Introduction
Organisations that wish to gain a competitive advantage in the future focus on mechanisms of changing the manner in which they conduct their businesses. The most desired change is the one that enables an organisation become more profitable.
Geopolitical, demographic, and technological changes together with intense pressure on the physical environments pose the need for organisational change.
Such changes also need to be combined with various security concerns and governance issues that help to generate pressures that drive organisational change (Bruch and Gerber 57).
Development of awareness for technological needs, political, sociological, and economic characteristics of the external operational environment of organisations is crucial in the effort to drive strategic initiatives for their success.
Organisations can deploy proactive and reactive approaches to change. Such approaches can also be adopted following the occurrence of a crisis. Changes in the operation of an organisation underline the primary cause of the need to embrace change.
Organisations that have the capacity to identify the need for change before acknowledging the factors that prompt its necessity interfere negatively with their operations and ability to gain competitive advantage compared to those that adopt reactive approaches during change implementation.
A change that is implemented following the occurrence of a crisis translates into high organisational costs with a high probability of recovering the competitive advantage.
To execute employee HR-related functions effectively, HSBC Bank Middle East Limited implemented organisational change that led to moving all HR-related employee queries into online web-based systems. Previously, all employees addressed their queries directly to the HR department.
This paper analyses this changing situation and its implementation in the context of the literature in organisational change management and leadership.
Background of the Organisation and Change
Organisational Context for Change
Headquartered in New Jersey, HSBC Bank Middle East Limited is the biggest bank that operates in the Middle East region and in more than 70 other places across the globe. This penetration makes HSBC both global and regional product that is managed through several networks across the Middle East.
In particular, the bank has operations in Lebanon, Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, among other nations (HSBC par.5). The larger the organisation, the more it is likely to employ a large number of people from diverse backgrounds.
This implies a higher number of employees that the HR arm has to handle. In an effort to create a culture that encourages work-life balance for employees, the speed and efficiency in expedition of strategies for addressing employee human-resource-related issues became an important issue that HSBC Bank Middle East Limited had to consider.
Organisations in all industries are interested in maintaining their levels of competitiveness for continued delivery of value to their owners, namely the shareholders.
In fact, Van de and Poole assert, “Any organisation in today’s fast-moving environment that is looking for the pace of change to slow is likely to be sorely disappointed” (395). This means that organisations need to welcome and embrace change that will increase their performance.
Zhou and Tse support this assertion by maintaining that organisations that are reluctant to embrace change risk losing their competitive edge, and hence suffer the capacity to realise the needs of their clients in terms of delivering value to the shareholders and other interest groups (249).
The capacity of organisations to achieve the needs of its owners and other interest groups depends on their ability to maintain a competitive advantage.
Human resource comprises one of the essential resources at the disposal of an organisation, which, while utilised appropriately helps in maintaining and increasing an organisation’s competitive advantage.
HSBC Bank Middle East Limited understands that while operating in an environment of technological change, increasing its speed of expedition of employee human-related issue was vital in resolving challenges, which may result in conflict with the employees.
Instead of waiting for a crisis to occur, the management resolved to implement online web-based system to resolve employee HR-related queries.
Explanation of the Change that is implemented by HSBC Bank Middle East
Reason for initiating the Change
Change was important to increase the competitive advantage of HSBC Bank Middle East by focusing on increasing its ability to resolve employee issues through two-way online-based mechanisms of responding to employee queries.
This change was to enable the organisations increase its interactive capability with large numbers of employees to minimise the probability of occurrence of organisational conflicts. It is important to note that HSBC Bank Middle East implemented the system before any conflicts were registered.
From the above claim, change was adopted as a proactive measure, as opposed to a reactive technique, or as a mechanism of resolving organisational crisis.
Indeed, change management theory suggests, “organisations benefit from the change that results in new ways of looking at customer needs, new ways of delivering customer service, new ways of strengthening customer interactions, and new products that might attract new markets” (Oxtoby, McGuiness, and Morgan 312).
