Change Management is a hot topic and on the agenda in the current overview of an increasing number of rapidly changing companies for many reasons: acquisitions, mergers, transfers, renovations, and shareholdings. Companies change and this transformation affects people who work there and have to face new roles, acquire new skills and learn to interact with a new business geography, both real and metaphorical. The Change Management programs are necessary to learn to manage new realities, increasing complexities, new skills, and comparisons with other colleagues and business departments. Inside a changing company, the career development and succession plans are often overwhelmed by “tsunami” changes, alterations, replacements, arrivals and departures. In this context, it is important to be prepared to handle the career, sequence and alteration plans in an appropriate way planning the careers of high performers and minimizing the risk of leaving any open key-position. In addition to that, it is important to grant a transparency policy of information targeted at high-potential people, as well as an open and formalized sharing between employee and manager on the development plan for engagement and loyalty purposes, which can help in limiting the voluntary exits.
The strategies adopted by the companies about career plans move in the perspective of transparency, agreement, and dialogue. Among the most adopted, there are transparent policies towards the high performers (implemented by 67% of the Top Employers companies); promotions and career plans planned with formal agreements between the employee and the manager (in 94% of the Top Employers companies); sharing of the development path between employee and manager (in 95% of the Top Employers companies).
Alongside the plans for assimilating and managing changes, much importance is also given to how these necessary transformations are communicated within the company. Companies use Best Practices that focus on the motivation and the involvement and repeat on a regular basis some indispensable, common principles: empowerment, respect, motivation, trust, transparency.
Particular consideration shall be given to the means of communication and involvement to facilitate the overcoming of the various critical moments, linked to personal or professional situations of any kind.
Among the most widely applied and proven solution there are the reverse mentoring, dedicated to overcoming the generational gap and the differences in the technological familiarity between the senior management and the new digitized generations; the professional upgrading and tutoring actions to encourage the return to work after periods of absence (maternity, sabbatical year or illness); the extensive support and/or counselling activities outside the company’s boundaries and reserved to the children and the relatives of the employee.
The social initiatives become more and more important and are often delegated to the initiatives and the creativity of the employees themselves encouraged to express themselves with videos, video games, company games that are highly successful and interesting.
