5 Change Management Steps for Implementing DEI Software

Five change management steps that recruiting operations can take when implementing a new DEI platform.

Change management is difficult for organizations because team members have a certain way of doing things, and introducing new software can throw them off their game. 

However, there are lots of ways to make the transition period faster and easier on your teams. Here are five change management steps you can take to get hiring teams up to speed on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) platforms.


1. Explain the reasons behind the new platform

Why are you asking your hiring team members to adopt a new platform like Datapeople? Recruiters and hiring managers need a clear value proposition to buy in. 

As an example, here’s one for Datapeople:

A job post creates a first impression. A good first impression encourages qualified candidates to apply. A bad first impression makes qualified candidates click away to other job posts, becoming lost opportunities for your hiring team. 

Datapeople relies on real candidate search behavior rather than instincts or anecdotes to create a good first impression and better final result. Which means more qualified candidates for every job, less time presenting candidates to hiring managers, shorter time-to-fill, more diverse candidate pools, and overall stronger talent funnels. Hiring teams can see real results with very little extra work up front─even as little as 10 minutes. 


2. Be an internal champion for the platform

Hiring teams are more likely to embrace a new DEI platform if someone at the company leads change management by championing it. Use the software yourself and get early adopters to use it and become champions for it as well. 

Highlight all of your successes so other users can see the difference the software makes. In Datapeople’s case, share feedback on how easy the platform is to use and how quickly you’re getting qualified candidates and closing jobs. Positive feedback from the recruiting operations team and early adopters can nudge other recruiters and hiring managers to follow suit. 


3. Tackle workflow change management

A big obstacle in change management is workflow. Again, people have their way of doing things, and they can get uncomfortable when you ask them to adopt new ways.

The best thing you can do is think through changes in your recruiting process so that users don’t have to. For Datapeople, explain how to take advantage of the integration with your applicant tracking system (ATS). Build out learning resources specific to your hiring team (with Datapeople’s help). And incorporate your own team’s successes, tips, and tricks into those resources. 



4. Track usage and set goals

Holding users accountable helps hiring teams incorporate a new platform into their daily routines. It should be a part of your change management approach. 

Track usage for each hiring team and hold team leaders accountable. (You can track this in Datapeople with the usage reporting feature.) Include usage goals in key performance indicators (KPIs) alongside other KPIs such as time-to-fill and hiring manager satisfaction.

Also gamify adoption, if that helps. This is pretty easy in Datapeople because of the job scoring feature. You can make a competition out of getting job scores higher (a no-brainer at gaming companies, where the competition can get pretty fierce). And recognize high performers as examples and resources for other hiring team members. 


5. Reinforce the value proposition

Hearing the value proposition over and over helps your hiring teams internalize the benefits of their new software. It may take time, but you’ll get there if the platform is a good one.

If your recruiters don’t meet with hiring managers to discuss every role before writing a job post, they should. These meetings help establish what has changed about each role and what the hiring manager really needs. It also prevents hiring managers from simply copying and pasting old jobs again and again. 

These meetings are an opportunity to reinforce the value proposition as well. With Datapeople, recruiters can convey the best practices they learn from the platform. And they can feel confident because their suggestions are based on data from real candidate behavior, not just instinct or anecdotal evidence. In fact, they already know the changes will yield better results and help them avoid small candidate pools.


What are some change management steps for DEI software?

Change management isn’t easy, and the shorter and easier you can make a transition, the better. So explain the why behind a platform, identify internal champions, tackle workflow changes yourself, track usage and set goals, and reinforce the value proposition as much as possible.

If you’d like to learn more about the Datapeople platform, in particular, please feel free to sign up for a complementary trial or schedule a demo with a member of our team. 

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