The Best Way HR Can Actually Act As Change Agents

Life is never constant. As it is, change is inevitable and the best HR leaders do what they can to stay ahead of the change within their organizations.

In fact, in today’s corporate world, the best HR leaders are not those who react to change but those who act as change agents leading the company’s employees to positive directions.

Being a change agent therefore means wearing different hats. It means going out of your way to act as a leader to ensure that the organization is moving forward.

So that begs the questions; what role should you be playing as a change agent in your organization?

1. Change lies in first being then doing

In order to develop change within the organization and coach leaders, you need to be as equally involved with the business as any other department in the organization.

Truth is, today’s HR managers act as strategic partners to the business in any successful organization.

Your jurisdiction does not end where your roles end. It is not in that job description but in realizing that to succeed in your position; you need to develop others along the way.

2. Change begins with understanding

As you know, when bringing about any change in the organization, you are bound to encounter some resistance. How then do you handle the situation? What kind of leadership style do you use?

While high IQ is a requirement to succeed in your position, you also need to be EQ smart. Emotional intelligence is one of the key skills that all great managers and leaders have in common.

It’s all about perspective, intuitiveness and being reflective on how your actions affect others.

An emotionally intelligent leader knows that empowering others is way better than forcing decisions on them.

As a change agent therefore, start by understanding those who report to you. What are they going through? What are their aspirations? Will the changes you are about to make affect their well-being?

By understanding their emotional quotient, you will be in a better position to anticipate their resistance for any kind of change and being IQ smart, you can then formulate frameworks to bring about the change with minimal resistance.

For instance, last week one of our clients reached out to us to train their top managers on leadership skills since they had just introduced new policies and were experiencing resistance.

3. Change management is first and foremost about people and their capacity to adapt to change

Naturally, the HR department is all about recruiting, training and monitoring employee performance from the time they join the organization to the point where they are saying they want to move on to better things.

As the HR manager, you need to ensure that employees are motivated to undertake any changes and participate in the change management program.

And it all starts when you hire the right people who can think outside the box and bring fresh perspectives to the table.

4. Investigate resistance to change

Implementing change is rarely as straightforward as executing it. As HR you deal with people’s behaviors and attitudes and hence are required to dig below the surface to understand the dynamics of the organization.

As a change agent you have to constantly look for clues that give away to what is really preventing change from happening in your organization, so as to determine the steps most likely to remove obstacles and bring about success.

5. Encourage people to accept change

Change happens when you alter your own activities, behaviors as well as attitudes. In this case, people experience varied emotions when they come to terms with the fact that their sense of stability has been removed.

When you think about it, what you are asking them at the end of the day to do is to take risks and step out of their comfort zones and of course resistance will be experienced.

As a change agent, it is your duty to understand the personal implications of the people involved, so that in the end you can help them feel better about making the changes.

6. It is your role to facilitate change

One of your roles as a change agent is finding ways of helping people change. As a change agent, you need to clarify the change and make it easy to perform.

Your role as a facilitator therefore is in designing systems, tools and processes that enable people to succeed as they go through change. Change agents are not only helpful but creative.

Your turn

As you have seen, your role as HR goes beyond recruitment and personnel management. You are the backbone of the organization and it is through the decisions you make that companies can function. But what it all boils down to is how you interact with those below you. Nobody wants change and as such you need to understand the dynamics of the organization and the people as well to make changes succeed and stick.

In order to gain a better understanding of your employees and the organization as a whole, learn more about our upcoming personnel management training. Here you will gain a deeper understanding of how to lead from the front. To reserve your seat for this training today, click on this link and you will receive more information.