HSBC: How to take employees on your digital transformation journey

People don’t like change, or so we’re often led to believe. With the technological revolution of the past 14 months, how can businesses make sure that their people engage and join them on their digital transformation journeys? Roland Emmans, technology sector head, HSBC UK Commercial Banking, offers his view.

According to consultants McKinsey, more than two-thirds of all digital transformations fail, and in most cases, that’s because organisations force change onto their people rather than involving them in the process and evolving new systems around the feedback they receive.

Ultimately, human beings are very simple and respond to three things:

• What benefits them
• What interests them
• What hurts them.

It’s essential that technology leaders understand that digital change can very often be seen as a threat and it can be hard for people, especially when it’s happening all of the time. Whether it’s an automated process replacing something that has long been completed manually, or something technical that employees may be worried about adapting their skills to.

From the conversations we’ve been having with customers, we know there has been a huge level of technological change in recent months with many firms accelerating four or five years’ worth of digital transformation all at once.

From ways of working to evolving software and new working practices, we’ve all experienced huge change during the pandemic for a prolonged period. It’s said that it takes six weeks to form a habit and we’re well beyond that at this stage, so as technological change becomes permanent rather than temporary it’s critical to keep people focused on the future and not looking back to the past.

To an extent, the large amount of change in the past year has raised people’s tolerance, but many businesses are still in the middle of this digital transformation. They are becoming increasingly focused on their ‘new normal’ and delivering permanent tech strategy transformation for the future to deliver long-term sustainability and success.

There are several things to consider to do deliver these strategies effectively.

Demonstrate a vision

In my view, the most important thing is to sell a vision to people. Leaders need to make it personal for their employees, make it clear that by introducing this new digital tool their life will become easier and their productivity more efficient. Leaders can look to do this by winning hearts and minds through demonstrations and simple, clear communication.

If, for example, a business is introducing a new collaborative tool they need to make it clear how that will benefit employees. Will it reduce email traffic? Make instant communication more effective? Or free up more time in their day to focus on other priorities?

Demonstrating these benefits will help to put people in the right mindset from the start.

It’s also important to ask for instant feedback on transformational change programmes. Ensuring people are involved from the start will promote engagement throughout the process and help leaders to understand how their employees feel about the change and impacts within their teams.

Identify champions AND advocates

Digital change champions are nothing new but are critical to support the rollout of digital transformation at the frontline of a business. These people can answer frequently asked questions, provide an additional avenue of communication to leaders and encourage employees to make the best use of the new tools being made available to them.

It’s also essential that senior figureheads become change champions by adopting the new tools quickly. Demonstrating understanding of new tools from the top will have an impact on wider behavioural change and encourage employees to engage with the transformation.

In addition, leaders should look to identify the digital change advocates within their teams. These people wouldn’t be ‘appointed’, so to speak, but are the most engaged employees who are eager to learn and adopt the changes quickly for their own benefit. Identifying and engaging with these individuals will help leaders to find success stories and good examples to promote more to those less convinced by the changes.

Be flexible

We’re increasingly seeing, and becoming more used to, iterative change when it comes to technology, particularly with software.

As an example, when Apple updates its mobile devices to a new iOS it is often swiftly followed by further updates where bugs and kinks in the software are ironed out. People are becoming more used to this approach and understand that new endeavours may encounter teething problems. It’s important to be transparent on this, communicate well and don’t over-promise on resolutions while solving issues as quickly as possible.

A more iterative approach also lends itself to two-way communication and will keep employees engaged. Think of it like the tide slowly coming in rather than a tidal wave of change all at once – it’s much easier for many people to adapt to.

We’re also seeing a rise in tools that will help businesses measure engagement. Whether that’s through pop up widgets that run quick surveys on a daily or weekly basis or monitoring apps that provide aggregates of sentiment on how employees are feeling.

To sum up, I would say that tech leaders need to make sure that transformational change is something that their people are involved in, not something that is done to them.

They should remember that programmes of digital transformation rarely go smoothly, but the ability to adapt and engage with people will give them the best chance of success, making a meaningful difference to the long-term future of their business.