Piloting Change: Effective Communication or Training?

By
Amandine Fernandez
Head of Acquisition
Change management in a company goes through different stages, going from definition to strategy to team training. However, there’s another important and often-neglected stage: information.

Clear, accessible, and varied information is an indispensable asset for maintaining team motivation and achieving change successfully.You’ve decided you need to change. You’ve identified the processes that need improving or the new service offer you want to launch—or you’ve decided to do a complete turnaround to deal with the consequences of the pandemic. Now you just need to know where to start. Of course, jumping in blindly might be counterproductive.

Company change must be well thought out, planned and targeted. Keep in mind one essential factor: a company can only change through the people who comprise it.

A successful desire to change results not from a general policy imposed from the top, but through behavior adopted by each of a company’s employees. Thus, any company change must factor in the inevitable personnel resistance and the challenges specific to each individual and team. In short, it must put humans first.

To accomplish this, there are many levers and models which will measure behavioral change factors and analyze them based on different criteria: motivation, ability, complexity of requested adjustments, and much more.

A simple tool to counter resistance to change

In his book “65 Tools to Support Individual and Collective Change,” Arnaud Tonnelé presents a simple matrix to guide how we think about a change, and to help us consider potential obstacles, both internal and external.

This matrix relies on four elements:

  1. Desire: motivation can arise from curiosity, understanding of the change, or encouragement from management. That said, without a desire to change, there cannot be success.
  2. Interest: this is the classic WIIFM – What's in it for me? The change must benefit not only the company, but each individual involved. This benefit can take many forms, including financial, facilitation of tasks, a better work environment, and increased recognition.
  3. Ability: regardless of my motivation, I must be able to accomplish what is being asked of me. The slightest doubt or concern on this point can often lead to resistance to change.
  4. Means: will employees have the necessary tools to carry out the requested evolution? Is the process clear, has the strategy been shared, and is the budget sufficient?

These first two points are rarely forgotten in change management. The same cannot be said for the last two, despite their equal importance.

Training employees without forgetting to inform them

To get employees on board with the change, companies must factor in these last two points carefully – ability and means. Companies often think they’ve done so by providing training. Of course, plans to support new tools, new offers, etc. are necessary, but they are not enough. Employees not only need to be trained, but informed. Companies must communicate effectively about the nature of the project, the planned steps, the expected benefits, etc.

Leaders, HR teams, and transition managers have a customizable tool at their disposal to do so: email signatures. This tool covers all five components of internal communication that are particularly suited to change management:

  • information
  • identification
  • friendliness
  • participation/unity
  • involvement
ebook internal communication

A new, internal communication channel

A change policy that uses email signatures as a channel can get targeted employees involved and mobilized by making them participants in the transformation. Whereas training is generally a one-off event, the beauty of communication is that it can be continuous and standardized. A company stands only to gain by integrating and relying on an internal communications campaign using email banners.

These will serve to:

  1. Transmit important information
  2. Highlight key stages
  3. Create a favorable environment for dialogue

For example, it’s possible to create recurring or one-time banners and target specific groups or objectives within the company. A final crucial point: piloting change using an email signature campaign also helps to highlight and communicate successfully completed stages.

Communication is the key to effortlessly cultivating meaning, sustaining employee motivation, and achieving successful change.

Discover Letsignit

Sources: https://www.managersenmission.com/blog/debloquer-resistances-changement/
https://fr.blog.businessdecision.com/les-3-piliers-changement-entreprise/

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.

Frequently
asked questions
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Let’s call this
your signature move

Speak with one of our experts
and take a personalized tour of Letsignit
Request a free trial