1. Change is constant at every organization, but workers have emerged as the main opponents of change. Employees resist change for various reasons but the main one is fear that it might not favor them or there might be bad management of change in their workplace (Green, 2016). However, various strategies and motivators can be implemented to lessen employees’ resistance to any impending change in an organization. These include:
Addressing personal concerns first and linking the change to other issues workers care about: When faced with a change, employees react with their individual concerns: “Will the change alter my schedule?” “Will this affect my revenue?” So, as a change agent deal, with their personal issues first and concentrate later on the organizational benefits of the change about to take place. Besides, link the change to other concerns that workers seem to care about (Hodges, and Gill, 2014). Explain to them how the change will connect to issues of job security, health, salaries, and other pertinent issues which are in front of their minds. In so doing, the firm will make change stickier and hence will receive insignificant resistance from the workers.
Communicating change effectively: The best way management in an organization can communicate change is to specifically tell workers what is happening and how they are affected by the change (Quirke, 2017). Using a mixture of informal and formal communication channels allows employees to receive news about change in the best way possible. Employment of all communication outlets like face-to-face meetings, emails, town halls, and company intranets will take the change message across the organization. Employing different communication mechanisms help change agent to explain goals, mission, vision, and anticipations for what needs to take place and why. Communicating change effectively also gives the company an opportunity to explain to the workers its pros and cons as well as how it will alter their routine operations.
Effectively engage employees: Ensuring that workers are participating fully in the change process will certainly reduce their opposition to it. Pay attention, receive and respond to their feedback regarding the change about to take place (Stephan, Patterson, Kelly, & Mair, 2016).They are the ones ensuring that all customers are satisfied and that all work gets done and so it is crucial to keep them at the loop. Ask workers probing questions like: Is the change favorable? How can we improve it? What is your general comment about the change? There are the great questions to solicit ample feedback from them. Their answers can be utilized to alter the change accordingly, and prove to the workers that their ideas and concerns are being taken into consideration.
Execute change in several steps: In order to further motivate employees to accept change easily, it is advisable to implement it in a number of steps rather than at once. An organization should first prepare for the change, communicate it to the workers, take action on change, make a plan for managing it, and support the change and ensure that everything is going as planned (Al-Haddad, & Kotnour, 2015).
2. All organizational changes, whether small or large, require one or even more change agents. Change agents are those people who have the skills and powers to fuel, smooth the progress of, and harmonize the change efforts (Hesselbarth, and Schaltegger, 2014). Change agents might be either internal or external. As leader, change agent plays a critical role in any change management effort. Change agents are left with sole responsibility of consulting, training and researching in the course of change implementation process. As consultants, change agents place workers in touch with data from outside the company and also help members to generate data from the internal sources of the enterprise. Their main focus here is to assist workers to find solutions to problems by analyzing valid data. As leaders, change agents work to ensure other stakeholders like employees see the importance of bringing about change.
Apart from functioning as consultants, change agents perform the role of a trainer. Here they help organization’s stakeholders to learn how to utilize data to effect change (Lessard et al. 2015). In this, change agent serves a dual purpose. He assists members to obtain insinuations for actions from the current data. He also provides them with fresh skills or the ability to retrieve, transform, and utilize data to provide solutions to future problems. In addition, while training them to do these things, change agent also trains organizations members how to cope up with change and ensure that it does not affect their individual contributions to the success of the entity. Lastly and narrowly connected to the preceding role, change agents might assume the role of researcher. As researcher, he/she might train organization stakeholders in the skills considered necessary for compelling assessment of the efficiency of action plans which have been put into practice. In addition, as part of the general intervention approach, the change agent can design an appraisal module which can be utilized in resolving not only the present problems but also future ones.
