Best Step-by-Step Guide to Change Readiness Assessment
(for Change Managers & Project Leads)
Are you ready for change?
Change is an inevitable part of any dynamic organization’s journey. It can be an exciting opportunity for growth and innovation, but it also comes with its unique set of challenges. That’s where this guide comes in – it’s your trusted companion on the path to successfully navigating change within your organization.
In this guide, we’ll help you understand the concept of change readiness and why it’s so crucial for the success of any transformative initiative. We’ll break down the complexities of change into manageable steps, providing you with a roadmap to assess, plan, and implement changes smoothly.
Whether you’re looking to streamline processes, adapt to new technologies, or enhance your team’s performance, the principles of change readiness can be applied to a wide range of scenarios.
So, if you’re ready to embark on a journey towards a more adaptable, resilient, and change-savvy organization, let’s get started! Our Organizational Change Readiness Guide will empower you with the knowledge and tools you need to thrive in an ever-evolving business landscape.
Interested in a brief summary? It’s up next, but if you’re enthusiastic about delving into the definitive change readiness guide, your journey starts here!
Quick Summary
Embracing Change: The Significance of Readiness
Readiness for change refers to the process of preparing individuals and organizations to effectively embrace and implement changes in an organizational setting. It involves communication, education, training, and managing obstacles to ensure a successful transition. Whether the change is minor, like updating an access card system, or major, like adopting a new digital document system, it is crucial to ensure that people are prepared and willing to adapt to the changes, as failure to do so can jeopardize the success of the project.
Are you finding it challenging to navigate complex readiness assessment software? If so, there’s no better moment than now to explore OCMS Portal. Our comprehensive OCM solution incorporates a user-friendly change readiness tool, created to efficiently evaluate stakeholders’ readiness for change. Start your free trial today, no credit card needed.
The Significance of Project Readiness Assessment
A Project Readiness Assessment is vital to project success because it ensures an organization is ready for the changes a project brings. Deploying a project isn’t straightforward; people often resist change. Assessing organizational readiness using a business readiness template helps identify gaps and allows for effective mitigation by the change management team.
Assessing Readiness for Change: Best Practices
Assessing readiness for change is crucial for successful organizational transitions. Begin by collecting key performance indicators (KPIs) early in the project to establish a baseline for business readiness. These KPIs include:
- Awareness of the change
- Acceptance of the change
- Capacity for change
- Knowledge of what is changing
- Level of training needed
The combined assessment of these KPIs determines the overall readiness of groups or individuals for the project’s implementation. The initial baseline informs change management engagement planning. For instance, if awareness is high but knowledge is low, prioritize training readiness. If a group lacks the capacity for change, involve sponsors and executives to address this gap.
After change management engagement activities, confirm progress through implementation readiness assessments to ensure readiness for the project’s launch. The number of readiness assessments depends on project scope and readiness results, typically ranging from 2 to 5 assessments. These KPIs collectively determine the overall readiness of groups or individuals for the project’s go-live date.
Measuring Change Readiness: Utilizing 5 Key KPI Components
The Change Readiness Matrix provides guidance on what to do if these KPIs are low, emphasizing the importance of effective communication, engagement, and support to improve readiness. It includes five key performance indicator (KPI) components used in a business readiness assessment:
KPI 1: Awareness of the Change: Lack of awareness is the primary reason for resistance to change. It’s crucial to assess end-users’ awareness of the change to increase their willingness to support it.
KPI 2: Acceptance of the Change: Acceptance of the change is vital for readiness. Initial opposition to change is common, and it’s important to engage stakeholders to gain their acceptance and support.
KPI 3: Capacity for Change: Groups may be undergoing multiple changes, affecting their capacity for more. Assess each group’s capacity for additional change to tailor engagement accordingly.
KPI 4: Knowledge of What is Changing: Impacted stakeholders may be aware of and accept a change, but they might lack basic knowledge of what specifically is changing in their workflow. To address this:
- Provide a high level of training and communication to enhance their understanding.
- Ensuring people are aware of what changes are happening and when they are happening is vital.
- Training, communication, and support are essential to prepare an organization for a successful project go-live.
KPI 5: Level of Training Required: Once stakeholders have basic knowledge of the changes, formal training is needed for them to gain the necessary proficiency. A high level of required training indicates the need for more preparation:
- End-users must transition from their current state to the target future state with the right knowledge and skills.
- In cases of transformational change, various components like job roles, systems, tools, processes, policies, and procedures may change.
- If the level of training required is high, the change management team should plan extensive or additional training to ensure readiness, especially during subsequent readiness assessments.
The OCMS Portal’s comprehensive All-in-One change management suite offers a leading readiness assessment software, among other tools in aiding the achievement of successful change management. You can test all of these features without any cost or the requirement for a credit card. Start your free trial today (no credit card needed).
Strategic Readiness Assessment: A Comprehensive Walkthrough
Following a practical step-by-step process for assessing organizational change readiness while simultaneously understanding and preparing for it is critical to the success of projects. But it can also require some intricate changes for example in how people work.
