Employees who have a sense of ownership in the companies they work for adapt to changes more quickly and effectively, according to Neil Gholson and Mark Schloegel of Deloitte Consulting LLP. Making sure employees are fully trained on current processes and coming changes will help them gain that sense of ownership, they said in Case Study: Training Makes the Difference.
In the case study, an electrical distributor looking to become more agile re-engineered key cross-functional business processes and implemented an ERP system to support them. One of the biggest challenges in doing this, according to Gholson and Schloegel, was working with the organization's staff to leverage the new processes and system.
The training curriculum began with the business case platform for undertaking the change initiative. The company provided customer service representatives with transition guides in hard copy, including before and after snapshots of their jobs. The customer service reps also received tools, such as scripts, FAQs and quick reference guides, to help them serve customers better. Over time, CSR “super-users” would conduct the training sessions.
Because the training gave the customer service reps a sense of ownership, as well as familiarity with the new system, adoption quickly spread. When the new processes and systems were launched, the company experienced no business discontinuity.
Read more about how this electrical distributor successfully prepared its employees for the changes to the organization in Case Study: Training Makes the Difference.