Improve ATS Adoption

49% of ATS implementations fail due to poor adoption preparation – Forrester Research

You’ve made the decision to upgrade your recruiting suite and now it’s time to let your team know about the looming change. With change comes resistance, but change is a fact of life and a necessity if you want your company to develop, grow, and stay competitive. As such, it’s vitally important to go the extra mile to make adoption as easy and stress-free as possible. The more comfortable your company, is with the new software the better it will be utilized, and the better utilized, the greater your ROI. Below are some tips on how to reduce adoption stress and increase adoption success.

Sell the value

Let employees know why you made the switch, and most importantly, how they will benefit. When introducing something new – but failing to explain the direct benefit – you will be setting yourself up for pushback. Corporate has made an adjustment to advance the team and improve everyone’s output, so be sure to explain how the new software will be a value add.

Have an adoption process

Once the new system is in place, make a concerted effort to teach and help users. Resistance is unavoidable, but by having an open a forum to discuss, learn, and ask questions during the adoption period, the transition will be exponentially easier. If employees feel like everyone is coming together, they will be less skeptical about the change.

Select adoption experts

Adoption experts are influential members of the organization who will act as advocates for the new software. They will have two key agendas:

1) Assure employees that the software will increase their efficiency and productivity levels
2) Act as product experts

These internal liaisons will help get everyone up and running by being available to answer the questions that inevitably arise during a learning period. Of course, there may be more in-depth questions requiring you to reach out to your vendor’s customer success representative, but internal experts will act as a scaled down help desk and will expedite the adoption timeline. When influential members of your organization exude positivity and excitement, the sentiment will trickle down to everyone, helping to reduce the anxiety of having to alter their process and learn a new system.

“Select people who are visible and carry influence inside the organization and, before you go broad,
pour all your resources into making these early adopters wildly successful.”

Highlight successes

This will instill a “light at the end of the tunnel” feeling and help mitigate the apprehension of having to learn something new. As people start learning the new ATS and implementing it into their workflow, have everyone share their successes. This will encourage others to keep at it and stay confident that this new ATS will result in recruiting success.

“Human nature makes people resistant to change and transition the way we work, but it can be a huge improvement to the work place.”