Implementing a new technology? Rolling out new or updated processes? Don’t move forward until you’ve mastered the following change management best practices.
Change management is an essential practice that enables your organization to mitigate the risks associated with change, plan and track progress, and create strategies for handling resistance.
Organizations that master change management thrive because their team can easily pivot, understand, and execute evolving business needs and strategies. The alternative? Miss reaping the full potential of your investments in your people, processes, and technology.
So what makes change management so challenging?
- People have a natural resistance to change
- A lack of clear ownership over change management
- A disconnect between addressing micro and macro changes
These challenges result in common mistakes:
- Not establishing repeatable change management processes
- Providing poor communication and enablement on the change
- Never reinforcing information about the change
Spekit can help.
By making your documentation more agile and centralizing change management tactics, Spekit makes driving, communicating, and training on changes easier. This guide teaches you how to use Spekit best to support agile, consistent, and repeatable change management practices.
How Spekit uniquely supports change management best practices
Spekit drives awareness, understanding, and ultimately adoption of change.
But how? Glad you asked!
Spekit empowers you with an agile, end-to-end change management workflow. We don’t see change management as a linear, isolated project. We see it as a continuous cycle to improve performance by providing the right people with the right information at the right time via:
- Bite-sized training content and step-by-step guidance that’s easy
to consume and manage - Contextual delivery and reinforcement of knowledge
- Powerful analytics that helps you measure understanding and optimize training
12 ways to use Spekit for successful change management
Ready to unlock the power of Spekit for change management? To set your change management strategy—and yourself—up for success, check out these 12 change management best practices:
1. Identify processes and tactics you can streamline in Spekit
There are so many disparate channels, materials, and locations that can be used to document, store, and share change management information.
This makes change management a challenge for everyone. It’s hard to standardize processes for change management drivers, and employees don’t know what to expect when changes occur, since the organization doesn’t consistently share information in the same format or location.
To alleviate this challenge, consolidate tactics in Spekit. It’s easier to establish consistent change management practices, and for employees to know what to expect and where to go for up-to-date change management information.
PRO TIP: Change management is a team sport. When thinking through tactics, tap your stakeholders to make sure you captured everything and to get buy-in on new approaches.
Check out the graphic for recommendations on how to streamline training processes with Spekit.
2. Plan how Spekit will support different changes
It’s a good idea to have a plan on how you’ll use Spekit to support change management. For small changes, you probably don’t need a dedicated Topic with several Speks and a Flow.
But, for large changes, you probably don’t want to simply send a browser notification after updating a Spek.
Be strategic. Make a list of the different types of change in your organization. Then map out which Spekit features make sense for your organization to use for each change.
We’re fans of breaking down changes by t-shirt sizes. Check out the graphic for our recommendations on using Spekit features for small, medium, large, and extra-large changes.
PRO TIP: To establish consistent processes across the business, document your chosen tactics in a Spek for each type of change.
3. Build repeatable change management best practices and processes
After you decide how you’ll consistently use Spekit for change management, you need to establish repeatable change management processes.
Templates are really helpful here. For example, let’s take the small change we mapped out in the section above. To templatize this, you could:
- Create a Topic called
“Change Management | Templates” - Add a Spek to the Topic called
“Change Management | Templates | Small Change” - In the Spek, outline the format and
information required - Add a section to the Spek that advises users
when and how to disseminate the information
(Hint: Remind them to enable the browser
notification when they publish their Spek.)
PRO TIP: Don’t only advise people when to communicate with employees. Also advise them when not to. We recommend avoiding Mondays, Fridays, afternoons, and end of quarter.
4. Design your Spekit org around your processes
Before experts start using your change management templates, make sure you set up your Spekit instance to support future changes.
If you follow our recommendations, you’ll always create a new Topic for extra-large changes, like new tool rollouts. But don’t forget about smaller changes that don’t require a new Topic. To keep these updates organized, create a Topic for each “category” of change. For example, create a “Salesforce Updates” Topic. Add a Spek to it when employees need to know about a new small Salesforce change.
Designing your Spekit organization like this makes it easy for employees to identify the latest changes to your organization’s tools, processes, and content.
PRO TIP: Create and follow a standard naming convention for change management content. This makes organizing updates easier and minimizes repeat questions from employees about finding information.
5. Assess the five Ws for change management
Communication is critical for implementing and adopting a change successfully, but it’s often underwhelming. To make sure you thoroughly communicate changes, assess the five Ws:
- Who needs to know about this change? Give the right teams access to your Spekit content.
- What role-specific information do they need about the change? Communicate the need-to-know information.
- When do you need to make this information available? Put specific timelines around your communication plan.
- Where will employees need this information? Embed content in the relevant resources so it shows up contextually.