By simply asking how and why an organisation is not able to attain certain specified goals in its vision and mission statements, an opportunity is created for adoption of creative and innovative strategies for enhancing success.
Strategic Renewal
HSBC Bank Middle East considered adopting change in an effort to support its strategic renewal initiatives as a mechanism of increasing its performance in a rapidly changing financial and insurance industry.
Strategic renewal implies alteration of organisational strategies via processes that involve the creation of new knowledge bases, services, capabilities, or products (Van de and Poole 398).
For HSBC Bank Middle East, the main concern for strategic renewal was increasing the organisation’s capabilities, and hence the capacity to respond to employee queries rapidly.
Parties affected by the Change and its Implications on them
Successful change requires the participation of different organisational stakeholders in the change process. Oxtoby, McGuiness, and Morgan confirm how this consideration is essential since such shareholders are also affected by the change (312).
Hence, change affects all parties that are involved in the day-to-day running of organisational affairs. The affected class includes the employees.
For the case of HSBC Bank Middle East, implementing change led to the elimination of the hierarchical organisational structures that were followed when presenting and responding to employee queries.
This case amounted to the alteration of hierarchical and bureaucratic organisational culture that had persisted in the in HRM practices. This suggests that the change influenced employees and all other people in the traditional channels of handling employee HR-related issues.
The change interfered with the effectiveness of all people who are charged with the collection of employee complaints in an effort of filing them and their subsequent perusal.
From the context of the employees, the change permitted them to forward directly their complaints to the head of HR department while expecting a response within minimal time.
The owners of the HSBC Bank Middle East comprise another important party that is affected by the change. They benefited from increased returns owing to good employee management practices.
Leigh supports this impact of change by claiming, “change is important in organisations to allow employees to learn new skills, explore new opportunities, and exercise their creativity in ways that ultimately benefit the organisation through new ideas and increased commitment” (par.3).
This implies that a change is all about enhancing the performance of employees by putting in place mechanisms of enabling them achieve better outputs. One of such approaches is the diversification of the jobs done by employees in organisations.
This noble paradigm of organisational change underlines the significance of the HSBC Bank Middle East’s changes in terms of using web technology to restructure and alter the processes that are followed while processing employee complaints.
Organisational Culture
HSBC Bank Middle East Limited appreciates and values all people who drive its success. This strategy is a major aspect of the organisational culture.
Organisational culture refers to the “shared basic assumptions that an organisation learns while coping with the environment and solving problems of external adaptation amid its internal integration” (Oxtoby, McGuiness, and Morgan 315).
Such assumptions teach all the workforce of an organisation the amplest procedures of seeking solutions to the experienced challenges. The beliefs also bind different elements in an organisation into one harmonious major component as proposed by the systems theory.
Organisational culture defines the primary operational strategy for an organisation. At HSBC Bank Middle East Limited, this strategy involves the utilisation of people as the source of competitive advantage by ensuring that all stakeholders are happy with the organisation.
The aim encompasses ensuring that all stakeholders for HSBC Bank Middle East Limited remain focused on common goals and objectives. Van de and Poole reckon that this aim is attained when all people in an organisation subscribe to a common way of thinking, interaction, values, and norms (396).
Organisational norms, values, and way of thinking define an organisational culture, which needs to be aligned with the business strategies for any organisation that seeks to achieve its global competitive advantage through people such as the HSBC Bank Middle East Limited.
Before the adoption of change, employees at HSBC Bank Middle East Limited followed bureaucratic and hierarchical structures to have their complaints and various queries reach the head of the HRM.
Thus, although the organisations valued the role of employees in driving its success, as stated in its social corporate responsibility statements, a culture that encourages bureaucracy and hierarchy hindered effective deployment of people in achieving competitive advantage.
