Report Of Organisational Change Plan For Pearson Education

The Description and Evolution of the Company

Describe about the Report of Organisational Change Plan for Pearson Education.

Change Management plan indicates to the steps taken towards certain changes in an organisation. Organisational change, on one hand, leads a company towards better sustainable progress, on the contrary, prevents a company from reaching a stagnation point concerning system and profit (Benn et al. 2014). However, companies often undergo an organisational change when losses are faced in gaining revenues or sales or employment. The Chosen organisation (Pearson) is an example of it. Pearson is counted as one of the leading companies in the field of publishing and education industry that primarily deals with textbooks. A British owned education and publishing company, Pearson owns multiple media brands like the Peachpit, Addison-Wesley, Longman, and others. This company has an employee count of 40,000 as counted in 2009 (Pearson.com 2016). However, it is in 2015 that the corporation faced a great loss in both segments of profit and customers. As the reviews go, the company faced a decline in sales of 7%, revenue went down for 11% resulting in a down of 50 million dollars than the previous pear in profit and in 2016 it faced a huge plummeting in stocks in London Exchange by 10% (Huffington Post India 2016).

The following assignment attempts to trace the needs of an organisational change in the strategies of Pearson to target to an increase in the revenue and stock price as well to establish the reputation of its name among its stakeholders and customers. Since the company has already lost much trust and revenue, it is the need of the hour to take counter strategies to regain its position.

The assignment, through a systematic analysis of the needs to make changes in the organisation, the resistances towards the step and a planning intensity for a successful project and planning for the HR professionals, attempts to make a plan for the organisational change in Pearson.

It is in January 2013 that the CEO John Fallon took the charges from the longtime CEO Marjorie Scardino. The first step Fallon took to change the approach of the company was triggered towards making the company more ‘service-oriented’, ‘digital’ and focused on the learning outcomes and economy. On the other hand, the company went through a huge reorganisation and distribution of the workforce among six different business units (Huffington Post India 2016). On their part the CEO announced their target to ‘help improve learning outcomes.’ Nevertheless, whatever target the company tried to achieve, the results turned out to be of absolute difference.

Importance of the Change (Internal and external context)

According to the report of Fortune, the scheme managed to upset many people. The step took Pearson to a completely different light. It is the opinion of many parents and teachers that Pearson is attempting to control every element of the educational process, from the qualification of the teachers to the Student curriculums and evaluations. Not only from the basic levels, the company has earned much negative criticism from several universities as well for their attempt to become ‘global learning services company’. Professor Alan Singer from University in New York calls Pearson a corporate ‘octopus’ (Fortune.com 2016). Such criticism has resulted in a drastic fall in the shares and the revenue. Therefore, in present times, an organisational change is turning to be the most necessary step to regain the position.

However, the internal work culture and structure are fair and perfect for the atmosphere of work. It is the organisational culture and managerial expertise of the higher-level authorities that has managed to continue the organisational culture resulting in an increasing reputation of the 171-year-old company. It is as kitchin mentions the company has already found ‘what a successful culture looked like,’ therefore is able to ‘design and impose such a culture,’ and the organisation has moved rapidly to be more successful (Pearson.com 2016). Structurally the company follows an organized pattern by departmentalizing segments concerning function, product, geography process and customer (Fortune.com 2016). Steps towards organisational change help in fulfilling the targeted position of the company concerning revenue, faith and retaining the reputation. Moreover, after taking charge john Fallon’s reorganising the work structure distributed the workforce among six different segments to fulfill the tasks more swiftly. Such steps have indeed contributed further towards the growth of the reputation.

The most important change the organisation needs to undertake at the present hour is to make sustainable changes in its business strategy towards ‘global learning services company’. As the reports reveal, the company has already invited much negative criticism for the steps. The company first needs to regain its reputation from the customers. Therefore, the most fruitful model for the process might be Kotter’s 8-Step change model demanding strategies in terms of ‘increasing the urgency for change’, ‘building a tram dedicated to change,’ ‘creating the vision for change.’ At the same time, the model demands steps to be taken like ‘communicating the need for change,’ ‘empowering staff with the ability to change,’ ‘creating short term goals,’ ‘staying persistent’, and ‘ensuring the permanence of the change'(kotterinternational.com 2016).