The following steps expand on those ideas and are as follows:
- Step 1: Review Project Details: Understand the project’s goals and the groups affected by the change. Determine what readiness means for the project and identify the groups that need to be prepared for the change.
- Step 2: Prepare for Conducting the Organizational Change Assessment: Choose the tools and templates for readiness assessment. Identify key managers and leaders to coordinate with.
- Step 3: Conduct the First Organizational Readiness Assessment: Assess where impacted stakeholders stand regarding readiness for change. Use surveys, focus groups, interviews, and other methods to gather data.
- Step 4: Engage with Stakeholders to Improve Readiness for Change: Collaborate with managers and key individuals of impacted groups to review results and deploy readiness plans.
- Step 5: Conduct the Second Organizational Readiness Assessment: Conduct a follow-up assessment to measure progress in readiness. Use the same methods as in the first assessment.
- Step 6 (As Needed): Engage to Improve Readiness to Change, Conduct Business Readiness Assessment, and Repeat as Necessary: If groups still lack readiness, continue with engagement and readiness activities, followed by additional assessments.
- Step 7: Finalize the Project’s Capability Assessment for Readiness: After the last assessment, make final updates and submit the readiness assessment report to project leads and stakeholders.
This process helps organizations systematically evaluate and enhance their readiness for change, ensuring a smoother transition during projects impacting the way people work.
Detailed Deep Dive
This Year’s Best Guide for Assessing & Creating Readiness for Organizational Change
When a change impacts the way people do things in their day-to-day jobs or in their organizational workflow, those people need to be prepared to adopt the changes. A change includes any changes to the processes, tools, systems, culture, policies, data, or protocol that people are used to, in their organization or group.
Getting these impacted users and stakeholders ready for go-live is in essence what change readiness is.
A change readiness assessment helps you gauge how ready your organization is for a transition. It looks at things like awareness, acceptance, knowledge, and more. A readiness test before a project is deployed in an organization is a critical component of change management. It increases the success of the project by ensuring that impacted individuals and groups are ready to adopt the changes required.
This guide is designed for Organizational Change Management Practitioners, HR, Project & Program Leads, Business Readiness Consultants, Organizational Readiness Analysts, and other practitioners for conducting the most effective assessments to measure organizational readiness for change.
We’ve also included steps and change readiness assessment tools for getting the impacted organizations ready to successfully transition.
“As a Senior Change Consultant, I have implemented global transformations that have impacted over 100,000 users across Intel, Apple, Cisco, Capital One, the Federal Reserve Bank, Accenture, HSBC, and Deloitte.
Something I have discovered is that applying the business readiness steps outlined below, as well as the best practices to assess readiness for change described below increases the success of a business change by an additional 78% on average.”
Ogbe Airiodion
Senior Change Management Consultant
This free guide provides you with a step-by-step overview of the best business readiness activities.
Change management, as well as business readiness management support, are fast-paced and ever-changing fields. It can sometimes be frustrating to get through a project if you’re relying on an outdated organizational change readiness assessment template and framework that no longer work or are cumbersome to use.
That’s why it’s crucial for you to stay well-informed on the most updated organizational readiness tools and best practices. To support you and other change practitioners and project leads in their business process readiness activities, this guide also references OCMS Portal’s best-in-class #1 Change Readiness Assessment Tool with Templates and Sample Data that you can leverage to enhance your change management readiness assessment performance.
Table of Contents: Creating Readiness to Change Guide
Keep on scrolling down this page to read each section or click any link below to go directly to that section.
1. First, What is Readiness for Change?
2. What is a Readiness Assessment?
3. Why is Project Readiness Assessment Important?
4. How Do You Improve Change Readiness?
5. How Do You Assess Readiness for Change? (Readiness to Change Scale)
6. Change Readiness Matrix: 5 KPI Components to Use in a Business Readiness Assessment
a. KPI 1: Awareness of the Change
b. KPI 2: Acceptance of the Change
c. KPI 3: Capacity for Change
d. KPI 4: Knowledge of What is Changing
e. KPI 5: Level of Training Needed
f. Overall Level of Readiness
7. Step-by-Step: Assessment Readiness with Detailed Readiness Process to Follow
a. Step 1: Review Product Details to Learn Project Readiness Goals
i. Understand What Readiness Means for this Project
ii. Understand Which Groups Will Need to be Readied for the Changes
iii. Understand What Factors are Assessed to Indicate Readiness.