HSBC states that HSBC Bank Middle East limited recruits best talents irrespective of ethnicity, gender, disability, and other demographic characteristics (par.7). This implies that the organisation shares the norms and values for the needs of respecting people’s diversity.
It also offers competitive rewards together with salary packages for its employees whose relationships at the workplace are guided by sound social values. Most importantly, the organisation continues seeking new strategies for reducing work-life related conflicts, which may impede the morale of its people.
This concern underlines the principal reason why HSBC Bank Middle East Limited sought to look for effective ways of addressing employee queries in real-time.
People are generally resistant to change (Mullins, 752). This implies that a successful implementation of change required an organisational culture that could compel people to follow guidelines.
At HSBC Bank Middle East Limited, bureaucratic culture was instrumental in ensuring that employees followed precisely the given guidelines so that all people adopted the online web-based approaches, as opposed to following the traditional routes after the change was adopted with reference to the mechanisms of forwarding their HR-related complains.
However, bureaucracy was also a major challenges and impediment to quick-change implementations. Much formal authentication was required when designing change solutions.
This process involved multi-level organisational assessment of online-based HR management system. However, amid these challenges, adequate technological resources such as computers and the existence of computer literate employees made the change easily adaptive at the organisation.
Nevertheless, some employees were concerned with the likelihood of their information losses due to cyber insecurity, although they were assured of adequate protection of the HR system against cyber attacks.
The Change Effort
HSBC Bank Middle East Limited implemented HRIS (Human Resource Information System) to facilitate the execution of HR activities electronically.
The system had several applications, including payroll management application, recruitment management application, and leave attendance and performance management application, among others.
Employees can also access any information on their employment status, such as changes in rewards system, among other information of individual interest. Web 2.0 technologies were utilised to provide employee accessibility to the system through the internet at any time.
The system has the capability of producing customised information. This flexibility enables employees to acquire individualised responses from the HR so that it (the flexibility) serves their needs at an individual level.
Change Evaluation
Several theories may be applied in the evaluation of the change efforts of HSBC Bank Middle East Limited. Change involves the undertaking of different tasks, which while completed amount to the realisation of the desired change.
However, people have different motivations towards the execution of these tasks within an organisation. In the search for mechanisms of making people-oriented to their work demands in an effort to realise organisational objectives, McGregor developed theory X and Y.
Theory X proposes that people are normally lazy and often avoid doing work (Lorsch and Morse 93). Consequently, managers must supervise their employees closely to ensure that they are able to control every activity that they execute.
Theory X advocates for a hierarchical structure of management of staff. This structure is meant to ensure direct control while leaving very little room for delegation of responsibilities in a change execution process.
Indeed, according to Lorsch and Morse, realising organisational goals from the basis of this theory calls for managers to deploy coercive and threatening management techniques (94).
This strategy encourages compliance. However, it is possible that applying this theory in change implementation process leads to mistrust between stakeholders who are influenced by the change, especially those who are scheduled to facilitate the implementation process such as the employees of the HSBC Middle East Limited and managers.
The organisation took care to balance compliance and the need to curb the probable turnover arising from organisational conflicts that may emerge during change implementation.
Consequently, the new HR management system was implemented slowly as people tended to maintain status quo. Employees were promised that the old system would only be shut down when everyone was aware and able to use the new one.
Opposed to theory X, theory Y presumes that employees are essentially self-motivated, exercise personal control, and are highly ambitious to get things done within the organisation they work for (Lorsch and Morse 99).
The theory holds that employees enjoy their work particularly if it is physically and mentally satisfying. Such employees are great problem solvers. Managers who are inclined to this school of thought believe that people are always ready to accept responsibilities.
They deploy self-control and self-direction to ensure the ability to achieve their organisational duties. Given the opportunities, from the context of theory Y, people have the eagerness to do well (Lorsch and Morse 101).
At HSBC Middle East Limited, people were expected to be eager in terms of utilisation of the new system in increasing the pace of processing their HR-related queries.
