Scenario
A change agent has been appointed to support a merger and acquisition involving two insurance companies. Following the acquisition, the parent organization plans to integrate the acquired firm’s operations, products, and services into its existing structure, creating a risk of job losses and requiring departmental restructuring. As employees resign or are terminated, many remaining staff members resist sharing knowledge and struggle with the loss of organizational identity. The task is to develop a change management plan to address these challenges and facilitate a successful transition.
Need for Change
A strong unwillingness to cooperate among new employees reduces the organization’s overall productivity and gradually erodes staff morale. The reason for such destructive behavior is easy to understand. It is the fear of losing identity, opportunities, and work. According to Richards (n.d.), it is the usual result of poorly addressed cultural clashes that occur after acquisition. Therefore, there is a need to change their attitude toward the new work environment.
Transformation Through Kotter’s 8-Step Model
Step 1
In Kotter’s 8-step model, the first stage in the change plan is to create a collective sense of urgency (The eight steps for leading change, n.d.). A shared, highly relevant problem that is also a splendid opportunity is what best brings people of different cultures, values, and attitudes together. It will be announced that one of the critical deadlines has been shifted due to customer demand, with the completion of this work bringing the organization incredible profits on time.
Step 2
A coordinated leadership team is needed to channel the enthusiasm and motivation of newly increased, poorly organized, and uncommunicative personnel toward productivity. Experts note that they must “guide it, coordinate it, and communicate its activities” (The eight steps for leading change, n.d., para. 4). The team will include senior staff and experienced managers. Regarding the composition of the leadership group, the principle of equal representation will be applied. A similar number of employees from the leading organization and employees from the instrumental one will be invited there. This approach will ensure cooperation between the two parties. Moreover, trust and responsiveness will start to develop in the working collective. Building the management team this way will encourage new employees to share their knowledge.
Step 3
Motivated workers and their leaders need the vision to move forward and guide their efforts. They need to see “how the future will be different from the past” (The eight steps for leading change, n.d., para. 5). Recent times have been tough for new hires, including poorly executed acquisitions, abrupt and harsh onboarding, the exodus of colleagues, and terminations. Cornerstone values will be talent appreciation and respectful treatment, around which the new vision will be centered. The vision is to be productive and achieve great goals through mutual respect, friendliness, appreciation of talent, humanity, cooperativeness, and creativity.
Step 4
There needs to be more than the formulation and announcement of a vision. It must also be communicated to employees to be effective (The eight steps for leading change, n.d.).It can be done through a series of team-building events. Their central themes will be a new beginning, a relationship reset, and the promise of fair treatment. Senior executives and team leaders will also regularly talk and discuss these topics. They will need to adopt servant leadership for a period of organizational change. According to Brizi (2022), this approach to leading people “unlocks potential and drives a strong sense of purpose” (para. 16). It is what is needed to accelerate the integration of new employees and the restructuring of their operations and processes.
Step 5
Some communication, cultural, and ideological barriers exist between the staff of the central organization and the acquired one. These were created by acquisitions, poorly conducted mergers, and terminations. These perceptual barriers can be overcome by introducing “the concept of democracy on speech and actions” among workers (Markopoulos et al., 2020, p. 53). This tactic effectively establishes organizational equity and trust among employees in business entities that have recently experienced an acquisition and merger.
Step 6
For a team to stay motivated on its journey to a better, more productive, and progressive organizational structure, it needs short-term goals. As management specialists say, they help “to track progress and energize volunteers to persist” (The eight steps for leading change, n.d., para. 8). In terms of the discussed company, improved coalition morale, faster communication, streamlined procedures, smoother processes, and reduced operating structure transformation costs will be considered small wins. All these goals will be listed in chronological order, with periods of 6 to 8 months for each, depending on the pace of progress.
Step 7
For short-term wins to work most productively towards organizational change, they must be reviewed regularly and positive practices reinforced throughout the process. Senior executives and coalition leaders should prioritize job satisfaction in evaluating milestones and developing improvement measures. Lin and Huang (2020) argue that this metric directly relates to the strength of an organizational learning culture. A continuous improvement strategy built on job satisfaction will have a long-term, positive influence on all workers, not just newcomers.
Step 8
Most practical initiatives, practices, and measures must be systematized into the new operating structure for organizational change to be complete and become the new normal in the company. The last stage will be identifying the most successful and positive innovations and institutionalizing them in working culture, policies, and communication and interaction. Change management experts believe these procedures should be the final stage of any significant business entity transformation (The eight steps for leading change, n.d.). Without them, the chain of previous actions will lose its long-term impact and meaning.
References
Brizi, P. (2022). Best practices for bringing teams together after a merger. Hospitality Net.
Lin, C. Y., & Huang, C. K. (2021). Employee turnover intentions and job performance from a planned change: The effects of an organizational learning culture and job satisfaction. International Journal of Manpower, 42(3), 409-423.
Markopoulos, E., Kirane, I. S., Gann, E. L., & Vanharanta, H. (2020). Avoiding post-merger corporate downsize restructuring: The democratic employee-culture fit model (DeECFit). In J. Kacprzyk (Ed.), Advances in intelligent systems and computing (pp. 51-62). Springer.
Richards, L. (n.d.). The effects of merger and acquisition on employee morale. Chron.
The 8 steps for leading change. (n.d.). Kotter.