Topic: Employee Resistance to Change one page - Essay Example

Employee Resistance to Change Employee Resistance to Change This post aims at sharing a few insights in relation to employee resistance to change, which is one of the biggest challenges to organizational change today. Change is necessary to take the organization to the next level and also to keep up with competition in the industry. Technological advancements have made it easier for organizations to manage change. Employee resistance to change can be both a positive and a negative issue to the organization (Zawacki, & Norman, 2005).

The negative side of organizational change is the fact that it makes it difficult to implement change plans, thus making it hard for the organization to remain competitive. Positives that can be derived from organizational change include the opportunities to learn on necessary improvement that can be made, identifying the best approaches to manage change in the future as well as learning how to incorporate the views of different stakeholders in organizational change.Organizational change usually requires employees to think and act in a different manner in order to implement the latest strategies to help the organization achieve its goals.

This demand can be very difficult for some employees if they are not very well prepared to work differently6 from how they are used to. Organizational change is also likely to result in uncertainties over the future of the employees and the organization’s forward. The employees are therefore likely to lose a sense of security, which may be reflected in their general performance. Resistance to change is therefore considered as a natural response and reaction of employees to organizational changes that they are not very well prepared to meet.

Resistance to ChangeThere are two main methods of implementing organizational change namely, the aristocratic method and the employee involvement method. The aristocratic method involves the management planning and implementing change without input from the employees. Employee involvement method on the other hand entails cooperation between the management and the employees in initiating and implementing organizational change. The aristocratic method is becoming less popular in the contemporary business world because of the man y negative issues associated with it.

One of the negative impacts of the aristocratic method is the fact that it alienates the employees from the change initiative. Employees form a significant part of the stakeholders in the organization and alienating them from the process of change leaves out a very important part of the organization. This method is also likely to result in resistance to change among employees since it makes the change appear foreign to the employees who are expected to play a vital task in implementation of the change.

There are also other cases where the aristocratic method may be most effective for implementing change in an organization. In cases where the imminent change is likely to have a tremendous influence on the organization in the long term in terms of increasing production and making the organization more functional, the aristocratic method is very useful, as it will ensure the change is implemented despite some case of resistance. When the long-term benefits of change are far much better than the short-term negative effects, the aristocratic method is most effective (Ron and Burnes, 2001).

The other method, the employee involvement method also has its share of negative effects which include, slowing down the implementation process of change and making the change process more costly.ReferencesRon C. and Burnes, B. (2001). "Managing organisational change in the public sector - Lessons from the privatisation of the Property Service Agency", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 14 Iss: 2, pp.94 – 110.Zawacki, R., & Norman, C. (2005). Successful self-directed teams and planned change: A lot in common. In W. L.

French, C. H. Bell, & R. A. Zawacki (Eds.), Organizational Development and Transformation (pp. 216-232). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.