With ambitious plans coming for the workplace, business leaders need better change management for support.
Every business wants to drive change in their industry, making the first move and growing as an organization. Often, this includes ambitious plans around the workplace and innovation, with a clear timeline for when they want to achieve it.
Often lost in translation, however, is the big picture of an organization’s appetite for change management and what is achievable on a given timeline with finite resources. Business leaders looking to implement a full enterprise suite of IWMS tools must consider several workplace areas to align their vision with reality.
This includes aspects of project management, human resources, IT, and other areas of an organization that are vital to the success of IWMS integration. With a full-scale enterprise integration, everything from space and hybrid work, maintenance and facilities, and real property become data pools with valuable information.
Guaranteeing that all sectors of your business are onboarded and up to speed with the vision for IWMS integration will play a significant role in getting the desired outcomes from your investment.
Technology will only magically fix some of the areas in which it’s implemented, so organizations must prepare and self-audit their course of action. Here are three areas of change management that guarantee a smooth transition so your business can hit the ground running.
Resources vs Vision
Have you ever put too much food on your plate? Did you order something a size too big? The same happens when effective change management processes are left out. All too often, firms see an IWMS tool as the lynchpin for achieving their goals in the workplace or making an impact in their operations but lack the resources to see it through.
Whether it’s a point solution for facilities or an enterprise suite, the human capital and bandwidth to leverage IWMS technology are necessary for a positive ROI.
Say a firm implements an enterprise IWMS suite to track and collect data on office space utilization, asset conditions, facilities maintenance, and portfolio energy use. The goal is to use the data to efficiently upgrade assets and facilities while optimizing the workplace for hybrid work. However, this is an often missed step as teams using the platform and acting on the data are not available to take on these new workflows.
This scenario is more commonplace than you might initially think. Integrating IWMS technologies brings new processes and operational adjustments to leverage the platform wholly. Ensuring that your team has the bandwidth for these new processes should be a prerequisite to integration. If the current squad lacks the resources, hiring new team members or supplementing resources must be accounted for.
Communication throughout your team is vital in effective change management practices. Knowing how different workplace areas are affected eliminates blind spots and maximizes your investment in IWMS solutions and your portfolio.
Timelines and Implementation
We live in a world of instant, with next-day delivery and on-demand answers to all life’s questions at our fingertips. Unfortunately, IWMS integrations don’t have the luxury of next-day delivery.
A common roadblock is the need for a realistic timeline for deployment and onboarding, wanting things to be ready to go at a specific date. Aligning timelines with the integration of IWMS tools, your budget, and your team are integral to getting the most out of your solution.
Training, onboarding, report production, and data integration have timelines and benchmarks to ensure organizations can leverage their solution.
Timelines must be aligned across all relevant sectors in the organization, especially those requiring training.
Effective change management practices take training timelines and onboarding new resources into account, and in some cases, your solution is fully up and running 2-3 months later. This gives both the integration and knowledge base to get up to speed.
Budgets are going to impact implementation timelines. If an organization wants a full enterprise suite installed in 6 months, there will be higher up-front costs and a more demanding workload for the integration. Factoring in expenses might alter timelines depending on budget constraints.
Alignment of goals and capacity for change
What do you want from your IWMS data and actual property portfolio?
For many organizations and commercial real estate leaders, it’s lower costs and improved portfolio utilization.
A common trend in commercial real estate for the foreseeable future is optimizing space and the push for a future-focused workplace. Many business leaders are taking the first steps to do this by gathering data to make informed decisions on the next steps.
But how does this align with operations and capacity for change?
Collecting the data is the first step. Ensuring that teams and processes are in place to turn data into actionable steps in the future is crucial.
Does your organization have frameworks to make the most of IWMS data? How do you plan on actioning the data that comes from your reports?
IWMS Supporting Change Management
Modules inside IWMS, like Archibus project management, are made to complement change in an organization, keeping track of budgets and project implementation in real property.
Project management is nothing new in business, but as changes continue to transform real property and commercial real estate, change management needs to be top of mind.
Change management helps organizations adopt innovative technologies and modern workplace strategies in commercial real estate transformation. A well-executed change management plan ensures that employees and stakeholders understand the benefits, embrace the new practices, and are equipped with the necessary skills. This minimizes resistance and maximizes the return on investment by accelerating the adoption of the latest techniques and technologies.
Workplace management in commercial real estate increasingly focuses on creating environments that foster collaboration, productivity, and employee well-being. Change management processes are instrumental in guiding organizations to transition to new workplace models, such as activity-based working or hybrid work arrangements. Communicating the rationale behind these changes, addressing concerns, and involving employees in decision-making are integral parts of workplace management in the future.
As workplace transformation gains traction, change management encourages a mindset that embraces growth opportunities. With this, real estate professionals are better equipped to adapt to market fluctuations, emerging trends, and evolving tenant expectations.
Horizants team of experts and workplace management solutions help streamline change management in your real property portfolio. Know the data on assets, space and finances in the planning stages of projects.
To bolster your project management with workplace management tools, contact us for more information and to improve your project management processes for the future.