- Why is this change important? Help employees understand the change’s impact.
6. Use prebuilt training content whenever possible
You know what you need to communicate, so now you’re ready to start creating content, right?
Not so fast.
Before you create something brand new, check Spekit’s out-of-the-box content. We offer customizable prebuilt training content for tool rollouts that you can upload and start using the same day.
Use our prebuilt content as-is, or tweak it to meet your company’s specific needs. Either way, less time spent creating content from scratch = faster rollouts and more time for strategic initiatives.
PRO TIP: If prebuilt content isn’t an option for your rollout but you still need content support, let us know. We offer content creation services, whether you need entirely new content or have existing documentation you want to convert into Speks.
7. Pick the best destination for change management push notifications
Configure Spotlights (Spekit push notifications) to show up on “any URL” or a “specific URL” to notify the right people of changes relevant to them directly in their flow of work.
To make your Spotlight as effective as possible, select the best destination for it. Check out the graphic for recommendations.
PRO TIP: For changes that won’t impact users until they perform a specific task, send the Spotlight to that task’s URL versus the app’s general URL. For example, if you make a change to how reps create a quote, send the Spotlight to website.com/quote instead of simply website.com.
8. Create feedback loops
The change is live and employees have the resources you created for them. But, that doesn’t mean your job is done.
Effective change management best practices depend on feedback. Do your employees understand the information you shared? Do they have questions that your materials don’t answer? If you don’t provide ways for employees to give feedback, you won’t know.
You can approach feedback loops in a few different ways:
- To quickly understand if the content resonates, encourage employees to use
a Spek’s emoji reactions. - To get feedback on smaller changes, encourage employees to share questions
through a Spek’s “ask an expert” feature. - For large changes where you anticipate a lot of conversation across the business,
set up a dedicated Slack or Teams channel, such as #SalesforceFAQ.
PRO TIP: If you create a Slack or Teams channel, don’t forget to pin the relevant Topic or Spek to the channel.
9. Answer every question with a Spek
Once questions start rolling in, make sure to answer them with Speks—don’t spend your valuable time writing the same response over and over again.
Instead, share the link to a Spek, copy and paste a Spek’s content into a message, or send a Spek directly in Slack. Get a question you can’t answer with a Spek? Not for long! Create a new Spek that uses the question as the title, and add your answer. This way, you only have to write an answer to a question once.
Moving forward, simply send the Spek to anyone who asks the same question, reducing time and energy spent answering repetitive questions.
Making this a habit also reminds employees they should always #CheckItInSpekit before asking a question, so over time, you’ll get fewer repetitive questions. Plus, answering questions with Speks helps you create a comprehensive, up-to-date knowledge base.
PRO TIP: Our Slack integration is for more than sharing Speks. Use it to create new Speks directly from Slack messages.
10. Reinforce changes with Knowledge Checks
By now, you feel confident that employees not only have the relevant information they need about the
change, but also that they understand it. Huzzah!
Then a week goes by. And they forget.
Reinforcement is crucial for the successful adoption of a change because it prompts employees to re-confirm that they understand the information. And by re-engaging with the information, they’re more likely to retain it. Spekit’s Knowledge Checks are an easy way to reinforce information. They’re bite-sized assessments that help you:
- Understand the impact of training efforts and content
- Quickly assess learning progress
- Uncover insights into where employees need more training
PRO TIP: To boost engagement with a Knowledge Check, share it in a Spotlight.
11. Track and review quantitative results
Because you created feedback loops, you’re already getting a sense of how employees are responding to the change. Most of that is through qualitative data.
Let’s talk about quantitative data.
Once your content is live, make sure you track engagement, understanding, and
retention rates. Key data points to review include:
- Spek views and reactions
- Spotlight views and snoozes
- Knowledge Check results
PRO TIP: Don’t forget to review your Knowledge Check’s question-level analytics. If you see employees consistently getting the same question(s) wrong, they may need additional training or clarification in that area.
12. Revisit and update change management content regularly
Last but certainly not least: regularly revisit and update your Spekit content as needed. This not only ensures your content remains accurate and trustworthy, but it also helps you identify opportunities to optimize your content.
For example, maybe a few months after you roll out a change, you notice engagement rates with the associated Spekit content isn’t as high as you expected. Compare it to some of your more popular content. Are there differences that could be contributing to their popularity? If so, can you apply those characteristics to your underperforming content to give it a boost?
The more you do this, the more you’ll be able to refine and customize your change management approach and content to suit your business’ unique needs.
PRO TIP: Easily identify content that may need a refresh by reviewing stale vs. fresh and hot vs. cold content in the Spek Management dashboard.
Start driving change management best practices with Spekit today.
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