Executive Leadership and Change Champions Are Keys to Success in the Cloud.

When moving to the Google Cloud platform, getting everyone in your organization engaged with change management is the only way to ensure a smooth transition process. That’s why it’s so important for people at the top to effectively communicate their objectives for change to their entire organization. According to research by Google, 84% of organizations considered senior leaders and executives to be one of the top three reasons for success. When workers see their managers directly involved with the transition, they are much more likely to enthusiastically participate.

Communications:  Be The Face of Change

Employees at your company may have heard about the move to GSuite Apps through word of mouth, announcements, or emails, but they are unlikely to become fully engaged with the change until a leader steps forward. This can be the president, CEO, or other executive, but what’s most important is to have a person at the top who visibly communicates the goals of change management. When Globe Telecom recently moved over to GSuite Apps, their CEO was very visible during the deployment. According to Miguel Cocjin, a professional who helped Globe Telecom with their transition, ““The most important element of deployment is having the top leadership team being very hands on.”

For large organizations, leading all aspects of change management isn’t possible for a single executive, so many specific responsibilities will need to be delegated to team leaders. With the help of an executive committee, each component of the change management process can be driven to the employee level effectively. The people leading these changes, who we’ll call change champions, will improve your company’s chances of reaching a variety of objectives significantly. In fact, 67% of project objectives were reached when a comprehensive change champion program was in place. Compare that to 33% or less projects reaching their goals when little or no champion program was present during the GSuite Apps transition.

Improving Employee Engagement

People are naturally resistant to change, especially when they’ve been doing things a certain way for a long time. You probably know a lot of individuals like this at your company, and you may be anticipating problems moving them over to the GSuite Apps platform. The best way to deal with these types of individuals is to make sure they realize that their boss and other important leaders at the company are fully on board with the change management process. Research from Google suggests that 45% of organizations who have gone through a GSuite Apps transition view executive sponsorship as the most effective tool for employee engagement.

Google Guides and Early Adopters

At the employee level, the best results come when individuals have direct access to support and guidance with trainers who’ve had experience working with the GSuite Apps platform. This means it’s important to make 5-10% of your workforce early adopters who get time to work with the new system for awhile before everyone else in the company. Even in small organizations, executive leadership will not have the time or resources to handle all the questions and support issues that are likely to come up during the transition, so these early adopters will play a crucial role before, during, and after the shift to GSuite Apps. When coupled with visible communication from the top, trainers at the individual level will find their responsibilities a whole lot easier.