Piloting Change: The Catalyzing Factors and the Art of Involving Employees

By
Amandine Fernandez
Head of Acquisition
Increasing competition, changing work methods, the health crisis, creating a new service offer—any number of factors can be catalysts for change in a company, and each one must be accompanied by strong internal communication in order to successfully bring teams together.

Heraclitus of Ephesus was before his time when he gave us the adage, “Nothing is permanent, only change.” Every group of people experiences change as part of daily life, not the least of which are companies. But we must differentiate between the many small operational changes that take place regularly, and strategic redirections that profoundly alter organizations and the way they function.

Why change?

Most companies need to change and re-evaluate themselves in order to succeed sustainably over the long-term. Digitalizing new work processes, adapting to legislative developments and regulatory constraints (like GDPR), increasing competitive pressure, mergers and restructuring, creating a new service offer, outsourcing a department, moving all or some of the staff… there’s a wide range of potential catalysts of change.

In recent months, the pandemic has caused numerous disruptions and brought entire parts of the economy to a halt. But it has also led thousands of companies to reinvent themselves, modify their business model, or simply create brand-new products and services they might otherwise never have thought of. So, we change to adapt, but we also change to progress. After all, what company doesn’t dream of improving, of learning from its mistakes, offering innovations, and accelerating its growth while competitors lag behind? Everything starts with one question: does my company need to evolve in order to fulfill its mission and sustain permanent development, both today and tomorrow? If the answer is yes, the change must be carefully planned and designed.

Ever-increasing factors of change

Change nearly always starts with an awareness of a disconnect between a company’s goals and the means or measures it is implementing to achieve them.

There are many potential factors, including but not limited to:

  • Technological disconnect
  • Strategic disconnect: re-centering or expanding the core business due to market constraints, competition, or shareholders
  • Cultural evolution: misalignment or evolution of values
  • Regulatory constraints
  • Structural constraints: organization poorly-suited to the environment

Forced change vs. Elected change

These “catalyzing factors” can be divided into different categories: internal ones (strategy, organization of activities, tools, culture, etc.), and external ones (the market, technological or sociological environment, etc.), as well as structural and cyclical causes. Whether change is forced or chosen, and whether it takes place urgently or gradually, its aim is nearly always progress and improvement. And in any scenario, success is never guaranteed.

One noteworthy study from the Harvard Business Review, which has since been corroborated by McKinsey, shows that the majority of company changes fail, not for budgetary or material reasons, but for human ones, i.e. employee attitudes and manager behaviors. This is the infamous “resistance to change” we hear of.

Take the case of a company operating internationally that plans to launch a new tool (e.g. an accounting or HR solution, marketing tool, etc.) across all of its subsidiaries. The end goal is clear: harmonizing and optimizing processes and performance. But it requires employees to change their habits, learn new practices, and adapt. It’s vital to support them in this process. This is precisely the goal of “change management:” countering resistance to change and other obstacles to innovation projects. Supporting employee development and skill acquisition and keeping employees regularly informed are equally vital actions.

Communicate for effective change!

As such, a crucial point of change management involves tailored, precise, and frequent employee communication. Regardless of whether employees are telecommuting, in flex offices, or going into the office daily, they must all be aligned, with access to the same information. Email signatures are an effective tool for achieving this change management and getting teams on board.

Easy to deploy, email signatures provide a readable, coherent, and accessible channel for driving change. A solution like Letsignit offers the ability to create different types of signatures depending on whether an email is going to colleagues or to people outside the company.

Email signatures are a new place for internal communication, and as such, are ideal for transmitting important news, ensuring all collaborators have access to the same information, regularly communicating about in-progress transformations, and getting employees involved in the success of a project.

Sources:
https://alain.le-diberder.com/lhistoire-mouvementee-de-netflix/
http://courriercadres.com/management/art-de-decider-discernement/netflix-lart-de-la-disruption-10092018
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/changing-change-management
http://www.btoblog.com/a-vos-marques-prets-changez-3-causes-de-frein-au-changement/

About the author
Amandine is the Head of Acquisition at Letsignit! Initially a content specialist, she now actively contributes to the profitability of acquisition channels: SEO, SEA, SMA, SMO... Amandine is also one of the pillars of Marketing at Letsignit! For more than 5 years, she has been participating in and initiating marketing projects and campaigns that systematically reflect her vision, writing style, and creativity (which can also be seen in all of her colorful outfits that brighten up the day of everyone she meets).
About Letsignit
With Letsignit email signature manager, connect with your audience in a way that's on-brand and personal, while driving quality lead generation.
Frequently
asked questions
1
Is it possible to track the number of clicks on email signatures?

