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Estimating cost for end-user change management (comms, learning, transition support and measurement)

Hello,

I am new to the CIPD community and looking for any feedback and comments you have about this topic.

It is an age old problem for defining up front change management costs for a project to forecast budget requirements and ROI. In the project management arena we see standard industry calculations (20-25%) can be used based on the known cost of the development.  However, I have yet (in my 13years) come across any such standard for calculating change management efforts to ensure that users are guided through a change with the right information, in the right format, at the right time for success.

I have created my own standards based on experience and categorization of the change at hand with insight to user impact and knowledge gaps, but these are challenged quite frequently by budget and program/project controls. Just wondering if anyone out there has seen standards for estimating the costs involved for change management.

Fingers crossed and waiting for all your valuable input now :-)

277 views
  • Steve Bridger

    | 0 Posts

    Community Manager

    10 Sep, 2018 15:06

    Welcome to the Community, Lisa.

    Not sure whether you are a CIPD member as I notice you've posted this to an 'open' group... not really meant for this kind of question [Note to self: tidy up this group].

    I assume the 'change' required is broken down into smaller 'chunks'? Not sure I understand "guided through a change in the right format". Can you give some tangible examples?

  • In reply to Steve Bridger:

    Hi Steve -
    Yes, indeed I joined CIPD just the other day on my quest for information :-)
    I thought the "community feedback" one was correct since I was looking for information from the community, my apologies if I picked the wrong one.

    In any case, I'm terribly excited that you have responded and are interested!!

    When dealing with change for end users, we use the standard change management methodology (such as Prosci, Kotter's, etc) and break down the activities into main chunks as follows for a change management strategy that addresses the user needs on a holistic level for success:

    - Analysis of the impact:
    1. Define audiences impacted (global users vs. specific use cases)
    2. Identify what changes for them & benefits- processes, behaviour, technologies (new tools))

    - Communication needs:
    1. Understand what they need to know about the change coming and when
    2. Identify what channels would be most suitable for communicating the change
    3. Build & deliver content

    - Learning needs:
    1. Understand what they need to learn (mainly functionality or process changes here)
    2. Identify what would be the most effective learning channel (elearning, quick cards, user guides, classroom, webex, etc)
    3. Build & deliver content

    - Support
    1. Understand how they get the support during the transition and afterwards
    2. Define how should it be communicated to them & execute it

    - Knowledge management
    1. Creating & managing the best platform to make all materials and information available easily

    - Measurement
    1. How we measure the effectiveness of the change management strategy

    A bit long winded detail above but, what I'm after is some feedback on whether or not anyone knows of a simple calculation that can be used to arrive at a high level estimate for the change management activities (like above) based on the development efforts - e.g. x% of development sizing

    Thanks for any information you have.
    Lisa