Kotter’s 8-Step model plan

Establishing a sense of urgency:

The sales and revenue statistics already are blatant examples that the company needs to undergo thorough assessments and changes in the organisation especially in the external contexts (internationalization, environment, technology and opportunities). It is important now for the others such as the upper-level managers and officers to understand the situation. Meetings and briefs to the employees must be held to inform the status of the present condition of the company and the results about to come. When acquainted with the problems the employees can suggest solutions of their own. Especially the solutions from the marketing and sales team will be most helpful to receive and follow for they are the one to get contact directly with the customers and dealers.

Moreover, the actions received as solutions from the concerned team managers and departments must be implemented within the duration of a financial year. The process of implementation must start within four months of receiving the plan to make the manual process implemented, processed as a natural trait which is an important feature of organisational change.

A separate team first is needed to set up to ensure and implement the changes. The team must include employees and managers from the marketing, sale, finance, and technical departments. The team must be small but strong and analytically powerful. The positive points in the team are that the team will be open directly to the problems and dissatisfaction of the customers through the sales and marketing teams which will bring in the first-hand experience of the satisfaction and the irritations of the customers (kotterinternational.com  2016). Moreover, the representatives from the financial department will be able to draw up a draft of probable expenses. The department will be helpful to focus on profit and loss keeping an eye on the present situation in the economy and stock price for the individual strategies decided to be implemented. The sales team will be helpful to understand the pulse of the customers.

The visions must be to retain the 171-year-old reputation as well as the existing customers by providing them with a standard quality of services and products. The official website already lists their vision to be the fulfillment of the needs across a ‘spectrum of individuals’ with the expertise of their technology and experience (Pearson.com 2016). At the same time, retaining customers will ensure a flow of the funds regarding revenue.

It must be taken into attention that the strategies must be traditional. The uncommon and ‘off the road’ steps to make Pearson to be ‘global learning services company’ has already brought in much negative impact resulting in a heavy loss. The company must at first align the concerned teams towards the strategies for generating the revenues, and the strategies must be well-crafted which will describe clearly the present state and the state the team is targeting the company to be within the duration of the implementing procedures (Kerzner 2013).

It is most important and the most desired action to take to an organisational change. For there are always conflicts of the positive and negative reviews regarding changes and new plans, it is most important to make people understand the need for the change and the impact on the company’s revenue and the stock piece if the current plans are continued. At the same time, the employees, as well as the directors, are needed to be oriented with the company so that they can feel the workplace to be their own and their contributions important to the progress of the company. At the same time, the employees must understand the need for change in terms of the effects of it on their financial situation.

Since the change is on a large scale and keeping in focus the need to implement as early as possible the company will need a significant number of employees to implement the changes faster. Since all of them are under a common opportunity and are driven towards the same direction implementation will be swift. The employees must be sent individually to houses and take surveys from individual students and parents, teachers and to stores and dealers to take their reviews and suggestions for the existing activities. Moreover, they must inform them about the changes and take the suggestions regarding the change. On one hand that would ensure a direct public contact to know the opinion of the people that will bring a marketing advertisement for the company at the same time, the changes will be reviewed whether be helpful or not.

First, a target market needed to be set to determine the profits of the changes and if they are well accepted. For the initial period, moderate profit margins for the sellers and discount for the students and teachers as special offers so that the changed services and products can spread through as much of the market as possible. For the market has  already reviewed and suggested their opinion for the changed services, the services and products are expected to meet the requirements of the people. That will ensure a good spread and profit in the revenue (Kerzner 2013). 

