Change management ensures smoother transitions, engaged people and better outcomes. It's essential for individuals and organisations because it guides how we prepare, equip, and support people to successfully adopt changes. When you don’t have effective change management, it can lead to significant costs and risks. Let’s break it down.
Project-Level Costs and Risks
Costs
Project delays - avoid delays. Have your change management team advise you how best to incorporate the needs and voice of the change audience from the start.
Missed milestones - if stakeholders aren't properly informed, they may make incorrect assumptions and decisions. Even worse, if they don't know until too late what changes are happening, they may disrupt or discontinue project progress.
Budget overruns - change management helps you to assess the timing, resources and financial allowances for key implementation events up front like rollout support, training and communications.
Rework required on design - once stakeholders become aware of the key details of the change, they may ask to revisit and rework decisions already made.
Risks
Resistance from employees - the platforms for resistance can be many. Change management will help identify impacts and create mitigation strategies to ensure mission-critical risks like failed adoption are planned for.
Project put on hold - aside from the key risks of adoption, employees being unaware and becoming change resistant, poor public awareness and poor external stakeholder engagement can also threaten progress. Prevent these risks through the sound practice of change management.
Resources not made available - if benefits are poorly defined or ill-explained, the project will find it difficult to attract the right level of organisational resources.
Unexpected obstacles - the thorough impact analysis that is the core of change management practice helps to forward-plan for all the potential people-related obstacles.
Project fails to deliver results or is abandoned - if people aren't onboard with the project purpose and approach, it may easily become abandoned in favour of better publicised initiatives.
Organisation-Level Costs and Risks
As the heading suggests, organisation-level costs and risks impact the entire organisation. The cost of not hiring a change manager can be great; both in financial costs, and opportunity cost. The consistent, ongoing practice of change management minimises variability of the processes involved in change, thereby making it more familiar each time an individual or team progresses through the change lifecycle.
Without a change team or a change manager in place organisations can fall down:
Loss of money needed to address staff issues - low consideration for the people impacts of new policies, strategies and approaches may mean hidden expenses that have not been planned for.
Loss of investment if the change doesn’t deliver desired outcomes - without a change manager expertly coordinating the activities that drive employees' ability to make and sustain change, it may be unsuccessful. Lack of success may snowball, impacting the organisation's enthusiasm to invest in future initiatives.
Inability to realise the expected value from the project - sound change management drives hand-in-hand with benefits realisation. Describing how the project will benefit stakeholders, leaders, customers and employees sits in the change management wheel-house.
The cost of not hiring a change manager
Far from being a costly overhead, effective change management is actually a cost avoidance technique and a justifiable investment to mitigate significant risk in projects and organisational changes; and to enhance project success.
To find out more about sound change management for your organisation, book a consultation session with Agencia Change.
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