ – how they logically group, organise and seek out information. Tree jack studies and user testing both work well to check assumptions and verify decisions.
Secondly, identify and engage your senior business sponsor early.
They’ll need to be credible and authentic promoters of the new ways of working. So make sure that they’re visibly engaged in practising and promoting the new ways of working which you’re striving to implement.
Third, understand that resistance to change is natural. So identify and engage with your innovators and early adopters from the outset.
They’re likely to be a minority of your people. But build early engagement activities around them. They’ll help you generate positive change momentum and will be internal advocates for persuading more sceptical colleagues to engage with the new ways of working.
Fourth, start small to build momentum, and embed the concept of Continuous Improvement from the start.
Consider early pilot activities, and iterate towards a Minimum Viable Product. Consider a limited Soft Launch for your MVP, and then refine your Digital Workplace further before you release to your wider staff. Look at every stage as an opportunity to engage with your user community.
Fifth, take user feedback and evaluate it at every stage.
Once you have launched, look beyond the conventional ‘hard’ usage metrics – consider things like user sentiment analysis for a gauge on how your users are feeling.
Think about services like Yammer to set up a self-supporting users’ community. That too will generate insights which you can act upon as you look to continuously improve the solution.
Finally, everyone likes to be associated with successes. And implementing new ways of working provides endless opportunities to celebrate them.
It might be a whole organisation recognising that tools like Yammer can actually promote cross-departmental collaboration to remove organisational silos.
Or it might be as small as a single person blown away by the possibilities of multi-author document collaboration.
Either way, identify the successes and share them with your users.
Thank you for coming to see this session. I hope you’ve found it useful. Please do come along to one of our Table Talks this afternoon, or drop by our stand for a chat.