Change management and experience

Build change as a muscle, lead change as a network and deliver change as an experience. EY teams help leaders to realize the full potential of transformation and transactions value through people.

Transformation requires behavior change at scale

EY Change Experience helps organizations lead change with confidence.

Get transformation right
of senior leaders have experienced at least one underperforming transformation in the past five years.

How EY can help

EY Change Experience is a modern approach to leading change and building change capabilities. Successful business transformations and transactions require behavior change at scale. That is why EY teams help organizations think about change differently.

Change as a muscle

We help organizations build lasting change capabilities, treating change as a constant in today's dynamic environment. Through transformation health diagnostics, we evaluate performance based on key levers of transformation success. Our data-driven methods, analytics and technology go beyond traditional training to drive real behavioral change within teams. Together, we foster resilience and adaptability, equipping organizations with the skills to tackle future challenges.

Change as a network

We help organizations adopt a holistic approach to change by integrating top-down and bottom-up strategies. Aligning leadership with the vision is essential, but real change occurs through networks of connected individuals. By mapping networks and identifying key influencers, we drive targeted behavioral sprints that make change practical and actionable.

Change as an experience

We help organizations navigate the critical moments, or turning points, of a transformation or transaction and link our efforts to behavior change metrics to drive desired business outcomes. By using data and technology, we move from being reactive to predictive and create personalized change experiences.

What EY teams can do for you

A successful transformation and transaction isn't solely about adopting new processes or technologies; it's fundamentally about behavior change. Based on EY Humans at Center research, done in collaboration with Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, EY Change Experience places humans at the change and helps organizations focus on three things:

  1. What conditions make change stick
  2. How change is delivered
  3. When getting it right matters more

The “what” of EY Change Experience designs transformation and transaction programs around the conditions for change: meaning, empowerment and growth.

  • Meaning: What leaders say and do resonates emotionally, rings true and becomes achievable within the culture. Each member of the team feels their needs are met, pain points are addressed and purposeful connection to work is sustained.
  • Empowerment: Adoption is calibrated to meet people where they are, harmonizing focus, collaboration and inspired innovation. Teams are unconstrained and equipped to work together end-to-end, augmented by powerful tools and insight.
  • Growth: In converting potential performance into real outcomes, organizations expand the impact and capacity for change. Building an environment of people and organizational growth brings a new sense of unity and excitement.

The “how” is grounded in four pillars, which are all outcome-centered, data-driven and customized for impact.

  • Leadership: Building a case for change, leadership alignment, leadership modeling and a change strategy
  • Engagement: Personalizing the change and harnessing connection points, including stakeholder and experience mapping, communications and engagement, and an influencer network
  • Proficiency: Mastering skills to drive outcomes through business readiness and adoption, learning, and deployment and support
  • Confidence: Measuring confidence and using behavior plus outcomes data to predict and prepare for milestones to navigate with confidence  

We architect customized change programs that meet the scale of the change and culture of the organization, while ensuring that they embed both proven behavioral science and practical experience-based practices.

Why the EY approach is different

We understand that the value of transformations and transactions can be locked, or lost, on the change journey. We have experience across sectors helping organizations anticipate where and when engagement needs to be amplified and how to unlock high value skills and activities during transformation.

Our approach combines leading change management activities with differentiated practices to significantly enhance employee experience and lasting change in hitting key performance indicators (KPIs), key behavioral indicators (KBIs) and business outcomes:

How can the moments that threaten your transformation or transaction define its success?

EY research with Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford found that leaders who put humans at the center to navigate turning points are 12 times more likely to significantly improve transformation or transaction performance.

How EY teams help you navigate turning points

Change is not a linear process, and interventions should be aimed at maintaining momentum and minimizing setbacks. Transformation and transaction turning points are junctures where initiatives might fail, making effective change essential.

Organizations can manage these turning points proactively and improve transformation results through three key steps:

  1. Sensing: Implement early warning systems that go beyond traditional KPIs to monitor behavioral and emotional cues within the workforce, as these are often early indicators of underlying issues.
  2. Sense-making: Facilitate collaborative forums where diverse stakeholders can collectively interpret emerging challenges, fostering a shared understanding and ownership of solutions.
  3. Acting: Reinforce the six drivers of successful transformation — Inspire, Lead, Care, Build, Empower and Collaborate — to rebuild trust, align teams, and restore momentum.

By embracing these steps, organizations can transform potential setbacks into opportunities, increasing the likelihood of transformation programs delivering significantly greater value.

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