Effective Management of Organizational Change - Term Paper Example

 Effective Management of Organizational Change Introduction VINCI Construction UK is a national facilities and construction company. VINCI is a world leader in construction and concessions. The company operates throughout the the UK. It offers a fully-integrated service – from remediation, ground investigation, and inception, through to project completion. The culture of VINCI UK surrounds its people and passion, environmental sustainability, strength and dependability, partnership and collaboration, innovation and added value, safety and success, and community spirit and investment. Due to these factors, change is inevitable. This means there should be set guidelines for effectively managing organizational change through strategic management and organizational development theories. This is the central point of this paper. Change management is a management approach of transitioning or shifting groups, teams or individuals and organizations to a desired future state from a current state. It is a process of organization that is aimed at assisting the stakeholders to embrace and accept the changes in the organizational environment. In the management of projects, change management is a process of project management where the changes in a project are introduced formally and approved. However, other scholars like Kotter sees change management as utilization of the basic tools and structures that control the effort of organizational change. The goal of the change management is to maximize the potential of the benefits of the organization and minimize the impacts of change on the employees as well as avoid distractions. Organizational change may range from strategic change, mission change, technological change, operational/ structural changes, and changing the behaviors and attitude of the personnel. In an organization, there is always the management and the employee category. When change is introduced in the organization, employees tend to resist change most. This is because they want to remain in the status quo. The employees always fear the unknown and tend to resist any changes that affect their normal way of working and/ or performing their normal duties. In most cases, organizational change adds work to the employee and hence they do resist change. Management on the other hand rarely resists change since they are charged with the performance of the organization. The management is normally responsible for success or failure of organization and hence they may not resist any change in the organization aimed at improving the performance. The practice of organizational change and business research aims at development and advancement of businesses for the intention of boosting effectiveness and receptiveness to changes in their external environment through a better management of employees or people, business structures, communication systems, and ensuring competence. It is this clear that proper change management within organizations is not a regulation that has more useful relevance in one segment within a company than in others that exist, and for that reason both the government and businesses apply its principles, approaches, and procedures in the same manner. The practical change management strategies described can make the transition into the new system easy through various means. This can be done trough involving the support from the employees within the system, obtaining an understanding of the current situation of the organization, making the employees and the management understand where the organization needs to be, why, and the practical measures that must be take to get there. The change management strategies should also be able to allow for development of plans to achieve the change measures. Finally, change must be communicated to the employees, they must be involved and facilitated as early and openly as possible. The practical change management strategies can also ensure the organization changes into the new system via ensuring the following: Increasing the urgency of the change and make real and relevant objectives of change Building and putting in place a support and guiding team that directs the rest of the employees into achieving the objectives of the change Getting the employees to understand the vision right this will enable efficiency in achieving the change objectives Communicate change, involve employees and respond to their needs Empowering the actions and removing obstacles and enabling constructive feedback to the employees Creating short term wins and successes through setting aims that can easily be achieved to motivate employees Not giving up to trials and short term fails but keeping persistence and determination Making the change stick through reinforcing the success value via recruitment and promotions and weaving change into the organizational culture Due of business environments that are increasingly becoming dynamic, most organizations are constantly faced with the necessity to apply changes in their culture, management structure, strategy, and processes. Many marketing elements contribute to the efficiency with which such changes in an organization are put into practice. Whether the process of implementing the organizational change is basically unplanned and irregular, strategic and premeditated, or even incremental or innovative, they have insightful implications for the management of people and organizational development. Any form of change in an organization stirs up the need for creativity, change of culture, innovation, and learning, all of which are legitimately positioned within the field of interest of employees and organizational development. Professionals that take part in working with personnel and organizational development can be main actors in the process of managing an organizational change in issues such as resourcing for personnel, learning and developing of employees, developing the structures of remuneration or reward, and the establishing new forms of relations with employees within a planned and strategic framework. Most professionals that work with personnel and organizational development in the senior levels of management need to illustrate the input that they can offer in helping individuals within the organization to be familiar with and construe the relationship between the vision of the organization, its external and internal environments, and its capability. Similarly, these professionals should be able to mobilize organizational processes that facilitate the process of implementing changes in the organization at the suitable level that fits the requirements of the business. According to academic and business researches that have in the past been made, there are only seven facets of determining how ready an organization is for change, which is not only limited to, but include insight in the direction of the efforts made towards change, existence of a vision for organizational change, mutual respect and trust between employees, initiatives of change, support from the top management, how the change is managed within the organization, and acceptance of