The organisations today require to undergo changes on regular basis to adapt to the dynamic market conditions. They face competitions from their competitors which again require them to restructure their modus operandi to sustain in the competition. The paper would delve into the business requirements which would require Australia’s government owned postal body to change its modes of operations. The first business requirement of Australia Post is to increase its expertise to handle parcels of goods ordered online which clearly indicates the increasing competition which the postal body is facing from its private counterparts (auspost.com.au 2018). The second business requirements is to change the modes of the operations to increase customer satisfaction in order to sustain in the market. Australia Post started charging its customers for not picking up their parcels on time did not go down well with the customers. The customers are as a result opting for private courier services which provide faster and delivery services sans such charges, the legality of which the customers resented (smh.com.au 2018). These two business requirements would lead the torch for choosing the appropriate change management models, the change models by Lewin Change Management Model and McKinsey’s 7-S Model.
Each and every business organization has to implement change to stay competitive and achieve the best results in the market. The management of the companies must identify both the internal as well as external analysis of the organization to gain an idea of the need for the changes in the organization. The SWOT and PEST Analysis must be used to determine the external sources of change that has an impact on the organization. The SWOT Analysis of Australia Post is as follows;
|
STRENGTH |
OPPORTUNITIES |
|
· Absence of any competition from other sources · Backed by the Government · Strong Investor |
· Gradual Expansion in Asian and other markets of the world · Use of covered bonds to reduce the pressure of funding |
|
WEAKNESSESS |
THREATS |
|
· Organizational weaknesses · Absence of use in technology |
· Presence of private courier services · Increasing limits of credit |
Therefore the weakness and the threats of the organization clearly depicts the immediate changes that needs to be implemented by the management of the organization to survive in the market.
The two change management models that have been selected for the implementation of change in the particular business enterprise is;
As per Cummings, Bridgman and Brown (2016), the change management model of Lewin is based on three major divisions which are Unfreeze, Making Changes and Refreezing. Australia Post can use the change model of Lewin to bring about changes in its operations to deal with the two business requirements namely, increasing its efficiency to handle online ordered parcels and become more competitive by adapting to the requirements of the customers and thus ensuring satisfaction of the latter.
The first step of the change model proposed by Lewin is Unfreeze which involves organisations preparing their staff members for the change. The analysis of the two issues clearly point out that the employees of the Australia Post lacks dynamism of the employees of the private courier services. They were not adept at handling parcels of goods ordered online line their private counterparts. The management of the organisation similarly was not receptive to the changing expectations of the customers and wrongly imposed fine of them for receiving parcels late. This faulty decision making led to Australia Post losing customers to its competitors, the private courier services. Moreover, Australia Post charged higher than the private courier services, which again points out to the flawed business strategy making by the management. Thus, the unfreezing stage in Australia Post would consist of two main parts, convincing the senior managers to change their modes of operations and training and preparing the employees to ensure higher degree of customer satisfaction and online parcel delivery expertise. Hornstein, (2015) points out in this respect that this attempt to change the modes of operations could give rise to resentment among both the senior managers and lower level employees like the delivery personnel. While the senior managers may view the change as a breach of their power, the lower level employees may view as a threat to their job security. This growing resentment among the employees may attract actions from the Communications Union since Australia Post is a public body (cepu.org 2018). This would lead to hindering smooth customer services of the postal body and attract more financial losses. The management of Australia Post should manage this stressful situation very tactfully which would lead to next stage of change management, Change.
