Does your team possess the right skills to overcome in-house uncertainty?

Being prepared to accept and tackle any changes within the market is crucial to ensure that your business doesn’t fall behind. As uncertainty is now an almost constant presence in most organisations, adaptability is a crucial skill. We can help you to understand the importance of change management, and how to spot the best professionals with the right skills to help your business navigate uncertainty. 

Change management and what it involves

The most prominent focus on change management within marketing departments is in change communications. These take place between senior-level decision makers and the employees within an organisation. Communications are vital to engage staff and to keep them updated with any changes within the business. 
These communications can be delivered through a number of digital tools such as the intranet, social media, and website blogs, as well as offline mediums such as newsletters and magazines. Processes such as these need to be managed to coincide with any insight that is going out to the wider market to ensure that employees are kept in the loop on all changes within the organisation. 

The importance of skills in change management 

When you are going through periods of change, you should be utilising insight and analytics effectively. It is important to be able to understand your company’s performance, market landscape, and gap analysis before any change management occurs. Any findings will be presented to senior members of the business to approve future plans, so strong presentation skills will be crucial when looking for new hires.
Change management occurs across all levels from junior to line managers, and even CEOs. Change can have a negative impact on employees if it isn't dealt with in the right way. Senior leadership changes need to be communicated quickly with a clear outlook of the future vision for the organisation. This will ensure that all employees are invested in the direction that the business is moving in.
We are seeing professionals with these skills within internal communications roles, as businesses go through change management programmes being redundancies, acquisition, or takeovers. Over the past 18 months, there has been a huge uplift in organisations placing a heavier focus on business intelligence, and the demand for these professionals is high. Organisations are seeking talented analysts who can manipulate data, bring insight, and consult the business on the impact and positive use of insights to support strategic directions. 

Developing your team

Developing your team is crucial to ensuring that they are equipped to deal with change management in your business. You should be developing your employees’ skill sets across all channels of communication, taking responsibility for creating content and managing certain areas within communications. Such as writing for the intranet, social media, or creating articles for internal newsletters. Allow staff to participate in smaller change management projects, such as communicating changes in personnel. This will provide a platform to develop further within bigger projects in the future.
Organisations are looking for analysts to become more than data experts, they want to be fully integrated with change management decisions and be able to report on key insight and support the business as changes are implemented. 

When to hire for change management

Within marketing, the two key roles include change communications and business analysts. Change communications forms part of the internal communications function. But, we are seeing organisations bringing in change communication specialists to run major projects which can run from 3 to 24-month contracts. Depending on the size of the change programme and the organisation itself, many businesses may also look to bring in specialists within digital channels, for the website and social media channels, as well as external communications, usually PR specialists. 

Recognising top talent

Throughout the interview stages, there are key things you should be looking out for when hiring new talent to manage change. You should evaluate a candidate’s previous experience and discuss projects they have managed. Through the examples they provide, you can discover their suitability for the role. Analysts will be able to present their previous experience through discussing methods of data sourcing, how they manipulated that data and how they presented the insights that they discovered. 
At Michael Page, we can help you to source and interview top talent that will help you to effectively and productively manage change within your organisation. For more information get in touch with one of our specialist recruitment consultants today.
Dean Hayman
Business Director, Michael Page Marketing
T: 0193 226 4138