In order to sustain in the present competitive market, every business should undergo changes. Various factors influence the process of organizational change. Many a times the managers need to respond to these factors to maintain the organizational balance and proper functioning (Benn, Edwards and Williams 2014). Responding to these factors are hence identified as organizational change. These factors can be divided into Internal and External factors. In the context of Specsavers Opticians, it can be said the organizational change happened under the influence of multiple internal and external factors.
Technological Advancement:
Technological advancement is one of the primary factors that influenced in the organizational change. The company has employed new technologies in order to come up with more efficient contact lenses and glasses. In addition to this, Specsavers has installed advanced machineries for eye testing. Moreover, the company has come up with special technologies to combat the issue of refraction. The glasses are also coming up with anti-reflective coating and UV blocking treatment. Many a times it has been noticed that the employees start to feel insecure and become frightened of losing their jobs due to these technological advancements. It is a popular notion amongst the employees that they might lose their jobs to machines. Hence, to assure them, it is necessary that the employees should be trained and well informed.
Customer Satisfaction:
Customer satisfaction is one of the most important external factors that influence the organizational change. As a result of the significant advancement in this field, the customers are demanding more efficient glasses and more options in frames. To retain the market base, the company needs to take up innovations and come up with unique features.
Employee Retention:
Employee retention is a major internal factor that created an impact in the organizational functioning. As the company was facing problems regarding employee retention. In order to combat the issue, the organization has come up with better HR policies and reward programs to boost the morale of the employees.
Changing Market:
To keep up with the changing market, the company needs come up with technological as well as functional changes. The youths are becoming more fashion and health conscious now a days. Hence, the company can create a target market and grab the attention of the youths by launching efficiently styled frames, sunglasses and user friendly contact lenses.
Organizational change can fetch both positive and negative responses from the employees. Many a times it has been witnessed that the employees take up the organizational change positively. The changes that has been brought after providing prior information to the employees, mostly brings positive responses from the workforce (Fullan 2014). However, it is seen that the employees restrain the technological and operational changes.
Restraining New Technology
For Specsavers, the organizational change may bring mixed responses. It is possible that the employees will try to restrain the technological advancement. In many cases, it has been witnessed that the employees restrain any technological advancement. Initially, they are apprehensive about new techniques and technologies. Hence, proper communication and training is required to avoid this problem.
Welcoming Innovation
Employees often welcome innovations that might help in the growth of the business. Bringing innovations and implementing them implies increased revenue generation. Hence, the employees always appreciate the innovations that are brought up in order to satisfy the consumers.
Appraising Employee-friendly Policies
Bringing new HR policies and coming up with reward programs are always helpful in making the employees happy and satisfied. Hence, it is expected that the employees will appraise the change. Reward programs are often seen as effective ways to increase productivity of the workforce. Moreover, a healthy work culture helps in building and maintaining the reputation of the organization. Specsavers is one of the leading names in the field of optometric services. Hence, it should focus on retaining the reputation.
Identify potential barriers to change in the workplace and state how they can be overcome
Employee involvement:
The most common barriers to change are lack of employee involvement. Many a times it is seen that organizational change causes stress amongst the workforce. They feel apprehensive and fear of losing employment. As a result of this, they show less involvement in the organizational change (Alasadi and Askary 2014). Specsavers is an organization that is operating since 1984. Hence, the bringing sudden changes in the operational and management policies within the organization may create an unrest amongst the employees.
In order to solve the problem, the managers and the leaders should focus on the team building methods. Unities amongst the team members will help the employees be more open to the changes. Proper training programs are to be employed to build confidence amongst them. They should be involved in the process of bringing the changes. In this order, it is very necessary to listen to their views and ideas regarding incorporation of new technologies and policies.
Communication Barriers:
Lack of communication within an organizational environment is the possibly the biggest barrier in organizational change. Some business organization lacks effective strategy for communication. This affects the process of organizational change to the most. The primary reason of employee resistance is the lack of communication amongst the workforce and the leaders or supervisors.
As Specsavers is aiming at bringing organizational change, it should focus on communication amongst the employees and the organization. Building strategies of communication is highly important. Managers and CEOs should stop this strategy of announcing the change and expect the employees to adapt themselves rather they should also explain them how this will affect the employees and provide necessary solutions to adapt to the change. They should make proper communication strategy that will clear the doubts and insecurities o the employees.
Organizational complexity:
Organizations begin to develop and with this development, the complexity of the organization increases. The planning and implementing the change becomes more difficult and complex. These complexities includes products, systems, processes all the things that contributes to the barriers to change. Managers play very crucial role in reducing the organizational complexity. In the context of Specsavers, it can be said that the organization needs to take up strategies to simplify the operational strategies.
