Within many organisations, the pandemic illuminated a number of home truths when it comes to transformation – from the benefits of remote working for a company and its people to the importance of workforce wellbeing. So, how can business leaders apply the lessons learned from the last 12 months in order to roll out positive change that benefits the entire business?

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders have been forced to quickly adapt their ways of working in order to keep up business continuity. Across all areas of organisations, this experience has influenced people’s perceptions of change and provided opportunities for driving strategic improvements that boost business performance.

While in the past, the idea that change projects are difficult to implement may have caused them to be left on the back burner, the pandemic has spurred many organisations into action. The need to rapidly adopt remote working practices has also forced leaders to implement more flexible working practices, while rethinking employees’ individual roles in line with the “new normal”.

One of the key transformation lessons that should be built into 2021 strategies is that change does not always have to be long-term or occur on a huge scale. Instead, organisations should make the most of small windows of opportunity to deliver incremental improvements that make a real difference to day-to-day operations. In these challenging times, lengthy transformation plans can often seem difficult or too costly to achieve, so breaking projects down into bitesize chunks and thinking 2-3 months ahead ensures that leaders can begin the change journey gradually.

Now is also the perfect time to review the business’ long-term objectives in light of the developments that 2020 brought. This should involve leaders asking questions in three key areas; what should we stop doing, what should we continue to do and what should we start doing now? For example, it may make sense for the business to halt any pre-COVID activities that are no longer relevant, while starting new activities that the pandemic has made more important. Investing in a strategic business health check with an external adviser can also provide companies with a fresh pair of eyes, helping them to spot areas of change that should be a priority moving forwards.

While businesses must continue reacting to fast-changing Government guidelines and consumer behaviour, organisations should also aim to strike a balance between making short-term changes and investing in strategic transformation. This process begins at the stage of setting annual objectives and then identifying the measures, KPIs, systems and processes needed to make them a reality. Considering a handful of initiatives that go over and above business-as-usual activity will help leaders to identify which changes to put in place first and develop a plan which combines reactive and longer-term initiatives.

In order to roll out positive change projects, it’s also essential to communicate effectively and secure the buy-in of all relevant stakeholders. With the majority of communications channels currently online, leaders must adopt creative approaches to strengthening team relationships and developing new ideas. Tools such as Microsoft Teams have a valuable role to play in bringing people together when working remotely and facilitating collaborative working. However, with an ever-growing number of communications channels that employees are expected to monitor, it’s worth being clear about the intended purpose for each channel. For example, deciding that the company WhatsApp group should be dedicated to social messaging can help to ensure that those who are time-poor or have family commitments have more freedom over when they access messages. This should involve thinking about which individuals are responsible for different elements of change projects, as well as using agile methods, such as a simple Kanban, to visualise all the different activities required to make change a reality.

Another area of transformation that came into the spotlight during 2020 was employee wellbeing. In order to ensure that projects don’t come at the expense of people’s health and happiness, engaging staff in the change process is vital. As well as creating a culture of leadership that actively embraces wellbeing as a core commercial strategy for success, it may be worth investing in resilience training to help teams recover quickly from difficult situations. Setting up a mental health working group and appointing dedicated champions in this area can also help to ensure that people remain a priority, whatever challenges transformation projects might bring.

It’s important to remember that transformation is personal. In order to make business improvements a success, this realisation should be built into every stage of a project, from taking steps to find out how employees feel about new processes or practices, to supporting individuals going through external pressures, such as those juggling home schooling with the need to care for vulnerable family members.

If there’s one key lesson that the pandemic has brought to the fore, it’s that change is inevitable. By nurturing an organisation that can withstand and benefit from transformation, regardless of the type or scale of the project, businesses can increase their resilience in the face of future challenges and improve their performance.