The Power of One: How Individual Actions Can Ignite Organisational Change

Whether you’ve got a strong culture of promoting employee voice or face a constant battle to engage and retain your staff, organisational change can feel challenging, particularly if resources and budgets are tight.

However, as our expert panel of Laura Skaife-Knight (Chief Executive, NHS Orkney), Nick Elston (international mental health speaker) and Paul Reid (CEO & Founder, Trickle) revealed in our latest Be The Change webinar, The Power of One: How Individual Actions Can Ignite Organisational Change, improving work culture and delivery across your workforce doesn’t need to involve an expensive, top-down programme. In fact, by focusing on small, achievable individual actions you can achieve substantive change, whatever the size of your organisation.

To listen to the full discussion, you can watch the webinar replay or read on for key insights from our panel on how individual actions can ignite organisational change, including practical suggestions you can take away and implement.

How can small individual actions have an impact on organisational change?

It might be as simple as investing a few minutes in listening to an employee’s experience or publicly noting when a colleague does something well but, as our panel highlighted, when individuals consistently take small but meaningful actions, it can act as a catalyst for far more widespread change across the organisation – particularly if the actions demonstrate to employees that they matter.

In Laura Skaife-Knight’s experience, once these positive actions are role-modelled in one part of the organisation, other colleagues notice and start to follow by example. Cumulatively, their impact can have a widespread impact on the company culture. As she reflected, ‘It’s the small things that people notice. It’s about kindness, looking after each other and saying thank you. I don’t think those things are difficult things to do. It’s refreshing and has a ripple effect on colleagues at every level of the organisation.’

Put it into practice

• Set a personal challenge to say ‘Thank you’ to at least three colleagues each week.
• Give out certificates or a small gift to recognise and show appreciation of employees.
• Hold a lunch or invest a few minutes of your day to go in person to thank team members.
• Organise employee coffee sessions (whether virtual or in person) where there is no agenda except to meet and listen to colleagues’ experiences.

Can the organisation’s vision and objectives help engage individual employees?

Our panel reflected that a key job of leaders is to inspire, give hope and inject belief into an organisation, even when people think the required outcome appears impossible.

In Laura’s experience, creating a compelling vision, focusing messages on explaining why change is needed and clarifying the role of individual employees in bringing about the change enables them to understand and engage with the change process. As a result, people feel empowered to share and discuss ideas for improvements and this leads to results.

Paul Reid backed up this approach, noting that employee engagement should always have a purpose which, for Trickle, is the purpose of empowering employees to create positive change in their organisations.

Put it into practice

• Set out a clear end destination that people understand and can relate to (e.g. what is broken that the change aims to fix).
• Link all communications and activities back to your organisation’s strategic objectives and values, so employees understand why each change needs to happen.
• Clarify the role of individual staff members, so they understand their place in the process and can recognise and suggest relevant improvements.
• Ask employees how they want to be involved in or do next to help bring about the change set out in the vision.

How do the actions of individual leaders impact organisational change?

Alongside the vision, the approach and behaviours role modelled by individual leaders play a key role in building the credibility and trust required for sustainable organisational change.

Nick Elston reflected that, in the past, leaders would tell people what to do – and then tell them again, louder, if they didn’t follow the instruction. Now, however, he believes, ‘It’s about emotional leadership, leading through influence over instruction.’

This point was backed up by Laura, who commented that she has taken on an executive portfolio so that employees can see that she will be held to account for delivery alongside her team in a practical, rather than purely symbolic, way. She observed that this approach of leading from the front as an individual with ‘visible and compassionate leadership’ is helping to create a culture change where people start to really feel and believe in the change.

Put it into practice

• Show you’re human: if you don’t know or understand something or don’t have the answers, admit it.
• Surround yourself with people with different experiences so you can all learn and grow.
• Admit if you get something wrong (assuming this is appropriate for your role) and then tell people what you’ve learnt and what you’ll do about it.

How can you make organisational change feel manageable for individual employees?

However well it’s presented, organisational change can feel overwhelming – particularly if employees have previously had negative experiences.

In addition to focusing on why change is needed, Laura accentuated the value of breaking down the overarching vision for change into manageable sections, such as quarterly chunks, to address this and also emphasised the importance of involving employees from day one. As she reflected, it’s not only leaders who can create change. Employees know their role better than anyone else so continually gathering, sharing and implementing their ideas will both engage individuals and help create sustainable improvements for the organisation.

Put it into practice

• Identify two or three actions to concentrate on at any one time, to avoid overwhelming your team.
• Ask your teams: ‘If your service didn’t exist, how would you create it?’ This can encourage employees to identify effective ways to make continual improvements, regardless of whether their organisation is struggling or outstanding.
• Identify key individuals across your organisation to let you know how people are feeling and responding to change. If they tell you things are going too fast, look at what you need to focus on and what aspects you can pause to ensure it remains manageable.

How can you help people to speak up?

Nick highlighted that, in his experience, fear of being judged or penalised for having an opinion is one of the key reasons that people don’t speak up. In contrast, he reflected on instances he has seen of previously disengaged employees starting to re-engage once they have psychologically safe spaces to put forward their points anonymously and/or talk without an agenda – particularly when suggestions they put forward are listened to and lead to positive action. As he commented, ‘People want to be heard and understood. Often in a noisy world, we don’t do these things.’

Paul backed up this point, revealing that, on average, 39% of the suggestions put forward on the Trickle platform are made anonymously. However, when people start seeing that their ideas and concerns don’t disappear into the ether but are listened to and followed through, the trust builds, people gain confidence and the levels of anonymity drop.

Put it into practice

• Provide safe spaces, including anonymous channels such as the Trickle platform, where employees feel able to put forward their views and ideas without fear of the consequences.
• Offer opportunities for employees to provide feedback, even if you’re concerned that you may not be able to offer solutions to all the points they raise. Listening, providing tools and signposting to relevant support can be enough to inspire confidence and lead to more ideas being put forward.
• Follow through on ideas and commitments. When employees see the impact of putting forward their points, their trust will grow, leading to higher engagement.

And finally…

Always remember to celebrate achievements, as these build the belief that positive change is possible. As Paul commented, ‘It’s so essential to celebrate wins, particularly when times are tough and targets aren’t being met.’

Rather than focusing on what is difficult or where the organisation is underperforming, highlight the green shoots, celebrate individuals’ small wins and recognise where you’re making progress – and then move on to explore where you need to do better.

 

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