Organisational change
Change can be hard for example acquisitions, restructuring and adjustments
to organisational processes can be difficult. Some organisational change
efforts fail. Effective communication, in particular, plays a vital role in
making organisational change possible. Change can be planned or
unplanned.
Two questions have to be addressed when communicating change:
a) Do our employees have the motivation to change?
b) Are our employees equipped with ability to change?
Steps to communicate change
a) Share vision
How is the organisation and staff going to benefit e.g remote working
during covid 19?
b) Tell a story
Where is the organisation going to be in future and how it is now?
c) Make those in your organisation the heroes. Inspire and enable employees
to be agents of change.
d) Chart the path
Equip employees to become leaders in your change communication i.e
share the vision that is keep on communicating.
Organisational Development
Organisational development (OD) was found in the USA in the work of Kurt
Lewin (1878-1947). Lewin found that using participative methods in small
groups led to positive changes in attitude and greater commitment from the
people in organisations.
Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) a psychology professor most famous for his
‘hierarchy of needs’, and another important figure in the history of OD believed
that when an individual needs were met, it led to ‘self-actualisation’. When an
organisation was open and individual’s contributions were recognised, this was
more likely to occur.
Other theorists advocated participation as a means of motivating employees and
achieving a greater performance, and leadership styles that were democratic and
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involving were shown to lead to better organisational performance and
employee satisfaction. Behavioural science, including anthropology,
psychology and have all had their impact in OD.
Organisational development is the work of facilitating organisational success by
aligning structural, cultural and strategic realities of work to respond to the
needs of ever-evolving business climate.
It is concerned with facilitating change in organisations through a holistic and
humanistic approach that put people at the heart of the process. At the heart of
OD is the deep connection between the best business processes and structures
on the one hand, and people working within the organisation on the other to
create great organisations.
Characteristics of OD include:
i. Change structure, culture, strategy and processes of an individual job
through to an entire organisation.
ii. The application of behavioural science and the practice to facilitate
transformation within an organisation.
iii. The implementation of organisational effectiveness by involving
members of the organisation in understanding the challenge whilst
enabling them new skills knowledge and a way of thinking.
iv. The promotion of high productivity, performance, quality products,
financial performance and continuous improvement.
v. The facilitation of change in a flexible adaptive and often participative
way.
vi. Sustainable and consistent change in the right direction continues beyond
the life of the initial change initiative
OD values human potential and therefore the importance of understanding
the systematic challenge from a range of stakeholders and then engage those
stakeholders directly in shaping the change, partly so that, through broad
ownership, its chance of being understood and implemented are maximised.
Benefits of OD
It is adaptive, flexible and evolving.
Puts people at the heart of change and emphasises creativity, innovation
and positively affects the bottom line.
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OD creates a continuous cycle of improvement from strategy through to
implementation, evaluation and further change.
OD increases communication across all levels of the organisation
aligning employees to shared values and manifesting change from
employee feedback.
OD increases innovation through employee development and engagement
and an effective analysis of the market.
OD increases profit by improved productivity and creativity, reduced
cost, minimising staff turnover and creating a culture of openness and
adaptive and ongoing change.
Resistance to change
Zalton and Duncan (1977), define resistance as “any conduct that serve to
maintain the status quo in the face of pressure to alter the status quo”.
Organisations are in their nature are resistant to change and conservative in
adapting to change. Government agencies want to continue doing what they
have been doing for years.
One of the most baffling and recalcitrant of the problems which executives face
is employee resistance to change and it takes a number of forms:
i. Persistent reduction in output.
ii. Increase in the number of “quits”.
iii. Requests for transfer.
iv. Chronic quarrels.
v. Sullen hostility.
vi. Wild cat or slowdown strikes.
Solutions which has become increasingly become popular for dealing with
resistance to change is to get the people involved to participate in making the
change.
The key to the problem is to understand the true nature of the resistance.
Actually what employee resist is usually not technical change but social change-
the change in their human relationships that generally accompanies technical
change.
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Resistance is usually created because of certain blind spots and attitudes which
staff specialists have as a result of their preoccupations with the technical
aspects of new ideas.
Low tolerance to change is defined as the fear that one will not be able to
develop new skills and behaviours that are requires in new work setting.
Employees resist change because they have to learn something new.
Employees’ resistance may force management to rethink or re-evaluate a
proposed change initiative.
Employee resistance to change is a complex issue facing management in the
complex and ever-evolving organisation today.
Beckhard and Pritchad (1992) outlined the 3 basic steps in managing a
transition to a new system:
i. Identify task to be done;
ii. Creating necessary management structures;
iii. Developing strategies for building commitment ;
iv. Designing mechanism to communicate the change; and
v. Assigning resources.
Kotter (1995) developed a model for understanding and managing change in
any organisation:
i. Increase urgency-inspire people to move, make objectives real and
relevant.
ii. Build the guiding team-get right people in place with the right emotional
commitment and right mix of skills and levels.
iii. Envisioning- get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy focus
on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and
efficiency.
iv. Communication-involve as many people as possible, communicate the
essentials simplify and appeal and respond to people’s needs.
v. Empower actions-remove obstacles, enable constructive feedback and
lots of support from leaders, reward and recognise progress and
achievements.
vi. Create short term wins-set aims that are easy to achieve- in bite size
chunks. Finish current stages before starting new ones.
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vii. Continues focus- foster encourage determination and persistence –
ongoing change encourage ongoing progress report, highlight achieved
and future milestones.
viii. Sustain the change-Reinforce the value of successful change via
recruitment, promotion of new change leaders.
Dealing with resistance to change:
a) Communication-people have to be given the facts, reasons for change and
they have to have the clear picture of possible change.
b) Encourage participation-all those affected should be involved in the
decision to change, reducing conflict, and uncertainty and suspicion thus
encouraging participation.
c) Provide support to those who are to be negatively affected by change.
Those who are afraid need counselling and training for example
retrenchments.
d) Negotiate-that is giving something in return for a commitment to change,
for example more benefits, new title and attractive packages.
e) Co-opting –buying off the leaders of resistance, that is, give them a role
in the decision making.
f) Force-issues threats dismiss/suspend people eg they can suspend or fire
one or two people in order to make a point.