The personnel at this stage start adapting to the change because they understand its requirements though there always remains scope for conflict. Goudge et al. (2018) point out that at this stage the apex management should take steps to acclimatise the employees of different levels with the change. The apex management instead of retrenching employees who resist to changes, especially the lower level employees, should take steps to train them. As far as Australia Post is concerned, the apex management may hire external consultant to mentor and train employees to handle online order posts. The postal body can install a software dedicated to process and train the employees on the same. The management can hire experts from private courier companies to train the middle level managers to price the parcel delivery services accordingly (Farid, Davaji and Barani 2016). Similarly, the apex management should hold conferences internally with the managers to train them on new pricing techniques to gain more competitiveness in the market (Behringer and Sassenberg 2015). These steps would gradually lead to employees understanding that the essence of the change in Australia Post is to gain more competitiveness in the market and not to pose threats to their jobs. The employees should be trained in new methods like more advanced methods of handling online ordered parcels. The outcome of the training of the lower level employees would be faster delivery of the parcels containing goods ordered online. The outcome of the managers’ training would be formation of more competitive pricing strategy which would ultimately enable Australia Post to price its services more competitively, thus enabling it to give the private courier services a run for their customer shares (Altamony et al. 2016). Successful change management procedure consisting of both managers and lower level employees would pave way to the next stage, refreeze.
The third step of the change model by Lewin is refreezing in which the employees of the organisation adapt to the change and embrace the new modes of operations. The management enforces new organisational behaviour within the organisation which the employees readily adopt (Kirrane et al. 2017). As far as Australia Post is concerned, the employees, both the managers and the delivery staff adopt the new modes of operations. The outcome of the change would be more efficient delivery of online ordered parcels and lower pricing strategies. This would enable Australian Post to emerge into a leading online ordered parcel delivering body. This newly earned expertise can in fact enable the postal body create a new niche market where it would cater to the leading ecommerce companies and enable them deliver their products to consumers. This organisation would also be able to earn higher economy of scale and price its services more competitively (Cameron and Green 2015). This analysis shows that the outcome of the efficient change management along Lewin’s Change Management model in Australia Post would be generating of higher revenue and securing higher competitive position in the Australian courier and postal market.
Figure 1. Figure showing adaptation of Lewin’s change management model for Australia Post
(Source: Author)
The McKinsey 7S model of change management takes into account 7 key factors which organisations can integrate to bring about successful change management. The 7 elements can be broken into three hard elements which remain directly under management control and four soft elements which are beyond the control of the management (Shiri, Anvari and Soltani 2015). Strategy, structure and systems make up the hard elements while shared value, style, staff and skills make up the four soft elements. The following section would delve into how Australia Post can implement the 7S model of McKinsey.
Strategy consist of actions or road maps which the apex management of organisations which are looking forward to adopt changes can adopt. AS far as Australia Post is concerned, the body can train its employees which would include both managers and delivery employees. (Ravanfar 2015).
The structure refers to the structure of the organisations which are heading towards changes. The nature of the structure of the organisations would have deep impact on how they embrace changes (Naipinit et al. 2014). For example, organisations having fall structures can embrace changes more readily owing to their dynamic decision making process. As far as Australia Post is concerned, the body has a tall organisational structure and had to cater to the needs of various other stakeholders like labour union (auspost.com.au 2018). These complex structural factor prevented it from taking dynamic decisions. The body must aim to make its decision making structure more dynamic and enable making of speedy decisions which would be aligned to the market.
The systems component consists of daily operations of the employees working in the organisations. As far as Australia Post is concerned, its system consist of receiving, management and delivery of posts. The staff of Australia post must receive trainings to deliver parcels, especially ecommerce parcels more efficiently.
The shared values component of the McKinsey 7S model would consist of the vision and mission which the employees of the organisation share irrespective of their posts. For example, the corporate governance of Australia Post embrace all employees including managers and delivery staffs. They are all obliged to comply with the decisions of the management to bring about positive changes in the organisations. The offering of training to managers and delivery employees would align them more to the management decision to adopt a more efficient delivery procedure of the online ordered goods and higher levels of economies of scale (Farid, Davaji and Barani 2016).
This component refer to the leadership style which the apex management bodies follow in the organisations while leading them towards changes. Kok and McDonald (2017) mention that leadership style plays a significant role in the success of change management in organisations. Awino, Njeru and Adwet (2017) point out that application of authoritative style like threatening to render employees redundant to make them embrace changes only lead to further conflict which impedes implementation of changes. As far Australia Post is concerned, the body must use participative style of leadership and encourage both the managers and the delivery employees to participate in the change process (Guenzi and Storbacka 2015).
