Engaging Staff in Change: Headache or Team Builder?

on June 22, 2012 at 10:43 am

My natural tendency when I hear about team decisions, large group meetings and engaging staff is to shy away; this could be due to my type A personality of wanting to make decisions, my dislike of conflict (I hate when people don’t feel heard in a meeting) and my frustration with wasted time trying to consider ideas that just don’t make sense, all of which inevitably come up in this type of engagement process. That said, I have seen the incredible results that come from staff engagement in food service and how the folks on the front line really can help an initiative gain a solid foothold, more so than any top down implementation.

Let me clarify, I am not suggesting that these meetings become a free for all of endless opinions and minute details but I am however suggesting that there is an appropriate time and place to engage your staff and it usually comes before the project is ready to launch. Asking for feedback, conducting focus groups (make sure you are careful of how you divide the group making sure your pro change staff and change averse staff are evenly dispersed to keep the morale high), trying to make the change visible (ask a senior staff member to come in and visit with the group while they are working or send a letter to the staff letting them know how important their work is to the hospital and that they are “seen” by the higher levels of the organization) are all ways to make your staff feel included in the change versus having change forced upon them.

Here are a few steps to ease your team through change:

See if you can find some great articles or information on what you are intending to change in your facility, maybe a group that has already implemented this shift with success and make this information available to your team in an informal way, on your staff bulletin board, as a slide in a staff meeting or through general conversations with your team.
Once the idea has been floating around, let your staff know as a group that there is a desired outcome that needs to be achieved (maybe increase in patient satisfaction, infusing the menu with more exciting meal options, changing work loads to allow for other tasks to be accomplished) rather than suggesting that changes are coming down the pipe. This will allow people to wrap their heads around the idea that change is necessary but that it is occurring for a tangible reason.
Now that your staff realize there is something in the current system that is not working, take the time to let them know how the changes will be taking place and what this means for them (make sure you have worked out all of the impacts of these changes prior to this meeting). People are going to have issues with these changes, some of them have been responsible for their current position for a long time and this request for change and flexibility triggers people’s stability in their work environment, maybe makes them feel less valued or that they have been doing something wrong all along. This is a great time to reassure them that the changes have nothing to do with any of these insecurities.
Open up the dialogue within the group at this stage of the game, you don’t want people leaving the meeting feeling unsure or unheard and creating tension in the rest of the work environment. Make sure people feel heard and that their concerns are addressed in a real way and it is okay at this point not to have all of the answers but to reassure them that you will let them know when you do have them.
If your change is a new meal item or a new process, have staff participate either in a food tasting, by providing them recipes of the item that they can prepare at home for their families or by asking for their feedback on a specific change in process; you won’t necessarily be able to incorporate all of their ideas but they are the people engaged directly in the work and may have interesting tricks to make this transition smooth.
Try to have fun with this process; have a lunch or a yummy treat brought in for the meeting so your staff feel special and appreciated, we all like to feel valued and this will make the notion of change that much easier to swallow!