How to Digitalize a Conservative Company?

Digitalization has become an integral part of our lives, with businesses facing the choice: practise new technologies or die. New startups find it easier to use digital solutions, such as AI or RPA systems, while big businesses with established traditions and corporate culture are having a hard time. However, there is a way to change a conservative company without triggering protest from your colleagues.

Show that change is inevitable

Working with a team that is facing change directly is a key to successful transformation. Sometimes even the most progressive ideas encounter staff resistance, because they destroy usual business algorithms.

The younger your business, the easier it is to make adjustments to your workflow. In conservative companies, the staff, on the contrary, will defend their longstanding experience, arguing that the proposed changes will not work, or even will destroy the established interactions.

Since the existing system used to cope with the assigned tasks successfully, employees often do not see the need to reorganize processes, and therefore do not support the managerial initiative. They are also concerned about changes in responsibilities that can impinge on their wages or their authority in the team, and unfamiliar working conditions that will increase the time and effort spent on job tasks. But most of all, employees are afraid of being replaced by robots.

Remember that the rejection of innovations is not about information overload, it speaks for a lack of knowledge of the market situation. To overcome employee mistrust, you need to show them why the organization needs to change. Give them examples of successful digitalization in other companies. Pay attention to process flaws that employees regularly encounter taking them for granted. Show how your initiative will allow to overcome them.

Explain how labour costs and tax risks, as well as number of errors in sensitive documents, can drop. Tell them how improved logistics will speed up reconciliation processes or streamline information flows within the organization. As a result, both you and your coworkers will clearly understand why it is unprofitable to use traditional methods when competitors have already switched to the latest business tools.

Find allies

The more employees are involved in the transformation, the easier it will be for you to carry it out. Don't make decisions on your own; take care of the conditions in which colleagues can share their opinions and be heard.

If you plan to use revolutionary IT solutions in your company, consider specialists’ experience along with the project customer needs. Identify employees or groups to use this tool in their work, conduct in-depth interviews with them, and try to understand each participant’s priority demands. As a result, instead of critics, you will acquire allies and project ambassadors, who will further, upon their own initiative, promote it within the company.

For example, last year, our company launched an information portal MyBPO — a unified channel for customer-employee communication, which allows to store and exchange documents, and monitor performance. In addition, the portal can be used as a corporate social network showing corporate news timely.

Project launch was preceded by long preparation, during which we not only worked on its technical part. We worked out the main scenarios from the point of view of end users, discussed the content and structure of the portal with initiative groups, drew layouts and prototyped the future interface. More than 40 employees took part in the testing, and as a result, we could take into account user preferences of most employees, and make the information space really useful and convenient.

Announce upcoming changes

It usually takes time for people to get used to innovations. Tell employees about your plans for the project, even before it is ready. For example, you can discuss this issue at a general meeting, share information in social media, publish news in a corporate newspaper or mail them. Announcements are a good opportunity not only to uncover plans for your colleagues, but also to demonstrate the benefits of your project. It will as well help explain why the new toolkit is useful or dispel doubts that inevitably arise.

Think how you implement your project

In order to prevent resistance and discontent in the team, do not leave employees alone with the changes in the hope that they will figure it out on their own. Make a detailed plan for how the transformation will take place and consider how to ensure that colleagues are involved at every stage.

Plan a chain of events where you can introduce innovations and talk about their key aspects. For example, immediately after the first launch of MyBPO, we organized special courses and in a couple of months, taught 90% of the staff how to work with the portal. In addition, our company regularly conducts remote webinars for those who want to learn more about the service features.

Ask employees who have already evaluated the changes to share their impressions and tips with colleagues. By attracting ambassadors from your company's staff, you will increase loyalty and significantly reduce training costs.

Use external channels If you have finished a big project within the company — tell about it. Showcase the results you've achieved and share your experiences. Publications in external sources confirm the effectiveness of your actions, which means that the staff is apt to trust the changes more.

Source: PBC Pro