Change Management in Banking: How to Prepare for Successful Change

Prepare for a successful implementation with these change management in banking best practices. In this article, you’ll find a high level assessment questionnaire to get started and ways to avoid pitfalls that add time and cost to your effort.

We know that implementing operational change strategies can be challenging at best. In a world where businesses are under constant pressure to increase profits, reduce expenses and improve the customer experience, change is the one true constant. Change management in banking has become very complex.

There is no one size fits all approach to implementing change. However, we have helped clients transform business for decades. In our experience, the common denominator that defines success is an engaged team that understands and supports the change that’s happening. We’ve identified seven key elements for change management in banking that engages operations teams early, and keeps them engaged for the duration of the initiative.

Tackling these essentials in advance to support your workforce helps reduce setbacks such as missed deadlines or added expense. Use our questionnaire below to determine where you stand now, and our operational change management best practices to close your gaps to drive a successful transformation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: What are examples of good change management in banking?

Good change management in banking means considering the operational and people impacts of a change alongside the technical implementation. Strong programs engage front-line subject matter experts, assess impacts across affected areas, communicate throughout the initiative, train employees, involve operations in testing and continue monitoring adoption after implementation.

For example, during a major system or process migration, a bank can assess readiness across areas such as governance, risk, resources, communications, testing and implementation instead of treating the technology deployment as the entire change. Bridgeforce has used this type of cross-functional assessment in banking transformation work to identify gaps and develop recommendations for subsequent migrations.

Compare Best Practices Against Your Practices

Listed below are change management in banking best practices under each of the headings in the questionnaire above. We encourage you to do a credible challenge exercise and see whether these practices exist in your organization.

Integrating best practices with our clients has helped them avoid unwanted pitfalls and delays to implementation.

Impact Assessment

• Create detailed impact assessments and hold open discussions throughout the impact assessment process so that questions can be raised and answered quickly
• Ensure impact assessments are not completed in silos or by inexperienced individuals to avoid misses that can derail a project

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

• Pull SMEs from the front-line impacted businesses to ensure they are embedded in the current day-to-day process
• Set clear expectations with SMEs on the time investment and the deliverables expected from them

Culture

• Review past change and lessons learned from other impact assessments, if applicable, to identify any challenges you may face upfront so you can plan proactively
• Identify any unintended consequences the change may have on culture, so you can plan proactively how to address with the workforce

Communication

• Use open forums to gather staff input from the point when the change is being defined all the way through implementation planning and final delivery
• Document concerns and/or risks and as you take steps to mitigate them
• Circle back with your team to demonstrate you are acting on their concerns—this encourages more to speak up
• Engage those who are most vocal in the business and actively seek their thoughts and views to create advocates in them – sometimes these seemingly disruptive staff members can become your strongest advocates

Training

• Ensure trainers have been engaged in the change itself and are available after implementation to provide ongoing support
• Assess understanding levels post training and be prepared to act early and often to close any gaps of confusion to process change

Testing Support

• Confirm with operations that front-line agents are available for testing and be upfront on the amount of time they will be needed to support this critical step
• Require operations leaders to review and sign-off on test scripts for both accuracy and thoroughness (a sign of a good testing environment, is one that tries to break the system)

Embedding

• Consider rolling the change out to a smaller population initially so that they can be advocates for the change and can therefore be at the end of the change curve and support others moving through faster
• Track benefits and measures of success closely and regularly, publishing results to all those engaged in the change
• Have clear accountability for staff observations post-implementation and a process to address staff concerns/process regression
• Implement change advocates that reside in the business and are supporters for the specific change you are considering
• Celebrate key milestones

Bridgeforce Sustains Success for Change Management in Banking

To stay relevant in today’s banking landscape, financial institutions are challenged with implementing change that fosters evolution and growth. But handling that change ineffectively can be costly – incurring exorbitant costs to your bottom line. Early implementation of the operational change strategies we’ve outlined can help you get started—and keep you on track.