Proper Change Management Starts with Employee Involvement
Grocery Dive has a thoughtful piece from Jessica Dumont about automation, new skill adoption, in the industry. A few tidbits I learned from it:
Less than 5% of current jobs are "fully automatable" but that doesn't mean that many more are affected by tech innovation.
McKinsey found that it's about 20% of cheaper to re-skill existing employees than hiring new ones (which explains Amazon's massive re-skilling announcement recently)
The thing that gets me about these processes is how most companies don't know how to involve employees in corporate change and innovation that affects employees.
How it often works is managers decide what to do, and then roll it out with huge gaps. Then when the gaps are pointed out, only after significant friction is any change rethought. This is how employees get frustrated.
Involving employees in identifying key areas for change, ideating on solutions, and assisting with the rollout. You can then build a much better plan that is designed to change from the beginning - because employees themselves can then admit something needs to be fixed themselves rather than waiting for management to realize it.