Yes, with the 'Campaigns' offer, it is possible to track the number of clicks on the email signatures of all your employees in the 'Statistics' area of the platform.

You can then access a detailed or global view of the number of clicks on the email signatures of each employee. You can use the search option to target a specific signature or a given period. Finally, you have the possibility to export all statistics to an Excel document.

If you launch campaigns with banners inserted in your email signatures, you can also access their performance via this same space.

2
Can we add links to social networks, our website, and appointment-setting applications such as Calendly?

With Letsignit, you can easily add social network icons in your collaborators' email signatures and link to your company pages. Also, our "attributes" feature allows you to manage personalized URLs for each of your collaborators such as their individual LinkedIn profile.

And that's not all: you can add links to an appointment-setting application, allow your customers to leave reviews easily, and integrate our 'Chat on Teams' widget to let anyone start a discussion via Microsoft Teams chat.

3
Can employees update their signature information themselves (number, function, etc.)?

It’s up to you! As an administrator of the Letsignit platform, you choose whether or not to grant modification rights to your employees. These permissions are managed on an attribute-by-attribute basis, which means that you can decide to allow the employee to change their phone number, but not the address of your premises, for example.

This feature applies to all attributes in your directory, including custom attributes created on Letsignit. When your employees change one or more attributes, your directory is obviously not affected.

4
Why it is important to standardize our email signatures on a large scale to ensure our identity and brand image?

It often happens that employees make their email signature their own: custom format, bad fonts, colors inconsistent with the brand standards... all of this has an impact on your brand!

A consistent visual identity is considered authentic and outperforms a perceived weak one by 20%. And, your customers are 2.4 times more likely to buy your products.

With Letsignit, take back control over your brand identity by standardizing all your email signatures. Our tool has many features that allow you to customize your signatures by department, by audience or by subsidiary. Not to mention the possibility of carrying out campaigns within your email signatures thanks to our Campaign offer.

5
What is the user experience like for our employees?

What is the user experience like for our employees?

  • If you opt for the Letsignit Add-in for Outlook, they will have a dedicated space in their Outlook account where they will be able to view the signatures and campaigns assigned to them.
  • If you opt for the Letsignit Desktop APP, they will be able to preview all their signatures and campaigns in this space. If they want to change their default signature to another one when sending an email, this will be done in their signature library in Outlook.

In both cases:

  • They preview their signature before sending an email and choose from signatures assigned to them.
  • Based on the permissions granted, they will also be able to modify their personal information such as their name, position, or address in these spaces.

In short, they have autonomy in their email signature, but you keep control on the field, signatures, and banners they can edit or use.

6
Can my employees have multiple signatures available to them?

With our "multi-signature" feature, your employees can benefit from multiple email signatures. No technical manipulation is required. Thanks to our Add-in for Outlook or the desktop app, they can change their email signatures as they wish with just a few clicks.

Regarding the creation of email signatures, you can make several variations such as:

Everything has been thought of to go further in the personalization process based on the recipient of your emails.

7
Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

8
Regarding “Green IT,” have you implemented measures to limit the digital footprint of email signatures?

If sending emails has an impact, non-optimized email signatures also have an impact. An unsuitable format or an image that is too heavy considerably increases the size of your signatures... and therefore, your emails.

As a responsible economic actor, we contribute to reducing our CO2 emissions and those of our customers in several ways:

  • Optimization of the weight of signatures and campaigns in emails.
  • Green features: lightening of signatures during response/transfer emails, possibility of not embedding images, implementation of lighter signatures for internal exchanges.
  • Integration of a 'Switch to Teams' widget to encourage your employees to continue their exchanges via chat, rather than email.

As we are increasingly involved in sustainability initiatives, our priority in 2023 is to develop even more green IT functionality.

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asked questions
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