It is important to break these barriers by implementing skilful approach that will tackle complexity as well as the fast growth of the organization. The organization can introduce effective change management system. The managers and the supervisors should employ team-building strategies to increase more efficiency.
However, change is a very complex process and employees often ignore to adapt the changes in the workplace. The organization can get some unique benefits from the changes (Jacobs, van Witteloostuijn and Christe-Zeyse 2013). It brings new opportunities to the employees and the organization.
Some of the benefits of organizational change in the workplace are discussed below:
Fresh approaches: Changes brings fresh approaches to the business operation. This ensures more accurate and effective business strategy. Changes can be frustrated at first but with time it will be helpful very effective. For example, learning software programme can be difficulty and frustrated at first but this will also increase the speed of workflow, better management of time, and improve the processes. Taking up fresh approach towards marketing policies and organizational functioning will be helpful for Specsavers opticians. As they are planning to bring and implement effective organizational change, taking up fresh approaches will help the company to come up with better ideas of implementing the changes.
Increased Efficiency: The primary purpose of bringing any organizational change is increasing the functional efficiency of an organization. Similarly, Specsavers also will be benefitted, as the operation procedure will be more effective and lucid. Moreover, organizational change influences the work efficiency and productivity of the employees. This will increase the productivity of the workforce as well.
Increased opportunity: Change brings new opportunities for the people who are willing to embrace the changes. This also brings new opportunities for the unemployed people. Moreover, organizational change brings opportunities of greater revenue generation. Specsavers has planned for the organizational change so that it can capture the growing market. Hence, the changes will provide increased opportunity to capture the market as well as provide opportunities of innovations.
Updated policies: Change in the management ownership brings new and updated procedures and policies. This may bring more accurate and correct policies, which the previous sets of policies were missing. The effective organizational change include implementation of updated organizational policies. This will help in building employee satisfaction. Specsavers can update policies regarding HR issues and employee rewards. In addition to this, the company can take up new marketing policies to capture the target market. Bringing these changes will help the organization to grow significantly.
In order to bring changes within an organization, the role of managers are held as being highly important. Managers and supervisors are the key elements that take up important role of mediator between the organizational aim and the views of the employees (Rafferty, Jimmieson and Armenakis 2013). In this regard, managers and leaders can also be held as responsible in bringing the effective organizational changes. To elaborate it furthermore, the roles of the leaders are to be taken into further consideration.
Sponsoring
The leaders play crucial roles in bringing organizational change. As for Specsavers Optical, the role of the team leaders is also very important. The leaders act as the champions of organizational change. They are the representatives of the change in front of the employees. The leaders of Specsavers hence will lay the role of the sponsors who will help in keeping up the initiative of change alive. They keep on encouraging the employees as well as the higher authorities.
Role Model
It is widely accepted that the leaders should be the role model in bringing the organizational change. The employees always will follow the leaders, in this regard it can be said that the team leaders and supervisors of Specsavers should also follow the similar method to encourage the employees regarding the change policy. The employees of the organization mostly watch and follow the leaders and their consistency between words and actions. Hence, in order to implement the changes, the leaders should take up the changes primarily and be the changes.
The primary ideas and strategies are possible by the significant contribution of ideas from the manager’s end. The leaders and supervisors play primary roles in controlling and managing the budgets, necessary equipment and important resources. In addition to that, the leaders must employ their authority in implementing the decisions.
Communicating
During the change process, the leaders need to be inconstant communication with the higher management in order to understand the entire procedure in a better way. Moreover, the leaders need to convey the views and ideas of the employees to the higher authority. This will help in the process of better implementation of the organizational change. As the Specsavers Optical Group is planning for organizational change, the team leaders must communicate with the management in order to get clear vision regarding the process. This will help them in explaining those views and ideas to the employees. Taking up this method helps in avoiding unrest or commotions from both the ends.
The role of a leader is highly important in bringing an effective organizational change (Fullan, M., 2014). Team leaders are the key components who help maintaining the effectiveness within the team as well as within the organization.
· Creating a plan:
Every business organization needs change to survive in the environment. If an organization does not innovate and react properly to the changes of market demands, the organization will collapse. The managers of Specsavers have to make proper business plan before implementing a certain change. First, identify the areas of the organization that requires changes and then make the change accordingly. Creating proper and prior planning is highly needed in order to implement the changes. In addition to this, proper planning is also required in order to make the necessary changes in the organizational operation.
