Changing Your Interview Process? Tips for HR Change Management

If there’s one thing that makes people uncomfortable, uncertain, or uncooperative, it’s change. If you add in process changes at work, you could face a wall of resistance without the right HR change management tools. 

Changing your interview process is no different. But before you start moving pieces around, you need a structured HR change management strategy, including methodologies, tools, and procedures. By taking advantage of the right techniques, you can get buy-in from your hiring team when making interview process changes. 

Here are four techniques to consider.

1. Communicate Effectively

One of change management’s foundational elements is effective communication. When confronting change, leaders must communicate the changes themselves and the reasons for the changes. 

For example, perhaps you’re incorporating more video interviews into your interviewing process. Your reasons for doing so may be to broaden your reach to top talent or to trim expenses, making your interview not just more efficient but also more affordable. If you don’t communicate these “whys,” your team may not see the whole picture of why change is necessary.

However, remember communication is a two-way street: speaking and, perhaps more importantly, listening. According to Harvard Business School, two-way communication between managers and employees is critical to effective change management. For example, HBS found that this type of communication between managers and employees can have an “impact on employee engagement, their commitment to change, and their behavioral support for proposed change.”

Examples of two-way communication can occur during breakfast or lunch meetings, small group discussions, committee meetings, and even during day-to-day interactions. Be sure to keep communication channels open, embrace feedback, favor transparency, and listen to your employees’ concerns about change. Doing so will earn their trust, understanding, and eventually their buy-in to your revised interview process, smoothing any HR change management.

2. Include Your Team in the Decision-Making Process

Those employees who will be implementing or executing the interview process changes should be part of the decision-making process. Assemble a diverse team with an array of experiences and backgrounds. The more varied your thinking, the better your decisions for change.

Further, by involving your team in discussions about changing your interview process, you’re showing your employees that you trust and value their thoughts and ideas, which builds employee engagement. Additionally, by assembling a diverse group upfront, you’ll arrive at better decisions while fostering a group of people you can execute on your final decisions – giving you complete buy-in from your team during HR change management.

3. Lead From the Top

Your team is not the only group that needs to be involved in decision-making.  So does your leadership. However, getting your team onboard with interview process changes doesn’t simply occur if leaders are involved in the decision-making process. Your leaders must take additional steps to ensure buy-in.

For example, leadership needs to — well – lead the way, setting an example of what should be done and when. Say you’re refining your standardized interviews. In this case, your HR managers must demonstrate their involvement by executing these refinements in interviews. According to McKinsey, when leaders lead from the top, role-modeling the desired behavior, companies are more than 5x likely to make a successful transformation. 

So, leading from the top is not just a good corporate form, but it objectively can achieve HR change management.

4. Set Goals

Finally, just like any business change, setting goals (and continually measuring them) helps you to spur change while encouraging your employees to meet expectations. When setting goals, make sure they’re achievable – small bites are more effective than one big bite. 

For example, you don’t want your employees to become anxious or concerned about meeting a goal too far out of reach.  Doing so may backfire against your goals for HR change management. Instead, set realistic targets for employees to meet with positive reinforcement along the way. 

Resistance is to be expected when making even small changes to your interview process.  By in large, people don’t like change.  However, we know it’s the one constant. So, expect resistance along the way, but build in ways to counter that resistance into your new processes. 

Need help in restructuring your interviews or developing your workforce? Contact Cangrade today to learn how we can help.