Change is the process of improving the organizations processes and employees performance with the intention of increasing productivity. Change creates an impact on employees work processes behaviors and motivation.
Bradford and Burke (2005) suggest that it is the management’s duty to assess employee’s reactions, and introduce change techniques to help in the process. However, there are cases where conflicts occur as the employees undergo through the change process. The reasons may be due to fear of the unknown, fear of failure, and loss of power.
Tools and techniques for effective change help in addressing conflicts at each stage of change. When mangers are planning for change, they are supposed to raise awareness of the need for change so that they can create a desire among the employees. The change management team must come up with a plan to communicate to those employees affected by change, starting with supervisors and middle level managers because they will be able to convince other employees.
After the informing employees about change, the management should plan on training. Training on new skills will give confidence to the employees. The training should be based on knowledge, skills and behaviors of the employees. It will help in minimizing conflicts because they will have confidence in applying their new skills.
Response is also important after the employees have tried their new skills during implementation process because it will determine whether the employees have accepted the new process. Their opinion should be reviewed and the corrective action taken. Likewise, observation of how well the employees are performing is essential.
Those who perform well should be complimented and sometimes rewarded to increase on employee’s acceptance to change. Furthermore, Evaluation of the change process is important in determining whether it is in line with the organizations objectives.
Process Intervention Tools used in Change Management
According to Balkin (2008), the process of change is subject to many conflicts as it goes through all the processes with the employees either adjusting to the new system or resisting it.
The management should use some tools to make sure that the new change of activities are accepted, and this will be so if the management holds regular meetings to communicate to the employees about the current status of activities. Also, with the use of suggestion boxes, the employees are able to write down their views and ideas on the adjustment during the process of change.
The managers involved in the change process should write down the procedures required and distribute them among employees so that everybody gets ready for change, and incase of new changes, redistribution is important.
Consequently, the managers should improve interpersonal communication through small groups guided by representatives so that the employees can communicate their expectations. Observation of how the change is taking effect and observing how the employees are performing is most important because it will determine whether the change has been successful.
Furthermore, interviewing the users is also important because they will be able to tell the management on the complex processes. In every process of change, feedback from the employees is important because the management will identify the individuals who are positive about the change and those who are negative.
Those with negativity are retrained until they get it right (Hersey, Blanchard, & Johnson, 2008). Therefore, because an organizations objective is to have maximum profits, it is essential for the management to have a successful change process with proper training and use of different tools to minimize conflicts that arise in the change process.
References
Balkin, D. B. (2008). Management: People, Performance, Change (3rd ed.). New York McGraw Hill.
Bradford, D. L. & Burke, W. W (2005), Reinventing Organization Development (eds). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Hersey, P., Blanchard, K., & Johnson, D. (2008). Management of Organizational Behavior. Leading Human Resources (9th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.