b. Step 2: Prepare for Conducting the Organizational Change Assessment
i. Choose Your Business Readiness Template and Tools
ii. Identify Key Managers/Leaders You’ll Need to Coordinate With
c. Step 3: Conduct the First (Baseline) Organizational Readiness Assessment
i. Individual Change Readiness Assessment Survey
ii. Guided Focus Groups and 1-to-1 Meetings
iii. Employee and Manager Interviews
d. Step 4: Engage with Stakeholders to Improve Readiness for Change
i. Project Readiness Review with Managers of Impacted Groups
ii. Engagement with Impacted Individuals & Groups to Improve Change Readiness
e. Step 5: Conduct the Second Organizational Readiness Assessment
f. Step 6 (As Needed): Engage to Improve Readiness to Change, Conduct Business Readiness Assessment, and Repeat as Necessary
g. Step 7: Finalize the Project’s Capability Assessment for Readiness
8. OCMS Portal Change Readiness Assessment Templates & Reporting Tools
9. Conclusion: Readiness to Change Model & Business Readiness Plan
10. FAQ: Organizational Change Readiness Guide
Do you have questions about the concept of readiness, IT readiness assessment, or the business readiness definition? Please reach out and let us know. We’ll love to hear from you.
Don’t Miss: Alternative Prosci Readiness Assessment Tool.
First, What is Readiness for Change?
Readiness for change is the set of steps involved to prepare people and organizations to successfully adopt the changes that are being implemented as part of an organizational change. Readiness to change involves communicating with people about what is going to change and what they need to know, as well as educating them to adopt the change.
The change readiness definition also includes things like training and managing obstacles that can get in the way of the readiness manager’s efforts.
Organizations undergo change often. Sometimes it’s small, such as updating a keycard system for a facility’s front gate. And sometimes it’s large, such as implementing a new digital document system throughout the company for collecting customer data.
Any project like this that requires people to do something different, such as using a different key card for getting in to work each day, or learning an entirely new technology system, can fail if those people aren’t ready.
OCMS Portal Readiness for Change Assessment Tool
Group & Individual Change Readiness Assessment Templates & Launch Readiness Checklist
Don’t Miss: Change Readiness Review and Assessment Toolkit.
What business readiness definition does your company use? Does it differ from the organizational readiness definition above? Please reach out and share your thoughts.
Now that we know the change readiness definition. let’s look at the answer to, “what is readiness assessment?” for a project and organization.
What is a Readiness Assessment?
An organizational change readiness assessment is the set of tasks that you complete to identify how prepared an organization is for a particular change. How often you need to assess a group’s level of readiness will be based on the scale of the change itself, as well as the severity of the impacts.
In a readiness assessment, a readiness for change scale is used to compare early assessments, such as the first one done as a baseline, to subsequent employee readiness assessment reports. This readiness matrix will hopefully show that there has been an improvement in readiness as the assessed groups and individuals get closer to a “go-live” date.
In a digital readiness assessment, several factors are reviewed to get an understanding of how prepared the impacted organizational groups are for the upcoming changes required by a project. We will be reviewing these factors in detail in this operational readiness assessment guide.
When a business goes through change, the impacted groups and individuals need to be prepared and ready for that change. A large change with severe impacts will involve a more comprehensive employee and manager readiness assessment and more work to prepare the groups than a change with minor impacts.
Do the impacted employees and departments know about the change? Do they support the change? How much training will they need on the new processes and procedures?
These are just a few of the important data points you’ll be gathering as a business readiness manager during an organization readiness assessment. If you’re using the OCMS Portal Organizational Readiness Assessment Tool, you can leverage a free organization readiness for change survey to gather this important information.
Illustration: OCMS Portal Workplace Readiness Assessment Survey
Example of the survey that comes with the OCMS Portal Readiness Assessment Tool.
Why is Project Readiness Assessment Important?
Why can’t you just deploy a new project and be done with it? Won’t people just use what you give them?
If only organisational readiness were that simple. People are naturally resistant to change. You can roll out a new project, such as the implementation of a digital document system, but if people don’t know how to use it, don’t want to use it, or can’t use it for another reason, then the project fails.
Project success is reliant on those required to make changes adopting them successfully and permanently. Assessing organizational readiness for change is important if you want a project to succeed.
Organizational readiness to change assessment using a business readiness template provides an important gauge as to how ready an organization is for the changes required by a project to be implemented.
It also provides vital insights for the business readiness manager and change management team as to change readiness gap areas for stakeholders, so those gaps can be addressed.
Don’t Miss: Organization Readiness for Change Assessment Software.
Do you have any questions pertaining to a readiness to change assessment tool, an alternative to a change readiness assessment template Prosci tool, ‘what is business readiness?’ or ‘what is organizational readiness?’ Please reach out and let us know.
How Do You Improve Change Readiness?
Every group has its own unique characteristics that make the change either easy or challenging to implement for that organization.
When conducting your post implementation review checklist and business transformation readiness assessment, it is important that you use best practices that are consistent for each of these groups.
Using an organizational readiness assessment checklist can help ensure you’re using a standard method and good organizational assessment models to help you improve change readiness.
You improve organizational readiness for implementing change by understanding what barriers there may be to the change implementation and addressing them.
For example, if you learn that some departments don’t know much about how the upcoming change will impact them, you can schedule a workshop to explain the process, thus improving change assessment readiness of those departments.