Satisfaction that is accompanied by doing well in a given job acts as an enormous source of motivation, which also helps foster employee retention within an organisation.
Considering the roles of theory Y in enhancing motivation of employees, managers have embraced it while theory X has been incredibly challenged since it continues to support management theoretical paradigms, which have been proved to have little impacts on enhancing competitive advantage of an organisation in the modern globalised and sophisticated organisations (Lorsch and Morse 104).
Considering the manner in which HSBC Middle East Limited implemented its change (cutting out the traditional HR management approaches in phases), theory Y can perhaps best reveal and provide reliable evaluation of the organisation’s change efforts.
Four other important theories of organisational change are organisational development, systems theory, social worlds, and complexity theories. Social world theory claims that a change arises in an organisation through negotiation followed by renegotiations among various stakeholders (Amagoh 5).
It insists that an organisation that is implementing change needs to consider parties that are deploying the change indicators and the functions for which the indicators seek to accomplish.
Tensions always emerge in the evaluation of issues that are necessary to realise the change efforts with necessities for achieving the desired satisfactory quality improvements in the change process.
For instance, in implementing the change at HSBC Middle East Limited, obstructions emerged between the need to balance the increasing demand to have employee queries expedited at a high pace and the need to ensure accurate responses to the queries posed by the employees in real-time.
Organisational development theory emphasises that changes within an organisation must be planned. The leadership in an organisation that is seeking to implement change to drive its competitive advantage must have foreseen the need for change (Spector 52).
This suggests that human processes are essential in the change process. The theory highlights the significance of an agreement between various individual goals with organisational goals. In this context, an organisational culture forms an important medium to facilitate change implementation.
From the paradigms of organisational development, Piderit reckons that a change requires ardent organisational communication, flexibility, and empowerment of the change agents (787).
The organisation’s leader needs to plan the change process by defining the current organisational state and the intended outcomes upon implementation of the change. The theory maintains that people resist change because of some reasons.
Such reasons include the discontent with the change due to the status quo’s capacity to meet their needs, mishandling of the change process by the management, doubts on the possibilities of success of the change, and/or when the change threatens employee jobs so that its costs are higher than the anticipated benefits.
Systems theory reveals that various components of an organisation are interrelated. Change arises due to the need to improve the second component upon improvement of the first one (Piderit 789).
In the determination of the overall implications of change, the theory suggests that it is essential to measure organisational aspects such as infrastructure, resources like human capital and financial capital, technologies, and organisational tasks to determine their relationships.
When these variables are altered, whether singly or in some combinations, organisational change is experienced. HSBC Middle East Limited has been on the forefront in the implementation of computerised financial and customer management systems.
Therefore, to align all other elements to create an organisation that is capable of deploying technology to increase its competitive advantage, it had to implement online web-based HR management systems. This strategy would create coherence in all parts comprising the organisation.
Complexity theory insists on the necessity of measuring the degree of heterogeneity and/or diverseness in an organisation’s environmental factors such as suppliers, employees, technology, and departments, among others (Mason 10).
McKenzie and Kims assert that its aim is to measure the manner in which elements in micro-levels of any complex system influence the resulting behaviours of an organisation together with its effect on macro-levels’ overall outcomes (35).
Increasing complexity of an organisation creates complexities in terms of understanding it and/or deploying the existing information to plan its functional parts.
The complexity translates into a change within the entire system. Mason asserts that according to the theory, increasing organisational complexity renders the adaptation of an organisation to the rapidly changing environment impossible (11).
The theory nullifies ontological theoretical explanation for changes by rejecting the existence of a direct relationship between causality and the effects (Manson 22).
It also claims that instability between components of an organisation causes its evolution so that new relationships are established between internal and external factors of an organisation at a given threshold.
Furthermore, the theory maintains that an organisation that operates within limits that almost reach the instability point generates innovative and creative behaviours at every level of the entire system.