the change. Central to this idea, readiness for change encompasses a total transformation of personal cognitions transverselythrough a group of employees (Amenakiset al., 1993). This implies that the people within an organization are the actual source of, and the vehicle that pushes for, change since they are the ones who will have the capacity to finally resist or embrace the process of change (Smith, 2005).That is why it is important that an assessment of an individual’s perception and readiness is carried out prior to making any attempts to implement the change. Company Overview In order to assess the company’s need for change and illustrating how an organizational change can be implemented using John Kotter’s 8 Steps approach to implementing an organisational change, this paper focuses on a Construction Company that is known as VINCI Construction UK. This company is located in UK. VINCI provides services beyond the solutions of delivery of operations. The company offers their clients unparalleled depth and breadth of expertise. Due to the strong working relationships with other subsidiaries and companies related to the VINCI in the UK, the company is able to leverage skills, ideas, and entrepreneurial flair to convey top notch quality work in all sectors. In the entire process of infrastructure creation and environment building, VINCI UK is at the centre of this entire debate. The company encourages communication between the several involved stakeholders in challenges experienced in the cities of the future. Diagnosis: Perceived Need for Organizational Change Over the past ten years, VINCI Construction UK has been progressively more commoditized. The pressures arising from economic costs have been copious and the capacity to succeed in the international market has become reliant upon highly effective internal market processes and better service to its customers. For an effective competition by the company in such a business environment, the top management professionals of VINCI Construction UK arrived at a conclusion that they needed to re-structure or re-engineer their international process of ordering and the organizational systems that sustain them (Beckhardt& Harris, 1987). Their purpose of making such a decision was to establish a perfect order process that would achieve several positive results that include, but not limited to, increasing the loyalty of their customers by formulating reliable, easy and flexible customer-personnel interactions within the company, make available the economical edge (competitive) of a 6-sigma competent process of managing orders, eliminating the rework expenditures, and maximizing the productivity of employed personnel and customer satisfaction by offering the right information and management tools via modified technologies (Beckhardt& Harris, 1987). As such, this perfect order system was to ensure that VINCI Construction UK works in a more integrated and smooth system. The process of implementing this organizational change had many elements within it, which included developing an incorporated desktop with the purpose of providing customers with the data or information they require within the shortest time possible to save on time, employing and training technical service representatives of the company that are well equipped with massive knowledge of various topics relevant to the organization and customers in addition to access to many forms of data (Beckhardt& Harris, 1987). These may include all sorts of information from specification of products to manufactured goods data sheets and informationon regulations. Similarly, the process included the need to facilitate easy access to all the knowledge and information that their sales representatives would need to enable a quicker attendance tothe goals and desires of customers, and perform a cross-business view of an account in order to help the company leverage customer-company relationships. This included developing a portal who positively contributes to the service of the account, such as marketing and sales representatives, to facilitate easy sharing of relevant business information. The last element entailed facilitating the customer service representatives to access all the information or details that they need about clients or a particular bank account from the beginning of their relationship by using data from Siebel, SAP or any other relevant source, which are only but a mouse click away. In addition to fastening service delivery to customers, the aforementioned systems and processes would better individual productivity of personnel as a result of reduced search of information in the system, faultless movement transversely through numerous business systems and a reliableinterface or crossing pointonseveralchannels of communication. Similarly, the new elements to be absorbed entailed incorporating the technique of customer segmentation and regulation of customer services to allow for spot on decisions by frontier employees. With these initiatives, the time taken to train employees would also be reduced as an end result of a spontaneous customer crossing point or interface plus a simplified navigation of the computer screen.With these changes in mind, it is clear that the success of the business highly depended on this changes, thus implementing organisational change was a course that is completely inevitable. The main components for organizational change for VINCI Construction UK therefore entailed developing a communication channel control system that intelligently routs and manages both inbound and outbound voice calls, electronic mail and fax communications, enabling quick access to the company’s applications that include Rail, SAP, and Siebel, a proper fleet management system, facilitating easy access to internet or intranet and many other internal databases, improving the account and profiles of customers in Siebel, assigning of activities by the company’s technical support, sales managers, and Customer Information Groups in the company, undertaking customer surveys, and compiling relevant reports on the proceedings of the company. John Kotter’s 8 Step Approach to Implementing and Managing VINCI Construction UK’s Organizational Changes Many organizations implement changes without taking many factors into consideration and as such fail to implement an effective change process. From the experience that is gained from successful businesses, it is clear that the processes of implementing a successful change takes place when a sense of urgency, engagement of a company’s stakeholders, proper and clear process of communication, openness, a clear vision, a well executed plan, momentum, and a strong leadership exists (Beckhardt& Harris, 1987). Since John Kotter’s 8-step model recognises and takes into consideration each and every aspect of these elements, they may be used in change implementation in VINCI Construction UKCompany would want to adapt successfully.Kotter’s stages of implementing or leading the organizational change that Omega Chemical Company would want to implement is as described below. Step 1: Establishing a Sense of Urgency This is a stage where the professional