Change Management: Use All Channels!

By
Amandine Fernandez
Head of Acquisition
There are many reasons that can lead a company to change: integrating new technologies, legal framework changes (GDPR, etc.), marketing new products or services, implementing new processes, dematerializing, outsourcing certain activities… What do these have in common?

All these factors of change require communication that involves all channels and all touchpoints. When a company embarks on a change management plan, different actors (managers, associates, directors) must all know and understand the expected outcomes, including redefined roles and new practices, regulations, and skills. Indeed, such changes aren't not only intellectual and theoretical, but also cultural and behavioral. Thoughtful change management is essential to ensure team buy-in and project success. The success of a company change rests most specifically on appropriate communication.

The company must communicate on several levels:

  • Explain the change and demonstrate its purpose
  • Clarify the final objective
  • Reassure stakeholders
  • Define the change in concrete terms, detailing what it will change for employees
  • Insist on the benefits derived from the change, and invite team members to share their thoughts on the subject

To succeed in each of these stages, it’s crucial to provide frequent, sustained, and varied communication. It’s a question of mobilizing all channels and touchpoints—before, during, and after the change. A word of advice: leverage multiple communication channels. Each of your associates will be more sensitive or reactive to a particular channel, so be careful not to limit communication to just one. Instead, diversify and use each channel to its advantage.

Many channels to leverage

Depending on the change enacted, internal company culture, and tools already in place, a company can:

  • Implement working groups.
  • Post announcements and flyers in the workplace. Are posters really outdated or dull? Not really. A poster displayed in a busy place can get the word out easily and enhance the distribution of information. Limits: posters are only seen by employees who pass by a particular location. Its content must also be shared on other channels (e.g. email) for it to be seen by everyone.
  • Consider dynamic displays. Screens installed in common spaces like cafeterias or break areas have the advantage of being very visible and easily updated to offer content adapted to different periods throughout the change.
  • Schedule briefings, ranging from onboarding at the beginning of the process to regular milestones throughout. These meetings can be led by change managers, team managers, or "heroes," i.e. employees who are familiar with the processes to be modified and are willing to help train their colleagues.
  • Offer training courses, as well as tutorials and explanatory videos. This can be done using an e-learning platform or integrating new content onto the company's intranet.
  • Organize workshops dedicated to learning specific skills.
  • Use company social networks to lend a more user-friendly tone to discussions. The objective here is not to inform, but rather to discuss and collaborate: ask questions, propose ideas, etc.
  • Organize chat sessions with leaders and/or change makers.
  • Rely on existing collaborative tools (Teams, etc.).

Workshops and meetings are still essential

Giving meaning to changes promotes team approval and involvement, so don't forget to collect feedback. In fact, people not only expect to be informed but also like to be able to communicate—to discuss, share their own experiences, and ask questions. Meetings are valuable for both managers and employees, who can easily voice their impressions, or even challenges, with regard to the change.

This means that those leading a change will have to schedule regular meetings to take stock of progress. The ideal is to plan occasions for formal exchange (meetings, workshops, training) and other more informal “water cooler” conversation. It's up to each company to adapt their own project management and communication plans based on the opinions collected.

A dynamic marketing tool for internal communications

But how do you get teams on board and communicate well when many associates are alternating between working in the office and working from home? By using one powerful channel: email signatures. A solution like Letsignit assigns a different email signature for messages sent internally and for those sent externally.

The result? A new lever for all corporate subjects—including, of course, change management. You can very easily create a banner to promote updates, news, or workshops relating to your transformation... and give them unparalleled visibility!

Here, you can find some of our other tips for implementing successful change in the work-from-home era.