Evaluation of the Change effort using the Systems Model
Employees comprise one of the components of HSBC Middle East Limited. They also constitute one of the aspects around which it builds its competitive advantage. Therefore, from systems model, planned altering of the dynamics of this element can also influence other components that are related to it.
In this context, it is assumed that when a rejection of change at HSBC Middle East Limited is mitigated so that employees do not feel threatened by it, speedy expedition of HR issues that are related to employees will lead to happier, more motivated, and committed workforce.
In turn, this situation will result in satisfaction and attraction of new customers so that the owners of the organisation also gain from increased returns on their investments.
Increased profit levels led to higher availability of financial resources that were needed in HSBC Middle East Limited’s projects to benefit the societies. The employees also got better rewards and salaries.
Since employees are happier when their queries, especially on issues that are likely result in higher turnover or low productivity, it implies that they will be satisfied with their jobs. This move ensures better work-life fit. Therefore, their jobs will also be fulfilling even to their family members.
Consequently, all parts of the system will function under perfect linear relationship between employee satisfaction and the planned change. In this extent, employees become an internal factor within HSBC Middle East Limited’s operational environment, which influences all other variables.
Hence, the organisation can rely on it as a steadfast source of competitive advantage due to its capability of manipulating all other components in the desired direction.
The above expositions are based on a hypothetical systems model for evaluating organisational change. However, in practice, as evidenced by the case of HSBC Middle East Limited, while some players in an organisation’s internal environment may embrace change positively, others may oppose it.
For instance, HR personnel whose tasks in an organisation are replaced by online web-based HR management system may be reluctant in making the appropriate decision where human decision loops are required for effectiveness of the system in the expedition of HR-related information.
In this sense, system failure may occur, thus leading to even higher times of responding to employee queries. Fortunately, this instance did not happen due to positive effects of bureaucratic culture in change implementation at HSBC Middle East Limited.
It ensured that compliance was mandatory for all personnel that were involved in the administration and making of various decisions on full-scale implementation of the system.
Positive and Negative Aspects of the Change Effort
Change may affect all functional units within an organisation. Mullins states it affects organisational policies, procedures, guidelines, and the rules that are deployed to control the conducts and approaches of stakeholders such as employees, society, and organisational managers among others (751).
These alterations may induce negative or positive impacts on the overall operations of an organisation. While change may increase the performance of some employees, others may have reduced work morale, which leads to low performance.
For instance, at HSBC Middle East Limited, it was anticipated that employees whose roles would be replaced either partially or totally by the online web-based system for collection and subsequent responding to employees HR-related queries would have fear and perceptions of job insecurity upon the implementation of the new system.
However, those whose queries would be addressed in a quicker way, considered the change as an essential aspect.
Change may create parochial self-interest. Different perspectives on change situations may create misconceptions and negative perceptions from various parochial people within an organisation. These perceptions influence the change implementation processes negatively (Mullins, 753).
They create intolerance and misunderstanding between people who embrace the change and those who oppose it. This situation may lead to the emergence of organisational conflicts.
More importantly, people resist change due to the fear of facing the unknown. This implication may result in increased stress, anxiety, fear, and burnout, which may them result in higher turnover.
Although the change may have some negative implications, it is desired since it increases the available knowledge bases, range of products and services, and innovative and creativity levels of organisations. These aspects enable an organisation to operate competitively in a changing business environment (Leigh par.4).
Where change is prompted by technological changes, an organisation acquires the ability to produce its services and products at reduced costs so that it can exploit the low-cost strategy to penetrate deeper in the global markets.
At HSBC Middle East Limited, change was highly desired since employee forms essential components of the organisation in its attempt to achieve global competitive advantage.
The inability to address their HR-related concerns meant that HSBC Middle East Limited risked losing the motivation and dedication of employees, which has been instrumental in its global growth.
