(Digital) Wind of Change — Changes in the workplace

“The only constant in life is change”

Peo­ple have to keep chang­ing to keep up with fast-paced dig­i­tal change. Nowa­days em­ploy­ees are ex­pect­ed to be flex­i­ble, mas­ter sev­er­al roles and per­form to the high­est stan­dard. The dig­i­tal change al­so de­mands brand new skills from the man­agers them­selves. Ef­fi­cien­cy used to be one of the most im­por­tant val­ues in com­pa­nies. In the mod­ern world, a company’s abil­i­ty to be in­no­v­a­tive is the main fo­cus. If they don’t con­sid­er this change, the com­pe­ti­tion will wipe them out, it’s as sim­ple as that.

How are our workplaces actually changing?

The shar­ing econ­o­my prin­ci­ple, or shar­ing ser­vices like the Airbnb mod­el, is mak­ing its way back in­to the work­ing world, mean­ing on-call work more will be­come more im­por­tant in the fu­ture. Work­ing with Re­search NOW, con­sul­tan­cy firm De­loitte dis­cov­ered that 25% of the Swiss work­ing pop­u­la­tion took on project-based, tem­po­rary or ad­di­tion­al work. Fur­ther­more, new work­ing mod­els such as cowork­ing and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of flex­i­ble work­places bring sev­er­al ad­van­tages. A flex­i­ble work­ing en­vi­ron­ment in­creas­es pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and em­ploy­ee sat­is­fac­tion be­cause it pro­vides a bet­ter work-life bal­ance. The com­mute is al­so re­duced, which there­fore re­lieves trans­port net­works. Com­pa­nies can econ­o­mize their in­fra­struc­ture, and space can be used in the best pos­si­ble way as a re­sult.

Managing change in the workplace

De­spite change be­ing every­where, peo­ple of­ten strug­gle to let go of old habits. Change in the work­place or in a team can cause em­ploy­ees to feel un­easy, which im­pacts per­for­mance and team co­he­sion. For em­ploy­ees, the biggest ques­tion is: “What will this change mean for me per­son­al­ly?” Man­agers, there­fore, have the main re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when it comes to ex­plain­ing the pur­pose of the change to em­ploy­ees.

The key to success lies in experienceable communication

An­drej Isler, cre­ative di­rec­tor at Brand­soul, sees it like this: “For change projects, com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the cru­cial fac­tor. Pow­er­point pre­sen­ta­tions aren’t go­ing to spark any en­thu­si­asm – but that has to be the aim when it comes to com­mu­ni­cat­ing change projects. Our ex­pe­ri­ence shows that tar­get­ed, con­ver­sa­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion that can be ex­pe­ri­enced leads to the best re­sults. Em­ploy­ees should be con­vinced and ex­cit­ed, not per­suad­ed. They should be at the cen­ter of the process and play an ac­tive role in it. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion strate­gies should aim to in­vite em­ploy­ees to take part in a di­a­logue. The most suc­cess­ful re­sults can be achieved through things like a Fu­ture Day, In­no­va­tion Lab or NEXT Day.”

This ar­ti­cle was brought to you by Brand­soul. Brand­soul is the lead­ing agency in all mat­ters in­te­grat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion and brand ex­pe­ri­ence — all with the pur­pose of Ac­ti­vat­ing Peo­ple.