All Change!™ | Change Management Training Activity

This change management training activity sets up a simple situation: an organisation, spread across two sites in the city is about to move to a single site, outside the city.

The move will cause disruption in a number of ways. For some staff it will mean a longer commute, for all it will mean moving from a city-base to a rural environment. The computer systems to be installed at the new location is familiar to staff in one of the two sites, but not the other. More staff are to be recruited and some job roles will change. The changeover is due to take place in one year’s time.

Faced with this situation teams are asked a crucial question:

What major considerations and challenges can you identify for a smooth and seamless transition to the new site - and exactly how would this work?

You can instruct all teams to work on the question from the managers’ point of view OR, for more learning points at the end, you can have one of the teams working from the staff viewpoint.

Participants should identify the issues arising for managers including forward planning, people's resistance to change, the problem of poor communications, not giving staff ‘ownership’, the importance of being straightforward and honest, and breaking down silo mentality.

For issues arising for the staff undergoing the change, they should identify a convincing reason why the change is necessary, clarify the rewards, positive outcomes and benefits, and recognise fears and concerns around uncertainty, redundancy and losing the status quo.

• How to plan for change
• How managers can introduce effective change strategies
• To identify potential problems for staff undergoing change
• The importance of detailed forward planning
• Key levers to use when change is on the horizon and underway
• Seven-steps to successful, organisational change

1. Briefly introduce the topic of change. (Trainers can use this after their own input on change - or beforehand to reveal participants’ thinking at the start.)
2. Divide the group into teams of approx. 3-6 per team.
3. Issue one or more copies of the Team Brief to each team. It contains details of the proposed change and a map showing the existing sites and the new, single site.
4. Simply allow teams about 40 minutes to study the Brief and formulate a ‘change’ plan. Teams look at the situation from a management viewpoint. Alternatively you can have one of the teams looking at it from the staff viewpoint.
5. Teams can go into as much depth as you/they choose although no further information is supplied. (The session is about working in general terms rather than the specifics of this particular scenario.)
6. At the end of the allotted time ask each team to prepare a brief presentation about how they would tackle the problem. Then ask teams in turn to present.
7. Lead an informal discussion with the whole group to summarise their different approaches, priorities and plans and identify any shortfalls and potential problems.
8. Use Handouts 1 & 2 to consolidate the learning. First is a list of key points you would expect teams to cover (and outlined in the Trainer’s Notes). The second is a Seven-Step guide to handling change successfully. Issue this as an aide-memoire for participants to take away.

Full guidance supplied in the Trainer’s Notes.

Hard & Digital Copy

• ☑️ Hard copy pack supplied
• ☑️ PDFs supplied

Digital Copy

• ☑️ PDFs supplied
  

Contents

• Trainer’s Notes
• Team Briefs
• Handout: Key Points
• Handout: Seven Key Steps to Effective Change

This activity is for face-to-face and virtual classroom use. The digital files are supplied via the Northgate Trainerhub.

This Northgate Training activity comes with a five-year licence for repeat use with up to 24 participants at a time, for use by Trainers based at one licence-holding site.

All Trainers physically based at the same office location can access the Northgate resources during the five-year term, including the digital resources supplied on the Trainerhub via your own site-specific Trainer Dashboard. If you have Trainers based at other locations, and/or remote workers, who would like to access and use the Northgate resources, we can advise further depending on your requirements.

For further information on our licence terms please view the Northgate Licence Agreement.