Discuss About The Theory And Practice Of Change Management?
Envato is a retail company where I work as an operation manager, it is involved in selling clothing goods, and it falls under the category of retail good industry. The company is a brand producing fashionable clothing for the consumers of young age group. It is one of the smallest company in Australia involved in the clothing business. The smallest and new venture in the vast retail industry makes it important for the company to maintain a good communication system both externally and internally. This is because the wide spread of the retail industry makes it impossible for the business to communicate with their dealer and investors in the absence of a good communication system. The common communication channel of the company is through traditional phone calls or physically visiting the stores to take the orders and giving the delivery (Perrin 2015).
The paper focuses on the changes that are bought in the communication system of the company Envato where I work as an operation manager to modulate their communication channels and make their expansion path much easier. It will further analyze the effect of the change on the employee, on me as I need to manage all the operation work and on the future growth of the organization. The report will also discuss about the way the company managed the change and my learning experience from the change.
The organization in which I am involved in has to communicate with the dealers, investors and the intermediaries on a daily basis to keep a track on their supply and total number of sale in the market. As I am the operation manager, I have to communicate on the daily basis with the dealers and the retail stores where the products are getting distributed. For this purpose the company maintains a good communication system with their partners that are involved in giving them business. Previously I used to carry out the communication activity with the help of traditional communication tools such as phone calls, mails or physically visiting the franchisee stores to see the sale growth and demand. However, recently the company was facing a problem in its communication system, which was leading to their downfall. There were incidences witnessed by me of increasing loss and cheating by the retailers as some of the sale details was not shown in the data. This forced the company to take up steps for improving their communication channel. The company recently introduced a new communication system in their organization to keep a close contact with their dealers and with their other branch offices (Hayes 2014). It introduced their own online portal in which the dealers and the other branches of the organization need to update their data every day. The dealers can now order their products online directly so that the company can keep an easy track of the outgoing and incoming products. The online portal and social media presence of the company is also launched to maintain a good relationship with the customers. It was also done to make my work easier and required me to carry out all the transactions and tracking work through the online channels (Hutter et al. 2013).
According to my knowledge the change brought about by the company in their communication system both with the consumers and with their employees and franchisee, partners helped me to maintain a quality data about the dealers and daily orders made. However, at first I faced a lot of challenges in using the online channel and this reduced the motivation in me to work for the company. Even though it was done to make my work easy, it did not seem easy to me at first. It made me feel that the complications has increased further and it might create more mistake. This was because I was not aware of the usage of online channels and the strength the social media hold with the customers. However, the effect of these changes was negative initially on me and my co-employees of the company. This is because I needed some time to adjust with such changes. I found difficulty in being acquainted with the online channels of communication such as chat, emailing and running the portal effectively. This is because I was so well acquainted with the traditional method and due to lack of training; I did not know the way of using the online channel and thus failed to take the right advantage of it. Some of the employees also left the organization because of this reason as they were also feeling left out with the new online communication tool. Thus, the company’s aim to improve their marketing approach and customer relationship with these online communication tools has also prove to be detrimental because of the unsupportive employees. On the other hand, slowly we noticed that with the introduction of these communicating channels, the data maintenance of the business improved and error has reduced largely. Moreover, customers can now recognize the company in a better way as they could view the products of the company on their online website before ordering it. This helped to increase the customer retention ability and customer attraction ability of the company.
According to me, the change that has been introduced in the company has both positive and negative effect. The negative effect is discouragement caused in me and the mployees to work after the introduction of the online communication channels because the employees were finding it difficult to deal with these channels due to lack of training. We failed to understand the long-term effect of this change in the organization and on the pattern of their work. On the other hand, we also experienced that the company also gained some positive effect from the change in their communication channel as it helped us to reach to the customers and dealers easily and effective maintenance of the data. Further, through social media channel the company was able to spread its media presence in the market. This further helped the company to increase their customer recognition and customer retention power. Thus, according to me the change was appropriate for the company because it facilitated my work to maintain data and also for the positive effect on the customers (Best et al. 2014). However, the company needed to plan something to incorporate change in a systematic manner in order to stop putting negative effect on me and company partners.
