Managing change in the workplace 

What is workplace change management?

Workplace change management refers to the process of managing any level of change in a work environment from a people perspective. This change can be physical, involving a redesign or reconfiguring of existing space; an increase or reduction in office size; or a total change of location. It can also be procedural, involving new technologies, methods, materials and ways of working. But critically, change management is about managing the people side of these changes – that is, minimising the negative impacts of change on employees, while maximising the positive dimensions that shifts and transitions can bring for your workforce. 

What is the role of change management in the workplace?

In the workplace, the process of change management begins with a workplace strategy.  

A workplace strategy identifies the solution – or change – required to resolve current challenges, leading to an evidence-based brief and vision for a new workspace design. Through close consultation with staff, the strategy lays the ground for a responsive change management process built around stakeholder engagement. It provides an opportunity for an organisation to demonstrate that, in the creation of new spaces and systems, it is listening to its people and responding to their needs.  

Workplace change management then addresses the behavioural gaps that might undermine the success of the workplace strategy and future workspace. It helps to prepare people for their new environment, establishing the necessary behaviours, mindset and skills.  

So, the role of workplace change management is to ensure that when an organisation comes to occupy its new space, its people are ready, engaged and excited. It ensures employees are able to operate within their new setting, with the guidance and training they need to hit the ground running. Making the whole transition as seamless as possible. 

When do you need change management?

Change management is required at critical stages in an organisation’s evolution, best defined by the following six change-based scenarios.  

Some of these scenarios require more extensive change management intervention than others, depending on the levels of complexity and numbers of people involved, as well as factors such as change readiness, resistance and fatigue. 

Refurbishment

Workplace refurbishment involves in-situ improvements to existing space and assets, with a view to achieving functional and aesthetic alignment with evolving needs. During a refurbishment, employees are either moved into ‘swing spaces’ within the same building, or temporarily relocated to an external site.  

Typically, staff upheaval during refurbishments can be kept to a minimum, with only light-touch change management support required. For example, if your employees are being relocated within the same building, familiarity (with the environment and routine) will help to minimise disruption. Similarly, workforce relocation to an external site can be fairly easy to coordinate, with the temporary nature of the move mitigating any major impact on staff. 

Relocation

In terms of magnitude of change, a wholesale office move is typically the biggest and most challenging scenario an organisation will experience. With staff facing changes to their daily commute, plus a new and possibly unfamiliar location, the potential for high-level disruption is significant. Extended journey times and more complex commuting arrangements can be met with resistance, particularly if these factors have implications for other things, like childcare.  

Your programme of change management support therefore needs to be extensive. It also needs to begin long before your office move takes place. Early engagement with staff will help to pre-empt any pushback, enabling you to get people on board before the process of change is in motion. Commuting tours and journey mapping, for instance, can help to allay fears about dramatic shifts in travel routines.  

Depending on the size of your workforce, the change management process could begin 18-24 months ahead of your planned move (less if your organisation is small). You also need to factor in several months of ‘embedding’ activities (see below) to ensure that new behaviours remain in place once the move is complete.   

Adaptation

An adaptation refers to the repurposing of existing space – a sort of light refurbishment. It might involve repainting meeting rooms, installing new lighting or adding new desks and workstations. As such, it typically requires small-scale design changes that tend to have a low impact on staff.  

Whereas a full refurbishment will need to be accompanied by various change management interventions, an adaptation may only call for comms support. Comms support is less about promoting new behaviours and more about keeping your employees updated on planned shifts and transitions – making sure they have the information they need to embrace and navigate change as it happens. 

Contraction 

As you might expect, a workplace contraction involves the reduction in footprint of an existing space. For example, from 100,000 square feet to 70,000, or from two floors to one. Requiring people to do more or the same with less, a contraction often brings significant and unwelcome change. Teams may have to collocate, share space and resources, and employees generally will feel more constrained than before.  

In this scenario, workplace change management will be essential to keep your staff onside and prepare them for the transitions ahead. New behaviours will be required to help them adapt to spatial strictures. To pre-empt any resistance, you may want to plan and implement your change management interventions several months before the event.  

Expansion 

In theory, an expansion should involve less disruption and disturbance than a contraction, and consequently less change management. Moving into more space, rather than less, naturally presents fewer challenges for employees. In fact, expanding into unoccupied adjacent square footage within the same building is a fairly uncomplicated process. 

But an expansion across floors is more complex, and may require some level of change management or comms support. In this scenario, you might find that employees simply need be kept informed of what’s going on. They may not need to engage with new behaviours or training, but regular communications around your expansion programme – what, when, how – will be welcome.  

Consolidation

Workplace consolidation is the process of combining multiple work locations, departments, teams or functions into fewer, larger or more centralised units. Its main aim is to bring people, places and processes together to create a stronger, more efficient organisation.  

Whether you’re looking to merge departments or reduce the volume of physical workspace, early and pre-emptive change management will be essential. Staff will be moving into new and possibly smaller spaces, with significant coordination required. And new behaviours, mindsets and ways of working will be necessary to ensure a smooth transition. In consolidations involving large numbers of staff, change management interventions should probably begin at least18-24 months in advance. 

How long does change management take?

Change management can take anything from several weeks to several years. The length of time needed depends on the size and complexity of the transition and the numbers of people involved. Large workforce relocations will require engagement with HR teams, transformation teams and change teams, with multiple channels of communication. All of which means you probably need an 18-month change management lead time. In scenarios involving smaller numbers and less complexity, with no office or workforce relocation, three-to-six months may be sufficient.  

But each case is different, and you need to consider other factors such as change readiness, resistance and fatigue. If your employees have recently been through various shifts and transitions (i.e. a new CEO or wave of redundancies), they’re likely to be resistant to further upheaval. These scenarios will require increased engagement and a longer change management process.  

