5 Ways To Help Your Business Adapt To Change

• By Jenny Han
• 08-12-2022
• Technology

In recent years you'll have seen a huge raft of changes in the way you conduct business, especially thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. There's lots more things coming in the future that will make further changes to your business, whether it's digital changes or unprecedented disruption such as supply line disruption. Whatever it is, your business needs to be able to cope with it. Here's how you can help it adapt to change.

5 Ways To Help Your Business Adapt To Change

1) Change The Way Management Communicates

No matter what's causing the changes within your company, you need to be able to handle it at a management level. If you're able to do that and communicate effectively to the rest of the workforce, then you'll see that the business can weather change, and even benefit from it. That's something that you need to have down first, before you start making any changes.

How do you do this? On the whole, you need to be more transparent with employees about what is happening, and what it means for the company. It shows that you're trustworthy, and that you want them to have all the information that's available. Plus, you should actively ask for feedback from the team so you can see what's causing them the most concern. Communication has to go both ways, so keep that in mind. When you do so,. It makes employees feel as though they're part of the change, rather than fighting against it.

2) Frame Change As A Positive Challenge

When change comes to any workplace, it's easy to see it as a threat. You're comfortable with the way things worked before, so why should you have to deal with change now? A lot of this mindset can be changed if you frame the change in a different way. For example, new digital innovations can be intimidating, but you can show your team that once they get to grips with it, it'll actually make many elements of their job a lot easier overall.

Many changes are going to be positive, overall. As a business owner, you need to find that positive angle for your employees. Another good example of this is having to work from home during the pandemic. Many found that it was preferable, thanks to the elimination of commuting, the comfort of their own home office, and so on. Find that benefit and present it to your team.

3) Don't Ignore Any Resistance

Of course there will be employees that resist change when it comes to your business. As the owner or manager, it's easy to assume that they'll come around to the changes once they've experienced them for a while. However, that's something that you don't want to ignore. While some people may be resisting simply because they don't like change, others will have good points that you want to hear about.

As such, ensure that you are keeping those lines of communication open. Asking for employee feedback either in person or through surveys can help you identify challenges that you may not have thought of yourself. It'll also keep morale high, as you're showing that you're listening and taking action on any concerns.

4) Create A Pro Learning Culture

The best businesses are those that can adapt to change, and that means that everyone within them is able and willing to learn. When you first start your business, you want to be able to take advantage of change and use it to move forward. As such, from the very start you need to create a pro learning culture within the workplace.

Keep employees trained up in all the appropriate skills, and ensure that you're staying up to date too. When everyone is always learning, new changes won't be as alarming as the staff will be able to roll with it and incorporate the change into day to day work.

5) Use Tech To Streamline Change

You'll already be using tech to complete and help with many tasks in your workplace. Those businesses that adapt well to change have found that the more they use tech to streamline work, the easier it is to adapt to change. That's something you want to keep in mind.

For example, a lot of employee training can be done on online platforms. That's something that employers could use during the pandemic. They couldn't get employees together physically to be trained, but when they had online platforms they could still get training done, despite the set backs that they were facing.

There are lots of ways that as a business, you can adapt to change. You'll already have weathered lots of change in recent years, and there are bound to be more to come soon. If you start adapting now, you'll be much more resilient in the years to come.