The staff element of the 7S change management process which McKinsey proposes consist of human resources which organisations employ. As far as Australia Post is concerned, the organisation should train its employees and motivate them to accept the change (Mitchell, Fredendall and Cantrell 2015).
The skills refer to the skills and qualities of the employees. As far as Australia Post is concerned, the body delivers letters and parcels. As pointed out in the PEST analysis Australia is technology advanced which means that most of the documents are exchanged in form of emails (Basuony and Mohamed 2014). This means that the body would require curtailing down its delivery staff numbers and rendering some of them redundant, at least at the lower level. The above discussion points out that training staffs members to deliver parcels of online products would open new avenue for business for Australia Post (Cameron and Green 2015).
Change Interventions:
The human resource intervention approach consists of intervening into the issues and train human resources to deal with them. The process can take various forms like large group inventions and intergroup relation intervention, both of which are appropriate for delivery staff of Australia Post. Australia Post must train its employees to handle parcels of ecommerce products more efficiently and install software to manage the entire ecommerce order delivery. The entire change management can be aligned with change stage of Lewin’s change management model (Ravanfar 2015).
Training of delivery employees and their supervisors to manage and deliver parcels of products available online more efficiently.
The most significant feature of the first intervention would be training of delivery employees to manage ecommerce parcels and installation of software. An analysis of this intervention clearly shows installation of modern technology to manage ecommerce parcels would form an integral part of the process (Farid, Davaji and Barani 2016).
The intervention system uses motivation and tension to intervene in the issues. One can analyse that this intervention method is appropriate for high profile employees like managers.
Training of managers in decision making.
The components of whole system in room intervention method are presence of middle and senior level managers. The aim of the system is to improve the decision making power of the managers which once again can be aligned to the change stage of Lewin’s model. The most significant feature this intervention method is that it should aim to change and improve the decision process of the managers. For example, as far as Australia Post is concerned, the apex management to aim to train the managers to make more dynamic and market based pricing model (Ravanfar 2015).
The chosen organisational change diagnosis model is force-field analysis model by Kurt Lewin. The model outlines organisations as outcomes of internal forces propelling the changes and tress on the power of these internal drivers to embrace changes by overcoming the factors opposing the changes. As far as Australia Post is concerned, the body consist of apex management, middle level managers and lower level employees including the delivery staff members. As per the model, the employees including the managers and delivery staffs are capable of propelling themselves to accept the change towards adopting a more efficient management of ecommerce parcels and establishing a more competitive service charge strategy. The factors restricting the delivery staffs from accepting the change in the example consisting of job insecurity and fear of weaknesses being exposed before the higher officials. The factors impeding the managers from accepting the change are their ego and perceived fear of loss of position after the adoption of the change. Thus as per the outline of the model, these factors are impeding the organisation, Australia Post from accepting the change. Again, the change management model once again by Lewin stresses on training of employees to enable them to adopt the change. Thus, in this light, one can justify that the force field analysis model by Kurt Lewin is the appropriate model to diagnose the change at Australian Post (Basuony and Mohamed 2014).
The apex management must plan and implement the two interventions models namely, Whole system in room conferences and human process intervention. The apex management should form strategies like training the employees to enable them to the changes along the lines of change management model.
Conclusion:
One can conclude from this discussion that Australia Post should embrace change in the Kurt Lewin method to bring about improvement in its operations. The body must train its employees to handle ecommerce parcels more efficiently. Similarly, the managers should form more market based pricing strategy to attract more customers and give tougher competition to the private courier delivery service providing companies. The aim of the change should be aligning the operations of the organisations to earn more revenue and open new business opportunities which would ultimately render it sustainability.
Recommendations:
The following are the recommendations which can be made in the light of the above discussion:
Intervention:
The management of Australia Post alternatively can implement engineering approach intervention to improve the performances of the employees. The company can initiate innovations in form of projects.
Implementation:
Australia Post can implement the change according to Kurt Lewin’s model by gaining support from stakeholders like the government and the trade union.
Sustainability:
Australia Post must improve its delivery of ecommerce parcels and slowly create a niche business of delivering ecommerce parcels. This would increase its revenue and make its operations more sustainable.
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