If you learn through your Agile readiness assessment that individuals are becoming overwhelmed by the number of earlier changes and do not have the capacity for another change, you can work on ways to lessen the load on them.
Doing a detailed organization and leadership readiness assessment is how you know what readiness items you need to address for each assessed group.
The goal of a readiness to change model & assessment is to ready impacted individuals & groups for their “new normal.”
How do you know what to do to improve readiness? The assessment of readiness to change process!
The findings from your readiness for change assessment will allow you to better plan your change management activities, including communications, engagement, and any needed training that needs to be delivered.
Have you been looking for an effective group and individual readiness for change assessment tool? In search of an alternative to the Prosci change readiness assessment and change readiness assessment Deloitte model? Check out the comprehensive OCMS Portal Organizational Readiness Assessment Template & Analytics Tool, with a change readiness checklist.
Get the OCMS Portal Project Readiness Assessment Template Now!
How Do You Assess Readiness for Change? (Readiness to Change Scale)
What are the best ways for conducting an effective organizational change readiness assessment that will increase your success?
Based on industry best practices and decades of change management experience, when conducting a readiness assessment, you should analyze and document some key factors.
You should collect these key performance indicators (KPIs) early in the project to get a baseline determining what is business readiness for each group and/or individual being assessed. Use an operational readiness template to record the results so you can compare subsequent assessments.
The baseline that the first organisational readiness for change assessment gives should be used to guide your change management engagement planning. For example: Is awareness of the change high, but knowledge of what to do is low? This means your readiness planning should include ensuring employees’ readiness for training as a top priority.
Don’t Miss: Alternate Change Readiness Assessment Prosci Template.
Do the readiness review template reports show group capacity (aka bandwidth) is low or non-existent to take on a new change? Then, you’ll need to discuss the readiness audit with sponsors and other executives that can give these groups more capacity to learn what’s needed for a successful transition.
After your change management engagement activities to improve the overall readiness result for the groups, you should confirm progress by doing another implementation readiness assessment to see if the organization is ready for the “go-live” date.
The number of cycles of change management engagement, then assessing readiness for change you do will depend on the scope and timeline of the project as well as the overall readiness result. Some organizational culture and readiness assessment cycles use just 2 assessments, and others might use 4 or 5 assessments.
Using a change management readiness assessment template, like the OCMS Portal Change Readiness Toolkit, can make it easy to compare results and show progress towards organization readiness for change.
Example of the OCMS Portal organizational culture and readiness assessment toolkit. The dashboard graph shows how the readiness levels are distributed across a project.
What key performance indicators should you assess in a project readiness review?
We’ll list the 5 KPIs from the OCM Solution business readiness framework below, and then describe each of them in more detail in the following sections.
Readiness Matrix | 5 Key KPIs & Business Readiness Criteria
- Awareness of the change
- Acceptance of the change
- Capacity for change
- Knowledge of what is changing
- Level of training needed
When you look at these five as a total readiness test result, it should equate to the overall readiness of the group or individual for the project’s go-live date.
Do you have any questions about creating a change readiness plan? Need to find a substitute for Prosci readiness assessment tools? Please reach out and let us know.
Change Readiness Matrix: 5 KPI Components to Use in a Business Readiness Assessment
This section provides you with a detailed overview of each business readiness criteria listed above. If you’re just looking for the steps to take, you can skip directly to the Step-By-Step Business Change Readiness Checklist and Process.
KPI 1: Awareness of the Change
Over the last decades, ongoing studies of workplace readiness assessment and change management have shown that a lack of awareness is the number one reason why end-users including employees, managers, leaders, and external users resist a change.
Having awareness, and an understanding of the driving factors behind a change (for example: why now, what are the risks of not changing, what are the benefits, and “how am I impacted by the change?”) is one of the first steps towards organizational readiness for change.
Awareness helps to increase the willingness of impacted and potentially impacted end-user to support the change, which subsequently helps to reduce resistance and creates a higher level of readiness.
As such, a key component that you need to assess when conducting your organisational readiness assessment is the level of end-user awareness of the program/initiative/project.
See Also: Alternate Prosci Readiness Assessment Template.
What should you do if Awareness of the Change is low?
If awareness is low, then the change management team needs to provide a high level of communication to explain what the project is and what changes need to be adopted by this group/individual as part of the project rollout.
Awareness communications used in the organizational readiness plan should also include the WIIFM (What’s in it for Me), which lets impacted groups and individuals know how they will benefit from doing the learning, training, and engagement required for the project to succeed.
Awareness is one of the first steps of engaging with people that are impacted by a project. They need to be aware of what’s coming, why this transition or initiative is happening, and what they will be required to do.
KPI 2: Acceptance of the Change
The next important KPI for the assessment of readiness to change is acceptance of the change. If impacted groups and individuals aren’t happy about the need to change or what they may be required to do, then you run into the resistance to change barrier to organisational readiness.
