By Bruce Hawkins, Senior Maintenance and Reliability Consultant, PCA

Change is hard at the individual level. When it occurs on an organization-wide scale, it can be downright painful.

Before embarking on a major transformation initiative, business leaders must lay the foundation for a successful transition through proper change management.

The insights below were gleaned from a recent collaboration between Performance Consultants Associates (PCA) and Pactiv-Evergreen who requested PCA’s support in assessing, preparing and implementing changes to their work management protocols. PCA provides bespoke maintenance management consulting services designed to enhance overall equipment effectiveness, streamline maintenance work management. PCA conducted this project in conjunction with PROSCI^® whose change management methodology was instrumental in the client’s adoption of PCA’s work processes.

The mill, PCA’s client, realized significant improvements due to this partnership, including increased productivity and better collaboration. But while the resulting insights here reflect a specific project, they provide valuable guidance for any company that wants to implement major organizational changes at scale.

Change Management vs. Project Management

Change management and project management are two sides of the same coin. Project management focuses on the technical side of business transformation, such as integrating new tools, software and processes, while change management focuses on the people involved.

By emphasizing effective change management, business leaders can equip their teams with the skills, support and insights needed to embrace new processes. The goal is to stop doing things the old way and get everyone on board with the new way of working.

The 3 Phases of Effective Change Management

Although every organization’s transformative process is unique, every change initiative — particularly within a plant environment — will involve at least three phases of change management.

Preparation

Business leaders must align on the 4 Ps: project, purpose, particulars and people. All of these variables must be synergized before embarking on a large-scale initiative.

Next, they must define the desired and secondary impacts of the project. An impact assessment defines how the proposed changes will affect employees as they move from the current work state to the new way of doing things.

Organizational decision-makers must then define their approach to the project, which involves conducting a comprehensive risk assessment and identifying any anticipated resistance.

Even if a change will ultimately benefit employees and the business, some team members may be prone to clinging to old habits, showcasing a “this is the way we’ve always done it” mindset.

By anticipating where resistance may emerge, organizational leaders can implement proactive plans to address these friction points. As part of this process, they’ll also need to account for outages, work delays and other barriers to project success.

Proactive Oversight

During phase two, business leaders must finalize their plans and act swiftly to implement change. Some key components of this phase include:

• Disseminating communications to increase employee awareness
• Collaborating with union representatives
• Defining manager and supervisor roles and responsibilities

Additionally, decision-makers should conduct PROSCI’s ADKAR^® survey, which consists of the following components:

• Awareness
• Desire
• Knowledge
• Ability
• Reinforcement

The ADKAR blueprint provides valuable insights into how well the workforce is adapting to the new way of working by measuring relevant maintenance KPIs  and other established performance thresholds.

Post-Project Optimization

Contrary to popular belief, project implementation isn’t the finish line in change management. Once an organization wraps up a project and rolls out its key initiatives, it must continuously measure performance, review adoption metrics and proactively address any ongoing resistance to ensure that it realizes optimal ROI.

With that in mind, decision-makers should provide recommendations to mid-level managers, sponsors and informal leaders across the organization. This guidance will facilitate the continued adoption of change and maximize buy-in among line-level staff.

Focus on the Finish Line

During all phases of change management, organizational leaders must remain focused on two things: the motivation behind the project and the end goal. In the project that sparked this article, the ongoing support and commitment of the mill’s leadership was a driving force behind their positive outcomes during the PCA partnership. They experienced quantifiable improvements in operations and maintenance processes, overall equipment effectiveness and better collaboration across the organization.

In a similar manner, by maintaining a big-picture approach, manufacturing organizations can keep their projects on track and inform effective change management strategies, ensuring favorable outcomes and a meaningful return on investment.

PROSCI and ADKAR are registered trademarks of PROSCI Inc.