Change Makers: A Closer Look at the Savills Change Management Team with Tonya Williams: Part Two

A team is like a mosaic. Each piece is different but brings an essential addition to the whole picture. The Savills Change Management team is a group of individuals with unique experience and credentials. Together, they bring their clients a well-rounded perspective on navigating and implementing change. Learn more about our team and the Savills approach to change management in our series, Change Makers.

Change Management in Practice: Advising on a Major Headquarters Transition with Global Impact

As a Change Manager and Workplace Strategist with a background in interior design, I have helped many organizations over the years with a wide range of space transitions and challenges. Along the way, I have learned valuable lessons on the importance of fostering trust, remaining indispensable as needs shift, and guiding clients to rely on solid data (rather than biases or assumptions) when making critical decisions.

When these three conditions are in place, it sets the stage for a productive relationship, and stakeholders feel confident in their choices throughout a project’s duration.

One of my recent change management engagements demonstrates the importance of these principles. Here is a look at this project and its outcome:

Supporting a confidential global energy client

I had worked with this global energy client since the onset of the pandemic, providing workplace strategy and change management services. The company has a headquarters campus and was undergoing a major restack effort, which required a shift in employee work behavior. The project team strongly advocated for this new way of working, which had been successfully implemented at other global sites. However, due to local culture, leadership was unsure about proceeding.

After providing insight into how our team has managed change for other clients, the next step became clear to the client: they were missing a key part of their change management approach. On short notice, our team co-located on site at the client’s HQ and worked with them directly for six weeks to collect, interpret, and present data via a visual dashboard that would give leadership a clearer picture of employee sentiment. The client credited this effort as the catalyst for advancing the project objectives forward, which not only impacted the local site, but potential future changes to all global sites.

Our hands-on and tailored approach

Savills Change Management team embarked on an intensive touring and data-gathering process to help the client assess employee readiness for the potential change. Employees were able to voluntarily sign up for guided, curated tours of the real estate group’s pilot workspace. Our change managers accompanied teams of employees on all tours—conducting six tours a day over a period of six weeks—recording reactions in real time and then issuing a follow-up survey afterward.

Employees were provided with additional resources to ask questions during and after the tours. A designated “champion” within the real estate group, along with a dedicated champion from each employee’s business team, helped lead the tours and remained available to assist with any inquiries.

Previously, the client had neither considered nor implemented a mechanism for capturing feedback from employees to help drive the change. Our team set up a database with an executive dashboard that leadership could access to track real-time progress of the tours and employee sentiment. This data-rich dashboard presented information in an easy-to-understand format, featuring colorful charts and relevant statistics. Leadership could easily grasp the scope of the tours, how many employees from each business group participated, and employee reactions to their experiences.

Outcomes based on data and consensus

The data showed that most employees felt neutral to satisfied with the new working environment. With this information, leadership felt confident in moving forward with the transition and approved real estate to proceed with their intended business goals.

This case study illustrates the importance of building and supporting consensus from the bottom up. Whereas leadership could have chosen to move blindly in one direction or another, making top-down decisions within their purview, the data allowed them to understand sentiment across a campus of thousands of employees and make their next move on a solid foundation of evidence.

A partnership based on trust

This project was delivered in the context of a longer-term partnership with the client, which began with workplace strategy and change management services. The scope of our collaboration has expanded as the client’s trust in our ability to consistently meet their business objectives has grown. In addition to providing ongoing workplace and change strategy support, I also serve in an advisory role, providing workplace insights and best practices, and fostering connections within the organization to help spearhead initiatives that align with the organization’s goals.

By remaining available to the client for a variety of needs, our change management experts became the client’s natural choice for major space shifts requiring a systematic and thoughtful evaluation before proceeding. As they transition their campus, we will continue to support the evolution of their space and ways of working, leveraging change management principles to create a well-informed path forward.

Tonya Williams joined Savills Houston office in 2021 as Managing Director and specializes in developing and delivering workplace strategy solutions for clients globally. In this role, she helps organizations further the business’s purpose by creating the framework for an effective workplace strategy foundation. Tonya works with clients closely to understand their real estate needs, culture, work methodology, technology, and the business drivers and challenges to merge the art and science of workplace. Utilizing workplace data such as social physics, benchmarking and research, engagement in visioning and observation sessions, and programming and design expertise, Tonya executes a workplace strategy recommendation with data and thoughtfulness that is unique to each organization.

Get in touch with Tonya: tmwilliams@savills.us