What is more, change agents whether external or internal are supposed to be role models and be willing to go first. They should demonstrate their attitudes and behaviors which are expected of all other organization members (Van Poeck, Læssøe, & Block, 2017). Workers view them as leaders and watch them for consistency between words and actions to determine whether they should believe the change is going to take place. Apart from this role, change agents are expected to engage and motivate employees in the changing implementation process. As leaders, they are supposed to craft a sense of importance and urgency regarding the change, and demonstrate dedication and infatuation about getting things done. They should also provide acknowledgment to those who are taking part and doing well. Change agents are also obliged to communicate over and over again to share information, keep other updated and provide support. They are supposed to communicate every detail about change; it significance, why it is necessary, company intentions, and how it will impact lives of other people in the organization.
3. A change management strategy refers to a plan for how to make something different. In an organizational setting, a change management strategy explains explicit approaches through which a business shall address such things as changes in the inventory requirements, scheduling or project scope, or supply chain (Altamony, Al-Salti, Gharaibeh, and Elyas, 2016). The objective of setting up a proper strategy is to make sure that any unconstructive impacts of change shall be effectively curtailed. In order to efficiently establish a change management strategy, the involved parties are supposed to come up with a plan for how to recognize when a change is required, how to endorse changes, how to put changes into practice as well as how to keep an eye on changes to make sure they have brought about the desired effect. It is splendid to acknowledge that after change has been effected, it is not a guarantee that strategies put in place to manage it will be successful. Various factors can lead to failure of these strategies or their success.
Before management in any organization thinks of any change, it usually sets some goals or objectives which it ought to accomplish within a stimulated timeframe. These goals should be clear and concise without any ambiguity. Normally, most change happens to improve a product, a process, or an outcome and thus it is crucial to focus and clarify objectives. If after the set duration has passed without any noticeable improvement, senior management team can presume that their change management strategies were futile and they did not bare fruits as anticipated. On the other hand, if everything goes as expected, the executives can conclude that their change management strategies are successful and perhaps no further adjustments are needed.
Furthermore, collecting feedback from other pertinent firm stakeholders like employees can help senior management team in assessing the success rate of the change management strategies. Information regarding their individual views, attitudes, and outlooks of the strategies can provide management with a general stance of the current change management approaches in place. Different data collection tools like questionnaires, face-to-face interrogations, and open discussion forums can be used to gather worker’s views regarding change management plans being employed. After this exercise, management can take the initiative and analyze information collected to gauge its viability, reliability, and level of accuracy. Finding they will develop after data analysis will prove to them whether change management strategies presently in place are successful or not. This assessment process will serve two purposes. Apart from evaluating the effectiveness of change management schemes, it will act as a motivating factor since it will prove to the workers that their views are useful in the progress of the company.
References
Al-Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: a model for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 234-262.
Altamony, H., Al-Salti, Z., Gharaibeh, A. and Elyas, T., 2016. The relationship between change management strategy and successful enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations: A theoretical perspective. International Journal of Business Management and Economic Research, 7(4), pp.690-703.
Green, D., 2016. How change happens (p. 288). Oxford University Press.
Hesselbarth, C. and Schaltegger, S., 2014. Educating change agents for sustainability–learnings from the first sustainability management master of business administration. Journal of cleaner production, 62, pp.24-36.
Hodges, J. and Gill, R., 2014. Sustaining change in organizations. Sage.
Lessard, S., Bareil, C., Lalonde, L., Duhamel, F., Hudon, E., Goudreau, J. and Lévesque, L., 2015. External facilitators and interprofessional facilitation teams: a qualitative study of their roles in supporting practice change. Implementation Science, 11(1), p.97.
Quirke, B. (2017). Making the connections: using internal communication to turn strategy into action. Routledge.
Stephan, U., Patterson, M., Kelly, C., & Mair, J. (2016). Organizations driving positive social change: A review and an integrative framework of change processes. Journal of Management, 42(5), 1250-1281.
Van Poeck, K., Læssøe, J., & Block, T. (2017). An exploration of sustainability change agents as facilitators of nonformal learning: mapping a moving and intertwined landscape. Ecology and Society, 22(2).
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