It’s common for the change readiness process to include initial opposition to the change, especially during the first digital readiness assessment. This is because there hasn’t yet been much communication or engagement, and impacted stakeholders may be fearful or lack an understanding of what the change means for them or its benefits to them.
All good readiness to change model frameworks that you’ll find will note the need to have users accept and support the change. You need their buy-in so they will learn the needed information and be willing to make the necessary changes to workflow, behavior, process, etc. Acceptance of the change should be increased to ensure assessment readiness.
What should you do if Acceptance of the Change is low?
If acceptance is low, then the change management team needs to provide a high level of engagement to raise the level of acceptance. This includes activities such as opposition management, communications, workshops, training, and one-on-one or group meetings to identify the various reasons for resistance and resolve them to bring the groups and individuals to a higher level of acceptance of the change.
After impacted groups and individuals are aware of a change initiative, then the next place you want to guide them with change management is acceptance of the transition or initiative so they will be willing to learn how and to adopt the changes needed for the project to be successful.
Use an organizational change readiness assessment tool that tracks all 5 critical metrics to assess readiness for change.
The OCMS Portal Change Readiness Assessment Template covers the 5 KPIs of readiness and uses them to automatically calculate the Overall Level of Readiness for Go-Live.
KPI 3: Capacity for Change
At any point in time, a group might be undergoing a lot of change, not much change, or in a state of having “no change at all”. Groups that have undergone a lot of recent change or that are already overwhelmed may be in danger of “change burnout” with an upcoming change. This equates to having no or low capacity for more change, meaning they don’t have enough time or bandwidth to do what’s necessary.
The state that a group is in will impact that group’s acceptance of the change that your program is implementing. As such, when conducting your organizational readiness to change assessment, you need to assess each group’s capacity for “one more change.”
You should also ensure that any change readiness assessment tools you’re using (e.g., change readiness assessment Prosci tool, change readiness assessment Deloitte tool, or the OCMS Portal organizational readiness assessment tool) include this important KPI capture for capacity for change. (Hint: the OCMS Portal readiness assessment template includes this!)
What should you do if the Capacity for Change is low?
You can’t assume that every impacted stakeholder is going to have as much time as you’d like for their change engagement, coaching, training, and other change-related activities in a readiness to change model.
If the capacity for change is low, the change management team needs to be aware of capacity issues so it can adjust engagement for these groups accordingly or make managers or sponsors aware of a capacity/bandwidth issue.
You should include capacity level in your organizational change readiness assessment template because if impacted stakeholders don’t have the time/bandwidth to learn required changes, they won’t be ready when the project goes live.
As part of a business readiness plan, the change management team and business readiness manager should develop a relationship with managers of key impacted groups. The goal is to gain their support and buy-in of the project’s change management needs, so when capacity issues arise, you can request their help by giving their direct reports the time needed to learn and adopt the changes.
KPI 4: Knowledge of What is Changing
Impacted stakeholders can have awareness and acceptance of a change, and even capacity to do what’s needed for the change, yet still score low in a readiness to change assessment tool if they don’t have basic knowledge of what is changing in their workflow.
You can’t rely on “if we build it, they will come” when using a post implementation review checklist to confirm user adoption of a new process, tool, or system. People need to be given the knowledge in advance of what exactly is changing and when it is changing, so they can progress to the next step of learning what’s needed to successfully adopt the changes.
What should you do if Knowledge of What is Changing is low?
If groups and individuals have a low level of knowledge about what in their workflow is changing and what they need to do differently, then the change management team needs to provide a high level of training and communication to prepare them.
When people aren’t sure what they need to do when a project rolls out, then they won’t be prepared to adopt the necessary changes needed for the project to be successful.
Training, communications, and support to build knowledge are vital to ensuring an organization is ready to hit the ground running when a project goes live and is implemented. The change management team needs to know the level of knowledge they are dealing with, so engagement activities can be planned accordingly.
KPI 5: Level of Training Required
Once impacted stakeholders have a basic knowledge of what is changing, they need to be formally trained to gain the needed proficiency to successfully perform the new tasks, work with the new tools, or adopt the new processes after the project’s go-live date.
When you see a high level of training required when reviewing reporting in your readiness for change assessment tool, it’s an indicator that more needs to be done to prepare the groups and individuals for readiness.
For an end-user to successfully transition from their current state (“As-Is”) to the target future state (“To-Be”), they need to have the necessary knowledge and skills.
With a transformational change, one or more of these components (job role, system, skills, tool, process, policy, and procedure) will be changing. The company might be moving to a new system, new tools, changing its operational business process, expanding to new locations or new products, transforming its existing job procedures, etc.
The people that will be impacted by this change, and who need to change how they do some or all of their daily job functions will need to be educated, trained with the right skill set, and allowed to practice their new knowledge to develop proficiency.
What should you do if the Level of Training Needed is high?
If there is a high level of training needed indicated in your readiness assessment tool, then the change management team may need to plan more extensive training or additional training to ensure a team is properly prepared for the transition.
