3. Change impact assessment
What is it?
A change impact assessment describes the people and organisational impacts that will arise as a result of the change being introduced. The change may impact knowledge and skills requirements; underlying business processes; organisation structure; or new ways of working.
Why do it?
This process helps:
- Compile a picture of the capability, behavioural, cultural, organisation, process and system impacts that will come about as a result of the change being introduced
- Rank the size and type of impact for different stakeholder groups
- Agree key change interventions to ensure that individuals and the organisation are best able to meet the challenge of each impact
- Support the change leadership with clear insights into the challenges facing each stakeholder group
When to do it?
The change impact assessment should be carried out early in the diagnose phase alongside the Future State Definition and the Stakeholder Analysis
Inputs
Future State Definition
Stakeholder Analysis
Outputs
How to do it?
Review the
Future State Definition to confirm the required future capabilities and the
Stakeholder Analysis to confirm the impacted stakeholder groups
The change impact assessment requires input from key stakeholders across the University. This is essential to validate how the changes will input each group and also to understand each group’s reaction to the changes in order to tailor the support appropriately during the process of change
The actual assessment can be conducted in a number of ways – surveys, interviews, workshops or a combination. The decision on which approach to take will probably be driven by resource availability and time. As a guide:
- Interviews – can be resource-intensive but give the best insights. Best suited to assessments involving a small number of impacted groups
- Workshops – slightly less resource-intensive and can be hard to get the correct representation. Best suited when assessing a wider group of impacted stakeholders
- Surveys – quality of response can be low but this approach is useful when you need to address very large groups of stakeholders or to supplement insights from workshops and interviews
To select participants for the assessment you will need to consider each impacted area of the business and look for :
- Functional & process experts
- Business / end users (including academic staff and students where appropriate)
Finally, agree the change impact assessment questions and validate them with the change governance – particularly the senior representatives of the key stakeholder groups to identify any sensitivities regarding questions asked, terminology used or the timing of the assessment.
Once you have decided the best approach and identified the appropriate participants for the impact assessment you can schedule and conduct the interviews, workshops and/or surveys.
The impact assessment should be carried out using the following steps:
- Walk stakeholders through the current and future process design
- Identify each major step in the process and rate the degree of change (high, medium, low) in order to understand the relative impact of each change
- Identify which stakeholders are impacted by the change
- Involve subject matter experts as well as process owners to build a transferable pool of people and knowledge
- Determine the type of impact for each change, for example – paying particular attention to impacts that affect stress:
- Systems and tools
- Business processes (including workload and working patterns)
- Organisational design (including relationships, roles, purpose, changes in pay, benefits, recognition & reward)
- Skill impact (increased / decreased or new skill required)
- Cultural / behavioural impact (new behaviours, physical environment, level of control over work, new ways of working, eg. matrix management)
- Responsibility (increased / decreased or new responsibility required)
- Health and wellbeing
- Describe whether the change is supportive or disruptive for the stakeholders impacted
- Document any risks or barriers to change identified by the stakeholders
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A Change Impact Assessment Interview Guide and Change Impact Assessment Framework will help identify and document the impacts of the change on the stakeholders. |
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Template: The Change Impact Assessment can now be completed. |
Once the change impact assessment has been completed you will need to review, analyse and summarise the changes and impacts for each stakeholder group.
The impacts can be assessed using the following criteria
High Impact
- High degree of change to stakeholder group functions, responsibilities, skills and knowledge
- Extensive process or system changes
- Extensive culture / behaviour change required
- High degree of change to relationships across and beyond the University
- High level of complexity in the deployment of change
Medium impact
- Medium degree of changes to stakeholders, responsibilities, skills, etc
- Some process or system changes
- Some behaviour changes required
- Medium degree of change to relationships
- Interdependencies need to be carefully managed in the deployment of change
Low impact
- Low degree of changes to stakeholders, responsibilities, skills etc
- Minor process or system changes
- No behaviour change required
- Low degree of change to relationships
- Low levels of interdependency in the deployment of change
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The impact assessment ratings, including the breadth and depth of the change on each stakeholder group is now documented and tracked in the Change Impact Heat Map. |
Once the impact assessment and analyses have been completed, the opportunities for change interventions become more clear. Change interventions can include any or all of the following:
- Change leadership development
- Building or enhancing the change network
- Change-specific communications
- Providing new training and knowledge
- Organisation design
- Culture and behaviour change
- Resistance management
- Development of pilots, prototype, or ‘walkthroughs’ to help stakeholders understand and engage with the changes