Change Implementation
After the identification of the necessary changes in organisations that can produce short-term and long- term success, the next step is the implementation of the change. This step is accomplished with the help of a particular theoretical model for change implementation, such as Lewin’s model and Sequential model.
Considering the purpose and the parties that are involved in enhancing change at HSBC Middle East Limited, change will be implemented through Lewin’s model. Spector asserts that the organisational change using Lewin’s model occurs through three main stages, namely unfreezing, moving, and refreezing (29).
In the unfreezing stage, an organisation creates and interrogates whether the current practices (status quo) are appropriate. For HSBC Middle East Limited, the response to this interrogative was a straight no.
Consequently, the organisation progressed to stage two of Lewin’s model, which entails the redesigning and reorganisation of the responsibilities and roles of various stakeholders who are in charge of implementing the changes (Spector 30).
The second stage was achieved successfully through the determination of the mandates of various stakeholders who are charged with enhancing the implementation of the new HR management system. The system led to a reduction of responsibilities of the human resource management personnel under the traditional approach.
To keep them motivated, HSBC Middle East Limited did not consider revising the amounts of rewards offered to them downwards.
Therefore, the third stage in Lewin’s model, namely the alignment of the pay and reward systems with the new responsibilities and roles, is missing for the change adopted by HSBC Middle East Limited.
According to Lewin’s model, in the first stage of change implementation, an organisation also needs to consider “diagnosis of internal barriers to improved performance followed by the promotion of supporters or removal of resistors in the second stage” (Spector 29).
In such an effort, an organisation has to create new structures. This step reveals HSBC Middle East Limited’s success in implementation of the change. It was experienced in structural and hierarchical operational systems in HR management approaches.
Assessing the Effectiveness of the Change
Several approaches may help in effective assessment of change. One of such dimensions is the extent to which the adopted change complies with various standard practices together with the existing industry success benchmarks.
Where gaps are identified, possible recommendations for additional changes are incorporated. Evaluation seeks to compare strategies of change with the desired outputs (Piderit 785).
In fact, in any organisational change, apart from people who are influenced by the change in terms of alteration and/or addition of their roles and responsibilities, the parties that gain from the change are also part of the change.
The achieved gains act as indicators of the effectiveness of the change. In the case of HSBC Middle East Limited, this strategy denotes the capacity for employees to have reduced time of forwarding and receiving feedback for any complaint from the HR.
The owners of HSBC Middle East Limited are the chief beneficiaries of the change. The goal of any change is to increase the performance of an organisation from the paradigms of its relevance in adding productivity and delivering value to the organisational stakeholders (Oxtoby, McGuiness, and Morgan 316).
Value here implies adding benefits to shareholders. However, this goal is unrealisable without increasing service demand that is achieved by increasing the value of the service delivered by an organisation to clients.
Hence, the effectiveness of the change at HSBC Middle East Limited can also be accessed from the context of the magnitude of the clientele’s demand following its implementation.
Leadership of the Change Effort
Successful implementation of change requires effective leadership. A leader deploys the appropriate actions that can enable employees adapt a given behaviour. In this extent, leaders influence the process of organisational change.
Williams and Seaman claim that a leader should not serve the purpose of imposing new behaviours or directions but energise the change process (445).
Leadership also helps in building commitment to the change strategies together with the translation of the commitments into plans and actual actions that correlate positively with the desired change.
This suggests that, during organisational change, leaders need to have the capacity to articulate and develop clear and concise purpose and set the direction for the organisation, facilitate upward communication, establish emotional bonds between an organisation and the employees, and stretch organisational goals.
The question that emerges is how effectively HSBC Middle East limited adopted these concerns for effective leadership during change.
Evaluation of the Leadership in the Change Effort
The respective HR managers in different branches of HSBC Middle East Limited communicated verbally to employees about the change that is being implemented with minimal incorporation of the internet in its communication.
According to Barrett, this approach is useful since leaders need to avoid making an error of equating the volume and speed advantages that are offered by the internet to effective organisational communication (78).