The level of training needed is especially important to know during the second and any subsequent process readiness assessments. It can alert the change management team to a problem with the planned training and the need to add more training sessions or give users more time to become proficient in a new process/tool/system.
What is Readiness Assessment? | Assessing Organizational Readiness for Change
Overall Level of Readiness
If you’re using the right organizational readiness tools, you’ll be able to use the gathered operational readiness assessment data from the 5 KPI metrics above to calculate an Overall Level of Readiness.
This overall level of organizational readiness for change allows you to see a holistic picture of how close the groups and individuals are to being ready for a project’s go-live date to ensure the project launch is successful.
This readiness matrix guides the change management team in creating readiness for organizational change. Readiness for change means successful transformation and forward motion. This is necessary for organizations and their teams to grow and improve.
Are you looking for a launch readiness checklist? Do you need a group and individual readiness for change assessment tool? Are you looking for an alternative to the change readiness assessment template Prosci has? Please reach out and let us know. We can help!
Step-by-Step: Assessment Readiness with Detailed Readiness Process to Follow
What is change readiness? The steps below will help you answer that question through a proven process of creating readiness for organizational change. The steps below can be included in an organizational readiness assessment checklist, providing a consistent concept of readiness for any project your company launches that impacts the way people do things.
Organizational readiness for implementing change is a vital process to the success of any project that requires people to change something they do. Following these steps can increase your change management and organization readiness success.
Also… if you’d like these steps in a comprehensive change readiness checklist, you may want to check out the OCMS Portal change readiness assessment tools. They include both group and individual change readiness assessment templates, insightful analytics reporting, and a business change readiness checklist.
Example of the OCMS Portal launch readiness checklist with steps you can follow to process readiness for a change.
Step 1: Review Product Details to Learn Project Readiness Goals
Before you jump into organizational assessment models and surveying impacted groups, you need to be able to answer a very important question. This is, “What is organizational readiness for this project?”
You should learn as much as possible about the project and the groups being impacted by the project so you can ensure that your project readiness assessment template and framework are set up accurately.
Understand What Readiness Means for this Project
To learn about the project, you will want to review documents, such as the project charter, statement of work (SoW), project timeline, work breakdown structure (WBS), etc.
You need to learn what the goals of the project are so you can become familiar with what impacted stakeholders and groups need to do to successfully transition from their current state (how they do things now) to the future state (how they need to do things after the project goes live).
Learn more about this initial project assessment.
Understand Which Groups Will Need to be Readied for the Changes
Whether you are doing a standard business transformation readiness assessment or an Agile readiness assessment, you first need to know what individuals and/or groups should be assessed and then made ready for the change.
You get this information from the Change Impact Assessment, which is typically done after the initial project assessment and before the group and employee readiness assessment.
The change impact assessment will tell you not only who is being impacted (individuals and/or groups) but also the level of impact, so you can plan readiness management support engagement accordingly.
Learn more about change impacts assessment.
Understand What Factors are Assessed to Indicate Readiness
As mentioned in the section above, when ensuring employees’ readiness for training and upcoming change, you need to use a consistent and pertinent set of KPI factors.
The OCM Solution business readiness framework recommends using the five factors mentioned in this article (awareness, acceptance, capacity, knowledge, and training needed) as your main markers for organisational readiness for change.
There may be others you need to track that are specific to your project. Regardless of which factors you use, the manager readiness assessment team needs to be familiar with these and incorporate them into the change management readiness assessment template.
Step 2: Prepare for Conducting the Organizational Change Assessment
There is a lot of engagement and tracking that takes place with change management readiness assessment, so you’ll next want to prepare for that in advance.
Being prepared will help things flow more smoothly because you won’t be worried about choosing an operational readiness template or trying to find which managers you need to speak to in the middle of creating readiness for organizational change.
Choose Your Business Readiness Template and Tools
You’ll need a place to enter your employee and leadership readiness assessment survey data, preferably a tool that includes reporting analytics so you can share visual insights about the data.
In a lot of cases, you might be faced with a large-scale change that has global or nationwide impacts. In this case, it might be necessary that you host workshops and meetings for different geographic locations to conduct your business readiness activities. They may be done in person, or you and your team may need to conduct these meetings via webinars using virtual meeting tools.
Put the organizational readiness assessment template and tools in place prior to beginning the readiness assessment of impacted groups. You’ll also want to research, identify, and secure any other software tools or meeting facilitation tools/areas you need to conduct video meetings and team workshops.
Additionally, you’ll want to already have your readiness audit survey prepared, which can be presented via an online survey form, in person, or through virtual meetings.
Identify Key Managers/Leaders You’ll Need to Coordinate With
Identify critical managers and key stakeholders for each stakeholder group that you should coordinate with for the activities needed to assess readiness for change.
Readiness assessment should not be done in a vacuum. Your work will be easier if you interface with critical managers of impacted groups and key stakeholders, such as Change Champions.
