Employee ‘buy in’ is all about having the necessary support and commitment from your employees on new decisions projects, ideas, etc. ‘Buy in’ promotes employee engagement and an increased willingness to go the extra mile at work.
Sometimes employees can be resistant to change. Without ‘buy in’, it may be difficult to move forward in the direction you want to. When looking at employee ‘buy in’ in depth, you can see there’s a common set of reasons why getting your employees to ‘buy in’ to a change or new project/idea might be difficult. These reasons are:
Blame: No one wants to take on the task, because if it doesn’t work, they think they are to blame.
Authority: You may want to assign the problem to a particular employee/team to solve, but are they empowered to actually make the necessary changes?
Agreement: Does your team agree it’s an important problem? Do they agree it’s something that needs to be worked on to improve the organisation?
Pressure: If your team has other major projects and tasks to complete, any side projects you introduce may be put off indefinitely.
Priority: You may say it’s important, but do your actions show it’s the case? Do you have a plan, scheduled meetings, etc for this project/task?
Before deciding to implement a change, it would be good practice to review the change by going over these area’s and seeing where there may be issues you need to address to gain ‘buy in’.
Three tips to gain ‘Buy In’
When deciding on a change, making sure you gain employee buy in is key. Here are three tips to help with gaining ‘buy in’ and getting employees on your side:
Lead the way: If employees don’t feel confident in the path forward, you will struggle to get them on side. When they see you taking on the change, it’s easier for them to be confident following. Not doing this can look like you’re delegating to protect yourself and setting up someone else to take the fall. This may then lead to objection however, taking the lead and showing your employees the way will often reduce the risk of this.
Repetition: The only way for ideas to sink in with your team is to regularly repeat yourself and your ideas. This doesn’t mean you have to stand over someone and say the exact same phrase over and over again. Repetition is more about looking for opportunities to repeat yourself in various ways, for example following up a discussion with an email, booking in regular meetings and praising employees for any work they have done relating to your project, goal, etc.
Engage emotions: Grab the attention of your employees by relating your project/idea to something that resonates with them. For example, if your idea involves saving money then tell them what could be done with that money within the business such as increased employee benefits, new equipment, etc. This can also help to overcome objections as providing something of use to employees will often reduce the risk of objection.
Presenting a planned changed –
When presenting a planned change, being up front and honest is the best way to do it. Full disclosure works best as you are connecting with employees’ emotions which enables employees to get behind the change and really support it. It is also best to be fully up front with employees as if you try to ‘sugar coat’ a change it will backfire in the future when employees realise it isn’t all that was promised.
Gaining feedback from employees –
Utilising surveys, such as an engagement survey, are always a great way to gain feedback. Surveys save having to book out any time for 1-to-1’s and employees will often be more open as it’s not a face-to-face meeting, so they feel less pressured to give certain answers.
Surveys can also be helpful in gaining ‘buy in’ as it can help you assess the “now” position of your employee’s therefore, helping you plan on how to proceed with your project/idea.
If we can help with employee engagement surveys please get in touch. We can also run training on change management and you may benefit from downloading the recording of our webinar “Gaining buy in from your team”.
We can also assist with helping to prepare business cases for implementing our software products if that helps you to gain buy in from your team. Speak to us for more information.