managers leading the process of change in the organization help other personnel in the company to see the urgent need for change and thus become convinced of the significance of acting with an immediate effect (Kotter, 1999). The managers can do this by creating some formal sense of urgency around the requirement or necessity for change. For the changes suggested to become a success, ¾ of VINCI Construction UK Company’s top managers should be able to buy into the idea of change, which requires some effort. The leaders of change can assess the market together with its economical realities, identify and undertake a detailed discussion of some market crises, possible crises, including key opportunities, and finally avail evidence from the external environment of the company that change is a necessity (Kotter, 1999) . These can be competitive advantages in terms of prices that other companies have over VINCI Construction UK Company, or eye catching scenarios that would convince the company’s managers. Step 2: Building the Guiding Team The sense of urgency that is already created helps to bring the right personalities in the company together. However, getting the right individuals in place is more about getting the right team, trust to handle the job, and commitment(Kotter, 1995). This explains what this step is all about. Furthermore, it is about tackling issues that are conventionally avoided.At this stage there must be honest and open dialogue between employees and the change leader should speak openly and connects to the feeling of other employees(Kotter, 1999). Through that, he or she would be in a position to determine those with the required skills, credibility and leadership capacity to be part of the guiding team, who would in turn convince others that a change needs to be implemented(Kotter, 1999). Step 3: Developing a Change Vision At this stage, the guiding team under the direction of the change leader should be able to convey an image that is clear and compelling to portray what the VINCI Construction UK(Kotter, 1999; 1995). The Company would be like in the event the change occurs. The change leader therefore motivates top management organs in the company to buy the idea of change by connecting the result of the expected change with values that are already established and accepted in Canada. This vision would help direct the efforts associated with the change, and come up with strategies that would help achieve the vision(Kotter, 1999). Step 4: Communicating the Vision for Buy-in This stage involves the change leader making sure that many of his or her colleagues or employees in the company understand and embrace or accept the vision that he has in line with the change in addition to the strategy(Kotter, 1995). The leader can achieve this by ensuring communication, have honest and open dialogues to push the idea, and finally walk the talk. Step 5: Remove Obstacles A change leader that is effective enough should identify and remove obstacles as much as he or she can, and ensure that they do not impede the desired change(Kotter, 1995). This may be achieved through persuading other personalities that need to be convinced or in the least neutralize traditions, processes or procedures that require eliminating or adjusting. Step 6: Create Short-term Wins This stage involves the change leader, proving that the vision that he or she had is achievable by spotting and celebrating positive changes(Kotter, 1999). This can be done by formulating both short-term and long-term goals, look for simple or easy business victories make public the accomplishments of the short-term objectives, and finally praise or reward employees that made it a success. Step 7: Build on the Change The change leaders can then build on the already achieved outcomes and attach self-importance in successful positive changes(Kotter, 1995) . They can analyze what they did in the right manner and copy it, thereby identifying what needs to be improved in the process and make it better for even more positive results. Step 8: Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture If compared to losing body weight, maintaining the progress within the company is habitually more easily said than done when a positive result is attained in the first attempt(Kotter, 1999; 1995). To make the already achieved incremental result sustainable, the reality that is newly attained must become part and parcel of the culture within VINCI Construction UK Company. Conclusion Conclusively, a successful transition into the new system will only occur if the above mentioned measures are taken through the practical change management strategies described. Other things that may be included in order to facilitate transition may be the management of the accrued benefits and realizations from the change, devising and effective training and education as well as skill upgrading scheme, countering of the resistance by employees and aligning them to the organizational strategic direction, providing employee counseling in order to eliminate any possible fears resulting from introduced change. Finally monitoring of the change implementation and after effects associated with it. What prospective search makes possible in a company is a far much superior, enthusiastic, and joint action that would lead to any organization attaining what it previously was not able to achieve. At its best, implementing an effective organizational change leads to several positive outcomes that include an abundance of new initiatives and business ideas, complete agreement on the major areas, organizational teams working together, effective visions for each segment, proper action plans for each sphere and the scheme in its entirety, commitment and zeal, and finally quick implementation of positive ideas. As such, an organisation would be able to develop a shared vision, a strategic plan, implement an already existing plan, manage the growth of the organization, sustain it, have an effective culture, and establish a common ground of understanding amongst the community members, business suppliers, the management staff, employees, better service to customers, effective challenge management, and organizational unions, thus improving yields. References Armenakis, A. A., and Harris, S. G. (2002). Crafting a change message to create transformational readiness, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 15(Number 2), 169-183. Armenakis, A. A., Harris, S. G., and Mossholder, K. W. (1993). Creating readiness for organizational change, Human Relations, 46(June), 681-703. Beckhardt, R. and Harris, R.T. (1987).Organizational transitions: managing complex change. Reading: Addison-Wesley. Kotter, J. (1999). Change leadership. Executive Excellence, 16(4), 16-17. Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard business review, 73(2), 59-67. Patrick W. et al., Public Health Informatics and Information Systems. London: Prentice Philips, J. R. (1983). Enhancing the Effectiveness of Organizational Change Management. Human Resource Management, 22(1/2), 183-199. Smith, Ian. (2005). Achieving readiness for organizational change, Library Management, 26(June), 406-412. Read More