Those key stakeholders that you may want to reach out to for your change readiness assessment workshops and meetings would be:
- Managers and supervisors of groups being impacted at a high and mid-level of impact
- Change champions of all groups (they can help facilitate your readiness engagement)
- Project sponsors who need to be kept in the loop
- Project manager and other key project team members
- Executives that need to be aware of their department’s readiness for the transition
- Any other key stakeholders that will be involved in facilitating business readiness activities
Developing those relationships now will help you later when you need to share a readiness test result for a group and enlist the help of a manager in readying their team for the change.
Step 3: Conduct the First (Baseline) Organizational Readiness Assessment
Conduct the first readiness assessment to see where the organization’s impacted stakeholders stand on the readiness to change scale. This will be your baseline measurement, and the results will let you know where each group and/or individual currently stands in assessment readiness. Learning what is readiness right now for each of these groups will also allow you to see where you should focus your efforts.
You can conduct organization readiness assessments using one or more methods, such as:
- Surveys sent to impacted stakeholders
- Guided focus groups and 1-to-1 meetings
- Employee and manager interviews
Individual Change Readiness Assessment Survey
Send out change readiness surveys to impacted internal users (employees and managers), external users, or to your targeted audience to assess awareness and willingness to support the change, as well as the other KPIs.
You can save time by using a tool like the OCMS Portal Readiness Assessment Tool because it already has a survey to assess readiness for change included that is set up to capture the details you need.
This survey uses the same business readiness definition as we’ve been reviewing above, which includes the 5 key KPIs that need to be captured (awareness, acceptance, capacity, knowledge, and training level).
Illustration: OCMS Portal Readiness Review Template Survey Questions & Responses
OCMS Portal makes its change readiness survey questions available in Microsoft Forms, which allows real-time data capture and easy upload into the OCMS Portal’s change management readiness assessment template.
Guided Focus Groups and 1-to-1 Meetings
Conduct 1-on-1 meetings or group meetings with managers and employees.
As part of your meetings, you can directly ask people how aware they are of the change, how willing they are to support the change, how much knowledge they have of the future state, etc.
You can use an organisational readiness assessment survey as a guide to ensure you ask everyone the same KPI questions.
Employee and Manager Interviews
Interview project managers, program leads, key managers, employees, change agents, SMEs, and other identified resources who can provide insights into an organization’s culture and readiness for change.
While conducting your readiness test, it is essential that you use a readiness for change scale template. Preferably, the change readiness matrix you use should also come with a dashboard that allows you to easily glean insights and trends from your assessment.
Next, you should analyze your data, as well as the feedback you are gathering. Assess this information for trends, change readiness progression, and pockets of resistance.
Use your digital readiness assessment findings to develop your change management strategy. In a situation where a lot of the impacted groups are not ready for the change, your change strategy (including your communications, engagement, opposition management, coaching, and training) will need to be very comprehensive.
As part of your organization and IT readiness assessment, you also want to track the “readiness progress” of each group over time to see whether there is improvement or deterioration in their readiness for change. The figures below provide illustrative samples.
Use OCMS Portal’s #1 Ranked Change Readiness Assessment Tool, based on top readiness to change models.
Conduct as many change assessments as needed to determine what is readiness status of groups and individuals and view the comparison to show your readiness timeline.
Do you have questions relating to this article on “what is readiness” and “what is readiness assessment?” Do you need to find a substitute for a change readiness assessment Deloitte or Prosci change readiness assessment tool? Please reach out and let us know.
Step 4: Engage with Stakeholders to Improve Readiness for Change
Your engagement to increase organizational readiness will be two-pronged. First, you’ll be meeting with managers of impacted groups to review the readiness for change scale results for their direct reports.
Then you’ll be deploying your change readiness plan, which will include a number of activities and engagements to prepare the groups and individuals for the upcoming changes that need to be adopted.
Project Readiness Review with Managers of Impacted Groups
Conduct readiness workshops/meetings with critical managers and key individuals of impacted groups to discuss organizational readiness definition and activities and gain buy-in and support.
Explain the things you feel need to be done to improve scoring for impacted groups in key readiness areas. Be sure to include the WIFFM (What’s in it for Me/Them) so they understand the benefits to their departments or business units of having employees properly prepared for the transition. And what could go wrong if they aren’t prepared.
Deploying an organizational readiness plan is a team effort, so this is where you can bring in those key individuals and managers of critically impacted groups to help with ideas, visible and vocal support for the project, opposition management, more capacity for training, and other activities to assist with preparing their groups for the transition.
Additional key factors to discuss during your implementation readiness assessment meetings with managers include:
- The scope and magnitude of the change
- Impacted roles, groups, locations
- Type of change (process, system, policy, data, and org structure)
- Timing of impacts
- The initial baseline organizational change readiness assessment and readiness priorities based on the results
- Discuss each group’s preferences for training, communications, and other change management delivery
If you followed the step above for preparation, then the initial outreach you’ve made to managers of impacted groups will help you when enlisting the help of those managers now to improve organizational readiness for change.
