Introducing New Tech to Your Team

Upgrading your technology can save your business time and money, but only if your team embraces it. Unfortunately, when it comes to tech we tend to resist change, especially if learning new programs or hardware takes time from our busy workday.

Here are some tips for getting your team to embrace and adopt new technology.

1. Give Employees a Part in Planning and Choosing Solutions. Your team is more likely to embrace change if they are a part of the decision making process. Depending on the solutions needed, empowering employees to help with the research, budgeting, purchasing and implementation can help them to embrace change.
2. Choose Technology That Works With Existing Tools. You’ll have less disruption if the new technology you choose integrates with your existing technological tools.
3. Emphasize Benefits, Not Features. Cool features can motivate your team to learn a new tool, however if the bells and whistles don’t work, play up it’s benefits, not the features. Your team may be more interested if it provides them with time saving features, like eliminating steps in a workflow, or reducing errors.
4. Allow Time to Transition. Don’t bring in a completely new system just before your busy season! Plan ahead, allow time for training and if it makes sense, phase in changes over time. This gives your team a chance to adjust. This also gives you time in the event there is a problem or delay getting up to speed or integrating your new technology with your existing system.
5. Reward Your Team For Learning and Using the New Technology. Make the changes fun for your team. Look for ways to “gamify” the new tool to help motivate departments and individuals to embrace it. Consider incentives like a contest, or awarding a prize to the team that makes the fastest transition. Give employees who save the most time or reduce their error rate a free lunch for their team or reward them with a gift card or other incentive.

By taking the time to plan upgrades and keeping your team in the loop and a part of the decision making process, you’ll speed up adoption and improve your business operations in more ways than one.