Sources: https://www.lumapps.com/fr/blog/gestion-du-changement/pourquoi-la-communication-est-importante-dans-la-gestion-du-changement/
https://www.journaldunet.com/management/efficacite-personnelle/1149438-comment-faire-adherer-a-un-changement/
https://www.appvizer.fr/magazine/ressources-humaines/engagement-collaborateurs/resistance-changement/
https://www.appvizer.fr/magazine/ressources-humaines/conduite-changement-definition
http://www.industrie-mag.com/article10475.html
https://www.blogdumoderateur.com/letsignit-solution-creer-gerer-signatures-mail-salaries/  

About the author
Amandine is the Head of Acquisition at Letsignit! Initially a content specialist, she now actively contributes to the profitability of acquisition channels: SEO, SEA, SMA, SMO... Amandine is also one of the pillars of Marketing at Letsignit! For more than 5 years, she has been participating in and initiating marketing projects and campaigns that systematically reflect her vision, writing style, and creativity (which can also be seen in all of her colorful outfits that brighten up the day of everyone she meets).
About Letsignit
With Letsignit email signature manager, connect with your audience in a way that's on-brand and personal, while driving quality lead generation.
Frequently
asked questions
1
Is it possible to track the number of clicks on email signatures?

Yes, with the 'Campaigns' offer, it is possible to track the number of clicks on the email signatures of all your employees in the 'Statistics' area of the platform.

You can then access a detailed or global view of the number of clicks on the email signatures of each employee. You can use the search option to target a specific signature or a given period. Finally, you have the possibility to export all statistics to an Excel document.

If you launch campaigns with banners inserted in your email signatures, you can also access their performance via this same space.

2
Can we add links to social networks, our website, and appointment-setting applications such as Calendly?

With Letsignit, you can easily add social network icons in your collaborators' email signatures and link to your company pages. Also, our "attributes" feature allows you to manage personalized URLs for each of your collaborators such as their individual LinkedIn profile.

And that's not all: you can add links to an appointment-setting application, allow your customers to leave reviews easily, and integrate our 'Chat on Teams' widget to let anyone start a discussion via Microsoft Teams chat.

3
Can employees update their signature information themselves (number, function, etc.)?

It’s up to you! As an administrator of the Letsignit platform, you choose whether or not to grant modification rights to your employees. These permissions are managed on an attribute-by-attribute basis, which means that you can decide to allow the employee to change their phone number, but not the address of your premises, for example.

This feature applies to all attributes in your directory, including custom attributes created on Letsignit. When your employees change one or more attributes, your directory is obviously not affected.

4
Why it is important to standardize our email signatures on a large scale to ensure our identity and brand image?

It often happens that employees make their email signature their own: custom format, bad fonts, colors inconsistent with the brand standards... all of this has an impact on your brand!

A consistent visual identity is considered authentic and outperforms a perceived weak one by 20%. And, your customers are 2.4 times more likely to buy your products.

With Letsignit, take back control over your brand identity by standardizing all your email signatures. Our tool has many features that allow you to customize your signatures by department, by audience or by subsidiary. Not to mention the possibility of carrying out campaigns within your email signatures thanks to our Campaign offer.

5
What is the user experience like for our employees?

What is the user experience like for our employees?

  • If you opt for the Letsignit Add-in for Outlook, they will have a dedicated space in their Outlook account where they will be able to view the signatures and campaigns assigned to them.
  • If you opt for the Letsignit Desktop APP, they will be able to preview all their signatures and campaigns in this space. If they want to change their default signature to another one when sending an email, this will be done in their signature library in Outlook.

In both cases:

  • They preview their signature before sending an email and choose from signatures assigned to them.
  • Based on the permissions granted, they will also be able to modify their personal information such as their name, position, or address in these spaces.

In short, they have autonomy in their email signature, but you keep control on the field, signatures, and banners they can edit or use.

6
Can my employees have multiple signatures available to them?

With our "multi-signature" feature, your employees can benefit from multiple email signatures. No technical manipulation is required. Thanks to our Add-in for Outlook or the desktop app, they can change their email signatures as they wish with just a few clicks.

Regarding the creation of email signatures, you can make several variations such as:

Everything has been thought of to go further in the personalization process based on the recipient of your emails.

7
Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

8
Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

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