What are 'champions', and why do you need them?
'Champions' can be an important part of your Qulture.Rocks implementation . They are the early-adopters who will help permeate the practices in the team.
Think of 'champions' as ambassadors of the practices in the company: center-forwards trained by HR who can help score great goals.
Having a strong network of 'champions' will help speed up the implementation process by increasing employee engagement and reduce the "burden" on HR.
How to choose the right 'champions'?
Here are some practical tips on how to choose the right team of 'champions':
Choose around 10% of the company to be part of the 'champions' team
The group should be a representative sample of your company's population, so bring in people from different areas, functions and seniorities
The 'champions' should be employees of great influence in the organization, due to their popularity, traffic and openness to innovation
Important: think in advance if potential 'champions' have a good chance of supporting your initiative. In OKRs, for example, popular but underperforming employees may be against the initiative if they think that it will make their performance (or lack of it) more explicit in the group.
The role of 'champions' (and HR) in the process
We have 3 stages of implementation: pre-launch, launch, and post-launch.
Before launch
The 'champions' should be among the first ones to know the practices to be implemented, and have early access to the Platform. They should be able to get all their questions answered before the go-live, so that they can serve as an advanced point of clarification of doubts for the other collaborators.
We recommend that the 'champions' access the tool at least 2 weeks before their colleagues, and use it among themselves (e.g. exchange feedback with other 'champions').
One idea is to have all 'champions' receive the Qulture.Rocks feedback course by email. This way, they will become experts on the topic, knowing how to propagate good practices among their impacted colleagues.
During the launch
The 'champions' should actively help their colleagues to log in their accounts at the desktop and mobile platforms, knowing well the login process, password recovery and reset. They should also know the practices well (for example, they should be good at giving good feedbacks) so that they can coach their peers informaly.
One idea often used by our customers is to give special T-shirts, stickers, and pins to the 'champions', and invite them to set up adoption blitzes at the launch weeks.
In the case of Feedback product implementation, it can be interesting that the 'champions' are set up to be the pioners by asking and giving feedbacks or praises in a pro-active and thorough way, so that their colleagues have more incentives to get into the tool and already know good examples of feedbacks and compliments.
After the launch
The 'champions' should be a key part of the engagement and adoption process, driving and being pro-active amongst colleagues and their team.
HR should let the 'champions' know if there are employees who are "behind" in using the tools, so they can work their magic and bring the slower ones into the game.