Understand the objective:
It is necessary to understand the goals and objectives of the business organization for which the changes are to be done. Understanding the objective of the business will help to set the steps of changes accurately. Specsavers opticians are planning changes in order to capture the ever-growing market, come up with more innovations and encourage the employees for better production.
Communicate early:
Communication is necessary when it comes to apply change in the organization. From the start, it is necessary to communicate with the staffs and members so that they can be well informed about the change that is going to take place in the organization. This will also help them to share ideas, comments, concerns and suggestion during the process of change. In addition to this, it is also important for an organization to have proper and free communication between the leaders and the employees. This help in the process of exchange of ideas.
Identify key members:
To support the process of organizational change, it is very important for the managers and the leaders to identify the members or the employees of the organization, who can contribute ideas and innovations to the process. In order to obtain effective organizational change, it is important that the organization acknowledge and accept the ideas of the employees as well. This will help in the process of involving these employees. Acknowledging their ideas and views will encourage them to be involved with the process. In addition to this, the key employees can also help in encouraging other team members to be more productive.
Engaging
Involving the team members is important to make any organizational change fruitful. I this regard, it the role of the team leaders can be considered to be most important. Team leaders employ techniques and strategies to engage the team members. Similarly, the team leaders of Specsavers Optician Ltd. need to incorporate strategies and multiple employee engagement programs to make the procedure of change more effective.
Hold Accountable
Another key aspect of employing effective change is to hold every employee as accountable. Respecting and understanding each and every idea is highly important. Moreover, it increases the chances of acceptance amongst the employees. Hence, to support the organizational change the team leaders of Specsavers need to value every employee of the team, understand their views and values.
Unity and cohesion within the team and organization is important in order to maintain the effectiveness of organizational change. Building a cohesive team makes the employees ready to participate in the organizational change in an active manner (Brandler and Roman 2015). A successful team is united by their skills, willingness to work together as well as support each other.
The most important factors that need to be taken care of before selecting a team are the team’s mission. The mission or objective of the team needs to be set first, which will help the leaders to select particular members. In order to build cohesion within the team, it is important that the team members are aware of the mission behind the organizational change. However, lack of knowledge regarding the change can cause disruption within the team.
Search for diversity:
Diversity makes a team successful. A team with diverse people brings more ideas, skills and different experiences under the same roof. This will help in achieving the mission with more expertise. Moreover, the diversity within a group ensures group cohesiveness by acknowledging diverse cultures and their different values.
Practise teamwork:
Team building exercises helps in finding how the individuals will work in a group to execute the goals of the organisation. Moreover, it helps the leaders to build unity amongst the team members.
Utilize the strengths of the individual:
Identifying the strengths of the individual and assign, the specific tasks to the specific people will help the team in the end. Delegating tasks according to their strengths helps in accomplishing the goals.
Communicate effectively:
Communicating is the key for everything. A team can be cohesive if the communication between the leader and the employees is effective. Clearly explain the key objectives of the organisation.
Give proper feedback:
Throughout the entire project and after the completion of the project the leader needs to give feedback to the team about their work. This should be the feedback for the team as well as feedback of the individual. Explaining them about what went well and what did not will help the team to rectify and more effectively the next time.
Ask for employee’s feedback:
Not only should the leader provide feedback the leader should also ask for the feedback from the employees. This will help in identifying any flaws in the leadership process and it will help the leader to better its leadership process. The team leader will also feel proud and happy that their opinion matters in the organisation.
Celebrate success:
After achieving the desired success, it is important to celebrate the success. This encourages the team members to be more involved and more productive in future. Celebrating success is another way of acknowledging the efforts put by the employees in an organization. This will help the team to work harder in the next task.
Moreover, team cohesiveness helps in building an environment of trust, understanding and sympathy amongst the team members. It influences the team members to think and act as a united entity. Lack of cohesiveness often creates misunderstanding amongst the members and the leaders. This in turn may help the working environment and the procedure of organizational change.
Reference:
Alasadi, R. and Askary, S., 2014. Employee involvement and the barriers to organizational change. International Journal of Information, Business and Management, 6(1), p.29.
Benn, S., Edwards, M. and Williams, T., 2014. Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge.
Brandler, S. and Roman, C.P., 2015. Group work: Skills and strategies for effective interventions. Routledge.
Fullan, M., 2014. Leading in a culture of change personal action guide and workbook. John Wiley & Sons.
Jacobs, G., van Witteloostuijn, A. and Christe-Zeyse, J., 2013. A theoretical framework of organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 26(5), pp.772-792.
Rafferty, A.E., Jimmieson, N.L. and Armenakis, A.A., 2013. Change readiness: A multilevel review. Journal of management, 39(1), pp.110-135.
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