At HSBC Middle East Limited, leaders are the vision careers. Hence, the organisation’s leaders envisioned the change. They were aware that the change might attract emotional responses from various parties who may be affected negatively or those who did not have a clear understanding of its purpose.
Weiberge asserts that leaders are anticipated to have the ability to manage their emotions as the head of organisations so that the emotions do not get out of control irrespective of the challenges that leaders go through while attempting to enhance compliance through influence to their visions (748).
Leaders have total trust of their staff members. They speak kindly and eloquently while at the same time paying attention to the concerns of the people they work with as a team. Besides, they are ease to speak to and have the ability to make well-informed decisions (Weiberge 749).
These aspects were incredibly important in enhancing success in change implementation at HSBC Middle East Limited. In particular, trust was crucial to ensure that employees embraced the new system positively amid the fear of cybersecurity threats.
Change involves organisational transformation. For HSBC Middle East Limited, the transformation was from traditional approaches of addressing employee-related HR queries to a technologically informed approach.
In this context, transformational characteristics of a leader were instrumental in enhancing the success of the adopted change. As a leadership style, transformational leadership has received an incredible attention within the last decade.
Many scholars see it as one of the most essential areas of leadership research (Barbara and Shilpa, 387). This prominence is associated with calls of flexible and adaptive leaders who are able to work in an effective way, especially in a rapidly changing operational environment (Barbara and Shilpa 389).
Considering the importance of transformational leadership in an organisation that operates in a dynamic environment together with the role of communication in leadership during the process of organisational change, the question emerges on the extent to which HSBC Middle East Limited’s leaders portrayed these traits.
Extent to which Leaders displayed the Core Characteristics of Change Leadership
Change is accompanied by a misconception about is impacts on various parties (Spector 41). At HSBC Middle East Limited, the head of HR was responsible for ensuring ardent communication of the change process in an effort to clear the misconceptions and misunderstandings.
Communication was deployed as a tool for focusing organisational stakeholders to the change process. In an effort to ensure that the communication made positive impacts, careful planning, management, and taking measures to enhance consistency together with clarity of communication was an important consideration made by the HR.
This move ensured the avoiding of the mistake of concentrating on just delivering messages while neglecting the importance of planning together with the management of communication processes. In this extent, HSBC Middle East limited leaders were effective in communicating, as an essential aspect of change leadership.
As revealed before, HSBC Middle East Limited’s leader sought to clear any misconceptions and misunderstanding about the purposes of change.
This revelation provided avenues for the creation of positive relationships between employees and the organisation so that the change ceased from being a source of threats to the employees. In this extent, the leaders were able to induce high trust in employees for the change to have positive implications.
This strategy was an essential element of organisational transformational characteristics of effective leadership during change. The decision not to review rewards for employees whose roles were replaced by the new system helped to portray emotional leadership qualities.
Summary and Recommendations
Organisations that operate in a technologically changing environment need to make repeated changes in their operations.
After implementing various changes in customer management systems and financial systems at the HSBC Middle East Limited, the organisation considered changing its systems for management of its human resource.
The goal was to ensure rapid expedition of employee information, especially in a speedy response to their queries, including payroll, leave attendance, and performance management-related queries.
The culture for HSBC Middle East Limited is informed by the perspective that people account for the most important sources of success in a dynamic operational environment.
Thus, by ensuring rapid service delivery to employees, the change was anticipated to help it acquire better competitive advantage, which was to arise from the increased productivity that is associated with motivated employees.
It is then recommended that in the quest to ensure HSBC Middle East Limited succeeds with implementation of the changes in the long-term, the company also needs to consider keeping the personnel in charge of information management motivated and aligned with the organisational goals and objectives of the change.
This issue needs to be fixed through a revision of reward and remuneration packages for all personnel whose responsibilities and roles in the organisation have increased due to the implementation of the new HR management system.
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