Change in general can be a difficult thing to navigate as an organisation. It can disrupt productivity, cause extensive delays and stagnation, and lead to confusion and misinformation. When institutional transitions aren't introduced with thoughtfulness, consideration, and planning, they can cause more harm to your company than good.
The same goes for changes and improvements made to incident reporting systems. To help you navigate this, here are our top tips for how to manage changes to your incident reporting structures.
Beginning with small goals is the best way to start your change management journey. If you dream too big, you can bite off more than you and your employees can chew. And with incident reporting, it’s the small things that make the difference.
Some minor but impactful goals that you can consider setting include:
Increasing the number of reports filed
Improving communication
Reducing injuries and incidents
Getting more feedback and input from employees
These are seemingly general aims but they have a direct impact on your incident reporting culture and effectiveness.
Setting reachable goals also allow you to achieve quick wins. Gaining wins swiftly after implementation is the secret sauce of change management.
With workplace changes, if the project doesn't start yielding results relatively quickly, people might change camps from “cautiously optimistic” to “increasingly negative”. Doubtful rumours, misinformation, and negativity will spread affecting employee buy-in to the changes. This is something to be avoided at all costs.
The whole change management initiative should be designed so that quick wins are possible in the first place. This means setting realistic expectations within clear timeframes. You must then share and promote the results as early as they are available to show your employees the change efficacy.
Always expect opposition, concerns, questions, and difficulties with new policies and systems. If objections arise, do not silence them or keep them under the rug. Instead, embrace them! Take them as welcome feedback that you can use to improve your proposed systems and plans. Find ways to integrate solutions to these contentions in your management plan.
When people feel heard, and issues are nipped in the bud, employees have less reason to oppose change. You also get to address problems before they grow too big and it's too late to keep them from erupting.
Our last tip for effective change management is to give your employees all the information they need right from the start. Educate and train them on the changes you’re implementing to make the transition easier for them. You can do this through training lessons, workshops, webinars, videos, posters, and more.
When your employees are informed, they can feel more confident and less confused about the change.
It’s never a good idea to just throw your employees into deep waters when introducing new systems and policies. This is particularly important for incident reporting as you want workers to have the confidence to file reports and share safety concerns.
With the tips above, you can get everybody comfortable with changes in incident reporting so they come forward without hesitation.
If you're looking for a platform to collect more data to monitor your organisation's incident management practices, we've got you covered. Falcony is easy-to-use, boosts two-way communication, has customisable workflows, automated analytics, vast integration possibilities and more. Start your 30-day trial or contact us for more information:
We are building the world's first operational involvement platform. Our mission is to make the process of finding, sharing, fixing and learning from issues and observations as easy as thinking about them and as rewarding as being remembered for them.
By doing this, we are making work more meaningful for all parties involved.
More information at falcony.io.