Change is never ending factor when it comes to a new organization like Envato as the company goes on incorporating change in the company every now and then for the better growth of the company. However, the change had to be done on a systematic manner in order to reduce its negative effect on the company as well as other. Noticing the effect of the change I advised the senior managers and CEO of the company on starting with the change with proper planning. Planning is the initial step in which the company needs to structure out the change and the person to be involved in the change. It also allows the company to realize the persons to be affected by these changes and the result of such an effect. Second I asked them to involve every one of us of the organization in the discussion meeting to discuss the need of the change and the perception they keep about the importance of such a change. This will make them feel secure and help the company to know the problem they might face after the change (Belias and Koustelios 2014). On my advice the company arranged for training classes for the employees to get acquainted with the new system of communication that the company wants to bring in their organization and to motivate them to use the new system. This further helped us easily deal with the online communication channels and complexity and increase their employee retention capability.
Change is of various kinds such as transformational change, environmental change and incremental change. However, each of the change has different meaning and application in the organization. The change experienced by me in Envato includes both transformational change and environmental change. This is because the alteration in the communication channel of the company had an effect on the external environment such as the customers, dealers and others and also on the internal environment. The transformational change that is being caused by the communicational change affected the values and culture of the organization as well. Thus, along with the communicational change the company considered other changes as well and on my advice tried to manage it. Thus, it required multiple levels of decisions to be taken by the authorities on this ground. The best way of managing the change was to move systematically such as unfreezing the state bringing the change and refreezing the change state. The company unfreeze the past communication channel by reducing the use of traditional communication method. Change was bought by incorporating the communication channel like social media presence, online site and other (Worley and Mohrman 2014). Lastly, it refreeze the change by making use of the online communication channel on the day-to-day basis. This is the way the company easily formulated transformational change in the organization.
I have been able to learn a lot from the change by analyzing various challenges and opportunities it puts on the organization. By analyzing various concepts and theories of change, I got to know the difference between various types of change bought in the organization such as external and internal changes and the way the organization can deal with it. Moreover, I also got to know the challenges a company can face by bringing a sudden change in the organizational system such as grievances form the employees, external partners and others. Due to raise of such grievances I also learnt about the ways n which a company can manage the change. The change management techniques that I learnt from the organization I work in are that the company should first approach its employees before bringing any change. This will allow the company to know the challenges the employee can face, the thinking of the employees about the change and the way it can start bringing those changes. This will increase the trust of the employees for the organization. Lastly, it should also important that the company effectively convey the message about the change to the customers so that they can make maximum use of it. Thus, I learnt that in this way a change could be successful for an organization both internally and externally.
Conclusion
From the above analysis, it can be concluded that for the company to bring about a change in its organization and to make it successful it needs to take u various steps. The steps to be taken involve planning, discussion and implementation. The failure of Envato to adopt these steps at the initial stage of communicational change in their organization leads to various drawbacks. Thus, a proper method of unfreezing, bringing change and refreezing needs to be followed by the company. However, Envato was able to acquire a lot of positive impact as well by adopting modern means of communication in its organization. The main benefit was the increasing customer traffic and retention of customers due to increased brand recognition. Thus, change management can reduce the negative effect and allow only the positive effect if deal in a proper manner.
References
Belias, D. and Koustelios, A., 2014. The impact of leadership and change management strategy on organizational culture. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 10(7).
Best, P., Manktelow, R. and Taylor, B., 2014. Online communication, social media and adolescent wellbeing: A systematic narrative review. Children and Youth Services Review, 41, pp.27-36.
Hayes, J., 2014. The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hutter, K., Hautz, J., Dennhardt, S. and Füller, J., 2013. The impact of user interactions in social media on brand awareness and purchase intention: the case of MINI on Facebook. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 22(5/6), pp.342-351.
Perrin, A., 2015. Social media usage. Pew Research Center.
Worley, C.G. and Mohrman, S.A., 2014. Is change management obsolete?. Organizational Dynamics, 43(3), pp.214-22
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download