Other cultural factors may impact your timescales. For instance, office relocations may be accompanied by organisational rebrands, as companies take the opportunity to signal their new direction and ambition to the market. Similarly, as organisations evolve, they may look to shift from traditional ways of working to more progressive methods in an effort to improve performance, enhance collaboration and attract new talent. In such cases, companies may seek to leverage the workplace as a cultural asset and symbol, which will require significant changes in mindset and values, which in turn requires greater management, engagement, guidance and time. 

How do you start your change management journey?

Before you can begin your change management journey, there are various things you need to consider. 

Change fatigue

As discussed above, change fatigue can be a major barrier to engagement. Before you start setting out your plans, you need to assess your employees’ appetite for change. If your company has just undergone various transition programmes, is now really the best time for a workplace relocation or redesign? 

SLT buy-in

Before you start, you also need to ensure you have Senior Leadership Team (SLT) buy-in. Without SLT backing for change, it can be hard to cascade the message down to employees and drive meaningful engagement. It’s therefore critical that SLT members understand the reasons for change and see the office as a strategic asset. If SLT members pass on their belief and vision to middle managers, this can have a positive trickle-down effect, building a company-wide consensus around the direction of travel. Which makes the process of change management easier.  

Review of internal resources

Another prerequisite is a detailed review of internal resources. For instance, do you have access to an internal change management team or transformation team? Do you have good internal communications support? Are there networks you can utilise within the business to help deliver your change management programme? Or do you need to engage a specialist external consultant? A review of resources helps you ensure you have access to the people and skills you need. 

What are the three phases of workplace change management?

Workplace change management comprises three distinct phases: Discover, Deliver and Embed. Here, we explain each phase in turn and demonstrate how they work together to create a cohesive change management process. 

Discover

In order to devise successful change management interventions, you need to understand, within the proposed workplace development, the magnitude of change for employees. It’s a critical stage in the process, as it involves identifying the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.  

Built around assessment, analysis and stakeholder engagement, the Discover phase overlaps with your workplace strategy. It involves gathering evidence and insights to understand where the greatest people impacts will be – from leadership all the way down to junior staff. Underpinned by careful listening and analysis, Discover enables you to allay any potential concerns and pre-empt any resistance to proposed workplace changes. And it provides the data you need to create a detailed and informed change management plan. 

Deliver

The next phase, Deliver, is about engaging directly with staff, but primarily change champions, to establish a conduit between your project team and the wider staff population.  

Deliver is essentially the education part of the process, which, when working well, involves co-creating new workplace etiquettes and behaviours. Using FAQs, townhalls, workshops and induction sessions, you can collaborate with your change champions to guide and train employees, giving them the tools and information they need to work effectively in their new environment. Deliver also provides an opportunity to excite and inspire, for example by giving employees virtual tours of future workspace and promoting a sense of ownership and pride in the change that’s underway.

Embed

Change management doesn’t stop once your office relocation or refurbishment is complete. To deliver a truly successful transition, you need to monitor employee behaviour within their new space, watching to ensure new etiquettes are being adopted and old habits aren’t snapping back.  

In this final Embed phase, you need to remain vigilant to staff reverting to old routines or preferred ways of working. Continued encouragement and engagement, plus gentle reassertion of new values, will help to maintain momentum. Meanwhile, first impressions workshops and feedback sessions give the sense of ongoing consultation.  

Once people are settled, you can begin assessing ‘neighbourhood dynamics’ to understand how the new space is working in practice. This process will involve identifying potential friction points, or discussing where adjustments might be needed to deliver sustained progress. After six months or so, at the end of your Embed phase, these insights should be channelled into a post-occupancy evaluation.  

How do you know if the change has worked?

So how do you know if your workplace change management has been a success? How do you know if all the theory you’ve developed and the strategies you’ve devised have succeeded in practice?  

Your post-occupancy evaluation will give you the empirical data you need to answer these questions, with specific reference to the following key indicators. 

Retention rates

If there’s been no increase in churn in the leadup to your move/refurb/consolidation, or for the following six months, you can probably assume that your change management programme has been successful. Any uplift in recruitment, however, won’t be seen until three-to-six months after the event.  

Attendance

If you have more people in the office each week following your organisational change, this is a clear sign you have created an environment where people want to be. Reduced sick leave is another positive indicator.   

More efficient use of meeting room space – i.e. six people in an eight-person meeting room, rather than two – also denotes progress. Indeed, a closer gap between capacity and occupancy suggests a well-functioning workspace. Likewise, people chatting in stairwells or social areas is evidence of a happy and engaged workforce. 

Employee feedback

Positive employee feedback – via first impressions workshops, townhalls and neighbourhood dynamics events – provides a clear record of contentment and successful adaptation within a new space. 

How do you sustain change management?

To sustain good behaviours and ways of working, you need to conduct regular health checks beyond the organisational change you’ve been managing. By regularly touching base with key workplace stakeholders, for example at six, 18 and 24 months after the event, then again every two-to-three years, you can monitor long-term behavioural adoption and adherence. These touchpoints also provide an opportunity to assess whether your people are still aligned with the vision and principles that underpinned the original transition.  

“Workplace change management requires fluidity and flexibility. You have to approach this process in a loose and adaptable manner, because there will be so many additional changes and curve balls along the way. A rigid change management programme will always be derailed by the vagaries and uncertainties of the world of work. These programmes never fully materialise the way you plan and expect. Adaptability, agility and flexibility are the hallmarks of successful change management approach.” 

Miles McLeod, Change Management Consultant 

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People also ask: FAQs on managing change in the workplace