How Resistance to Change is Harming Your Digital Transformation Strategy

Welcome to the Digital Adoption Insider, where we explore common challenges and present actionable tips on driving digital adoption through better experiences for software users. If you're interested in staying up-to-date on the latest software adoption trends, click the "subscribe" button above.

COVID-19 accelerated digital transformation up to three years, with customer support interactions going digital, hybrid work, digital internal processes, and the increased reliance on enterprise software and technology in all aspects of a business.?

But for most executives, rapid digitalization is a huge shock to established ways of working. This often leads to employees feeling threatened and not understanding the need for a large change to their daily processes and ways of working. To find maximum ROI from digitalization, you need to successfully drive adoption of these new digital applications, processes, and technologies by breaking through this resistant barrier.

Research from Gartner found that an organization today has implemented an average of five significant organization-wide changes in the past three years — and nearly 75% expect to increase these change management initiatives in the upcoming three years. However, half of all change initiatives fail, with only 34% finding ROI.

Let’s take a closer look at one of the most common digital adoption challenges, resistance to change, and how to overcome it by enabling teams with better digital dexterity.

What Is Resistance to Change?

When you introduce a change, such as replacing a legacy sales tool with a new CRM software or moving from spreadsheets to a cloud CRM, not all employees will embrace it. Some employees might insist on sticking with what they know best, believing that digital transformation is disruptive rather than productive. Jobs and businesses may have evolved, but human resistance to change still remains. Ultimately, employee resistance to change makes it difficult to drive digital adoption.

Your employees are likely to resist change if:

• You don’t offer enough training and practice for employees to use new software.
• You don’t involve end-users that are most impacted in the change planning and research phase.
• The change is introduced by a manager or senior executive your team doesn’t know well or trust.
• You fail to communicate the value and improvement a change will make.
• You set unrealistic timelines for employees to switch to new software.

In each of these instances, your employees will be less willing to adopt new software or other digital initiatives, such as updating your legacy billing process.

How to Overcome Employee Resistance to Change

To overcome resistance to digital change, create and implement an internal change management plan that outlines the steps you’ll take to communicate the value of a digital change and enable employees with the skills and knowledge needed to adapt and embrace the change.

A digital change management plan includes five components:

• The Change Proposal. Your digital change proposal will tell your employees why digital change is important, their roles and responsibilities in the transition, and how you plan to go about it. Use this template to help you draft your proposal.
• Change Leadership. Your change leaders are managers or team leaders who your team trusts. They will communicate the change to your team and tell your team how the organization will support them through the change.
• Change Communications Plan. Your communications plan will outline how you convey the change to everyone affected by it.
• Change Results Tracking. Your results-tracking plan tracks and measures success and failure.
• Change Management Tools. Your digital tools should help employees prepare for a change. These tools include digital adoption platforms (DAPs), internal wikis, learning management systems, and walk-through videos.

Continue learning about digital adoption challenges to understand the possible roadblocks your team could face and how to overcome them and drive your digital adoption.

Don’t forget to subscribe to this newsletter to receive best practices, tips, and insider trends on empowering employees by driving the adoption of new technologies.