To ensure persistence in the change process the leader must be a variable. From some managers and leaders involved in the team of implementing changes, managers must be put to be in the leading position for a certain period. That not only will help to give a fair chance to all ensuring managers but at the same time, the company will get to see some new strategies and approach towards the change and their implementation. Stagnation is not expected in such an activity and if a leader is permanent the creativity of strategies might get stagnant that will prohibit the progress. The new strategies and steps will ensure a consistent acceleration in the changed service.

To ensure the changes to be permanent, the old strategies and activities taken in time of implementing the changes must be articulated and repeated. To ensure a consistent progress in the long run, the connections between the activities and approaches will be important to establish. According to a survey, almost 90% of managers and employees agree that the importance of agility and speed has increased in the last five years (Welbourne 2014).

However, there are problems as well for the plans and changes to be implemented. It is an obvious fact that the previous plans to make the organisation a ‘global learning services company’ was well accepted by the employees and decision board therefore implemented. Thus, there might again be problem and resistance from these employees, managers of the companies against the changes toward the digitalized and ‘more all encompassing’ plans. In their opinion might be to make the company global ‘digitalization’ ‘is the next step’ (Andersson 2015).

Indeed digitalization and all encompassing subjects are important for the company to be global. Nevertheless, the employees must be understood that the activities have not been accepted and more profitable for the company in the end. Therefore, at least for a small targeted market in a small amount, the changes are needed to be implemented to check their profitability and acceptability. Moreover, if proved a successful change the changes will be implemented on a bigger scale (Cameron and Green 2015).

The implementation of the plans is expected to be fluid and fast. With the great number of employees engaged in the implementation process, the activity will be in time. However, the resistance from different sections of the company and initial disinterest of the customers may lead many employees to be less positive and the conflicts that could have been used in a productive manner for the changes can  result only in winning arguments.

The HR, therefore, needs to follow many steps towards giving supports to the changing process. They need to review the job description regularly ensuring the job roles do not conflict; they need to meet regularly with the employees to discuss the problems and opinions so that further problems and conflicts do not arise in the process. The HR department needs to build a friendly relationship among the colleagues as well as subordinates. Moreover, they need to produce often reports on accomplishments, needs of plans for further implementation of several plans to encourage the employees and keep up the active atmosphere of the workplace (Hanson 2010).

Change management dashboard calculates the present state of management of change on a project. The units include the change managers, sponsors, project managers as well as the change management teams. Change management dashboard is important to determine and implement changes in the organisation for, it defines the perspective of change before deciding the monitor and identify the functional balance between ‘having brief overview and detailed insight of the change status’. Task management dashboard ensures an active and creative process of implementing the strategies toward the organisational change by monitoring beforehand the market and probable profits and losses and reviews of the customers depending on their experiences. Change management dashboard also determines the emergence of fruitful marketing strategies for the implementation of the changes (Vaccarezza and Rizzi 2014).

 Planning intensity plays an important role in successful implementation of the project. As reveals Zippel-Schultz, B & Schultz, the success of planning in the management of hospital industry is well evident. Even in the case of organisational change for Pearson, the planning is crucial. Planning for several marketing strategies as well as the market to target first and then progress accordingly ensures a systematic way of approaching the target to implement the changes. For planning, it is important first to identify and approach the change. Next, the changes and strategies need to be reviewed by several customers and dealers to check if the changes match their requirements. Then the management team must make the plans for output such as action plans, resistance towards the changes, reach the market and change the leaders after certain durations to keep the implementation active and creative (Zippel and Schultz 2011).

Conclusion:

In the end to conclude it must be mentioned that to continue the Pearson with the reputation and enough profit a sustainable organisational change mostly dealing with the external contexts. The market needs to be surveyed as well as the individuals such as the students and the dealers and the parents, teachers. Thereby it is important for the company to generate more revenue and retain its customer base and good will that the products and services must be taken under a thorough test to determine the changes in strategic and marketing factors which will ensure the profits as well as the acceptability of the company. At the same time, a change in the working strategies and existing plans will keep the organisation mobile and free from stagnation therefore open to newness of ideas and strategies.

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