Engagement with Impacted Individuals & Groups to Improve Change Readiness
Carry out your change management and business readiness plan. This will include activities such as communications, opposition management, sponsor or manager coaching, stakeholder education, change champions network activities, and training.
Illustration: OCMS Portal Readiness Assessment Tool with Post Implementation Review Checklist of Activities to Increase Readiness
The OCMS Portal Readiness to Change Assessment Tool has a section to track the progress of activities to increase readiness included in the readiness assessment template.
Step 5: Conduct the Second Organizational Readiness Assessment
Conduct the second organizational change readiness assessment to see the progress each group has made in readiness for the change.
Use the same methods you used in your first readiness assessment to see where the impacted groups and individuals are in their readiness for the change in the 5 key metrics (Awareness, Acceptance, Capacity, Knowledge, Training/Ability), and any other metrics you are capturing.
In some cases, this second assessment readiness survey will be the last one before the project’s go-live date. This is the case for smaller projects or those with shorter timelines.
In other cases, there will be more assessments of the readiness to change scale level for each impacted stakeholder or group. This is true of larger projects and those with longer timelines.
Enter the results of the second change assessment into your readiness for change assessment tool. This should give you the ability to view these new readiness test results alongside the initial baseline results from the first organizational readiness to change assessment.
It’s important to have this capability so you can see and report on the progress groups are making towards their organisational readiness.
Illustration: OCMS Portal Change Readiness Assessment Template & Reporting Dashboard
Organizational readiness tools from OCMS Portal to track and compare results from assessing organizational readiness for change.
Do you have any questions or input on this article answering “What is a readiness assessment?” and “What is business readiness?” Please reach out and let us know.
Step 6 (As Needed): Engage to Improve Readiness to Change, Conduct Business Readiness Assessment, and Repeat as Necessary
If impacted stakeholder groups are still not showing readiness, plan and conduct more change management engagement for creating readiness for organizational change.
Activities to increase change readiness include:
- Communications
- Briefings/Meetings
- Training
- Opposition/resistance management
- Setting up a change champions network
- Coaching of managers and sponsors
- And more
Continue with the cycle of engagement and business readiness activities, followed by an assessment of readiness to change as required by the project or by the scores of the impacted groups on change readiness metrics.
Step 7: Finalize the Project’s Capability Assessment for Readiness
After the last assessment, make any final updates to the digital readiness assessment template data and export your reports. Submit your final change assessment readiness report to project leads, change team, project sponsors, critical managers, and other key stakeholders.
Still have questions about change readiness assessment templates or how to assess readiness for change in your organization? Please reach out and let us know.
OCMS Portal Change Readiness Assessment Templates & Reporting Tools
The OCMS Portal readiness to change model and change readiness assessment tool provides you with a powerful, yet simple-to-use toolkit for assessing your impacted stakeholders for project readiness.
It includes a comprehensive overall readiness for go-live scoring system and an informative analytics dashboard that allows you to easily compare the results from all assessments and readiness tests.
This one-of-a-kind tool to assess readiness for change also includes a step-by-step organizational readiness assessment checklist that outlines all the steps listed in this guide (and more).
Project Readiness Assessment Toolkit – Get Yours Today
Conclusion: Readiness to Change Model & Business Readiness Plan
Assessing organizational readiness for change is a critical part of project and change management. Without the guidance of a business readiness assessment, it’s difficult to create an effective organizational readiness plan.
Without a change assessment plan, your project could be at serious risk of failure because impacted employees and groups aren’t properly prepared to adopt the needed changes when the project goes live.
Using a change readiness assessment tool and change readiness assessment templates improves project success by improving organizational readiness for change.
FAQ: Organizational Change Readiness Guide
What is a change readiness assessment?
A change readiness assessment is the process used to assess how ready and prepared a group is for a change. When a business, government, or group goes through change, the impacted audience groups need to be prepared and ready to adopt the new behaviors, systems, tools, etc. required for project success.
How do you assess readiness for change?
How do you assess change readiness? Based on industry best practices and decades of change management experience, when conducting a readiness assessment, you should analyze and document some key factors.
You should collect these key performance indicators (KPIs) early in the project to get a baseline determining what is business readiness for each group and/or individual being assessed. These KPIs include awareness, acceptance, capacity, knowledge of what is changing, and the training level needed.
What is change readiness?
Change readiness is the process involved in getting an impacted audience ready for a business, social, government, or organizational change.
What is readiness assessment?
Readiness assessment is the process of analyzing how ready impacted audience groups are for a particular change. A readiness assessment is critical to ensure that groups can be effectively prepared for a change.
How important is readiness for change?
You can roll out a new project, such as the implementation of a digital document system, but if people don’t know how to use it, don’t want to use it, or can’t use it for another reason, then the project fails.
Project success is reliant on those required to make changes adopting them successfully and permanently. Assessing organizational readiness for change is important if you want a project to succeed.
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