Stevie Nicks was afraid of it. David Bowie recognized it as inevitable. Tupac saw none of it. Change is everywhere, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it. And a lot of us don’t. As technology becomes a standard part of doing business, companies are faced with the tricky process of transitioning from the old way of doing things.
We’re here to help make the transition to tech for your construction company a lot smoother. Read on for our foolproof strategy to make your company’s digital evolution an unmitigated success.
Start with a plan:
Before you even think about announcing impending changes to your staff, make sure you’ve thought the project all the way through. Develop a plan for how the new technology will be implemented and how it will fit into your current workflows. Get clear on your existing processes and identify exactly what steps and elements of your day-to-day will be transitioning to digital.
You should be able to tell each of your employees how, when, and where they’ll be using the technology throughout their work day. This plan should also include the timeline for implementation, identify the resources you’ll need, and how the new technology will be integrated into your existing processes. Most fear of change is based on fear of the unknown, so the more knowns you can provide, the more comfortable your employees will be.
Identify key stakeholders:
Identify the key stakeholders who will be affected by the new technology, such as department heads, team leaders, and IT staff. Involve them in the planning process and ensure they are aware of the changes that are coming. Their attitude toward the change and their enthusiastic investment in it will have a trickle down effect. The opposite is also true. If they don’t feel comfortable and confident in the process, when it’s their turn to lead change on their own team, that disengagement will infect their staff.
Tell them the story of the change: how it benefits the company, how it benefits them, how it benefits their team. Give them reason to champion the cause, and reasons they can pass along.
Communicate the benefits:
Make sure your staff understands the benefits of the new technology to both the business and (maybe more importantly) to them individually. Yes, we’re all team players but if you really want to motivate your employees, let them know how this new tech is going to make their life easier and better,
On a macro level, your story should explain what the company hopes to gain, such as increased productivity, improved efficiency, and cost savings. A major driver of success in changing is understanding behavioral psychology. It’s human nature to be resistant to change, because our brains interpret change as a threat. To get people on board in the face of that discomfort they need to understand why the change is necessary and why it will be worthwhile. This will help build excitement and engagement around the new technology.
On a micro level, tailor the message to different departments and different roles, highlighting how they will specifically be benefitted by this change. Let your foreman know he will no longer spend the first hour of his day chasing people for signatures. Tell your payroll admin she’ll never have to decode a handwritten timesheet again. Assure your health and safety manager that their recurring nightmare about an employee with a wallet jammed to bursting with expired certifications can finally stop.
Understand your users:
Not to generalize, but ease of adoption with any new tech product often loosely follows generational lines. At one end of the spectrum are your youngest Gen-Z employees who have been online since birth. Tech is intuitive to them, part of their school curriculum along with spelling and math.
In the middle are “elder millennials” who remember dial-up and digital cameras, a time before tech was so prevalent, but have spent the bulk of their lives using technology. They know how to use it, but they also know how to learn how to use it, and empathize with why it can be challenging.
At the other end of the spectrum are the older employees who prefer paper. They’re more likely to be set in their ways, because they’ve been doing it that way longer. The last group is often where you find your stakeholders (see point 2) and the ones who most need selling on the benefits (see point 3).
Provide training and support:
Provide training and support to your staff to ensure they are comfortable using the new technology. This can include online tutorials, in-person training sessions, and ongoing support from IT staff.
While you’re busy training and supporting your staff, your new tech provider would ideally be training and supporting you. Some companies have embedded training programs designed to help you and your employees get up and running as quickly as possible. Here at Corfix, our Blueprint onboarding program takes a tiered approach to rolling out your new software. We work with a company’s leadership team and staff directly to make sure there is maximum adoption.
Once you know the types of users you have, it can really help to strategically group your staff so that your technophobes have at least one person in their vicinity who is an adept and enthusiastic user.
In addition to different levels of familiarity with technology (see point 4) people have different styles of learning that should be taken under consideration when designing training. Create an onboarding process that has features that apply to auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners (eg. “learn by doing” types). The trick is to have a range of learning materials – documents and written content, live training, and hands-on demonstrations.
Gamify and Incentivize:
We’ve discussed the basic psychology of change, and people’s resistance to it. But there’s also a psychology to getting people on board with things. Take a cue from successful mobile apps like DuoLingo and FitBit: you can make the most boring and undesirable tasks into a game, people will do anything – including exercising and learning French. A few suggestions to get you started:
- Inject gaming features, such as leaderboards, points tables, and badges into the training
- Challenges between employees or teams with rewards and incentives to motivate engagement and participation
- Rewards like honorary titles (Captain, President, Vice-Chancellor etc.) or limited-time special privileges (first dibs at new assignments, extra doughnuts at morning coffee break, not having to do whatever the most annoying job task is this week)
- Providing more engaging gaming experiences through interactive videos and quizzes
- Customizing your onboarding gamification experience to your company by mimicking (and maybe inverting) your corporate structure for training teams
Test the technology:
Before rolling out the new technology to your entire company, beta test it with a small group of users. This will help identify any issues or areas for improvement before the technology is implemented company-wide.
There are two schools of thought about this. One is to beta test within a single group; maybe one crew, one project, one department. Another is to introduce the tech to one or a few select members of different teams/projects/departments across the company. This has the advantage of ensuring each group will have a champion who is familiar with the product when you roll it out company wide and can be the go-to for their team.
Provide a turnkey solution:
Populate your software with all the relevant data for your users. To use our onboarding as an example, our clients see the most success when they seed their platform with projects, job sites, equipment, the forms employees will be filling out, worker data, etc. The faster they can start using – and getting value out of – their new technology, the higher the likelihood of successful adoption.
This also makes the training process easier, especially for your kinesthetic learners (the ‘learn by doing’ ones) who can interact with the software hands on if it’s already operational.
Monitor and evaluate:
Monitor the use of the new technology and evaluate its effectiveness. This will help identify any areas where additional training or support is needed and ensure the technology is being used to its full potential. As part of your initial planning stage, intersperse steps with these pauses to take inventory and ensure everyone is comfortable with what they’ve learned before going any further. If there are issues, this means you get to make tweaks to your training process so future steps work more effectively.