Change Management

Change management is a term from business administration. It describes the combined approaches of all the planning, monitoring, and strategic processes and competencies involved in the development and change processes within an organization. The objective of change management is to steer strategic realignments in companies, corporations, and other organisations and to transfer them from the current to the desired state.

Put simply, change management is necessary when the current state of an organisation no longer corresponds to what the end goals for achievement are. Typical indications are new legal requirements, escalating operating costs, or declining sales figures. Market-relevant factors such as a change in demand or the introduction of technical innovations also make the topic of change management relevant. The same applies when a company wants to expand its field of activity, e.g. from national to international. Changes at the top of a company can also bring about far-reaching changes.

Change management is gaining importance in times of energy transition, demographic change, digitalisation, and globalisation. Companies are realigning their energy supply as well as their production and distribution channels, and there’s a growing consciousness of the health implications around work-life balance. This results in numerous opportunities for application. Change management experts work in political and non-governmental organisations, medium-sized companies, and internationally operating large corporations.

At the beginning of the process, there is an inventory of the current problems, which are then intensively examined to see how they arose. In the next phase, change management develops change processes and defines goals on how to improve the situation. In this context, the time and financial scope of the realignment are also determined. The planning is followed by the concrete implementation, which should ideally be carried out in a socially acceptable manner. A practical part of this phase is the implementation of internal reforms. Finally, the process of change management can be regularly checked for success using various test instruments.

In addition to intensive discussions with staff and management, instruments such as market and competitor analysis are used before the change processes. This determines how comprehensively and in which direction change management must be pursued. Operationally, a strategic realignment takes the form of process consultations, workshops, coaching, and practical instructions for action (e.g. changes in the product range, realignment of the product portfolio, etc.) as well as the preparation of documents to measure future successes. To check the success of the change management, regular staff surveys, interviews, evaluation forms, and increased interim business assessments are used after the completion of the measures.

Change management is considered to be successful if it leads the organisation to new successes without having to act in a socially irresponsible manner (e.g. redundancies for operational reasons). Retaining the majority of the workforce is seen as a success in change management, as is improvements in balance sheets. Other success factors include the inclusion of all employees and critics, a focused approach while preserving the established corporate culture, and the development of sustainable concepts.

Scheduled in time, change management can release previously unused potential in an organisation and protect it from negative developments caused by various external influences. Ideally, change management will secure jobs and livelihoods.