Organizational Change And Occupational Health And Safety Act: Advantages, Disadvantages, And Implementation

Classifying the type of change

Organization change presents both opportunities and challenges for organizations and employees. Opportunities arise from the new changes that are affected if they increase business effectiveness or create better conditions (Boonstra, 2004). On the other hand, challenges exist when the organization and employees struggle to adjust to the new changes in the organization.

The change that I experienced recently was a change in the organizational structure of the organization which is regarded as an organizational-wide change. Such changes affect the whole organization since they lead to restructuring and changing organizational operations. This is a large-scale transformation of the organization to increase effectiveness and efficiency in business operations. The approach ensures that leadership in the organization is adjusted to meet the needs of the organization (Pettigrew, Woodman, & Cameron, 2001). McKenzie, Winkelen & Grewal (2011) suggests that as organizations increase in size and complexity, the nature of business operations also changes thus leading to the need for the organization to adjust in the same manner. Further, organizational growth also requires management to find a way of controlling the business operations that exist. For example, there may be a need to shift from one organizational structure to the other.

The change that I experienced was as a result of shifting from the matrix structure to a divisional structure to allow the organization to manage the new product chains in the organization. The divisional structure allows the organization to manage its operations based on the products that they produce. This means that the level of the hierarchy is organized based on the number of products that the organization has. Here each product is headed by its own manager who reports to the highest level in the organization. This process leads to better management of products in the organization and improvement of quality standards (Lunenburg, 2012). The reason why I positively responded to this change process is that it allows each division structure to operate independently and its performance to be measured easily. This leads to increased efficiency and effectiveness due to the ability to coordinate tasks within the organization.

It is normal for any employee to resist any change because of the fear of the unknown. At first, I had to resist the change because I was not sure how the new structure will affect the organization and my responsibilities in the organization. This uncertainty was due to poor timing where the structure adjustments came in the middle of the year rather than the need of the year (Thomas & Hardy, 2011). The resistance I offered was to request for enough time to consult with the people within the department that I was working with to determine the best time when the change can be effected. Since changes require time to be implemented, then it means that the process could not be effected in the organization unless a specific time frame has been agreed on when the change can be implemented. Without this, the organization experiences chaos and disharmony due to unwanted changes.

Positive response to the change

The amendments done on the Occupational Health and Safety Committee structure in the workplace was to ensure that the responsibilities of the committee in Alberta were similar to those in other states in Canada. Since the education system is similar across all states in the country, then it is paramount that the committees have similar membership and responsibilities across the country (Alberta Government, 2018). Therefore, the role of the changes made to the committee was to ensure that the committees perform similar roles thus making it easy for them to be held accountable. Lack of uniformity means that there is no clear definition of the roles and responsibilities of each party.

One advantage of the changes is to increase the accountability of the committee across all states in Canada. Since the committees are only state representatives of the larger workplace committees, then there is need to ensure the role of all them are clarified and similar thus making it easy for them to be accountable for the role that they perform. When similar structures exist across different states, then states can be made accountable for any issues that arise due to workplace challenges that employees face. The outcome is thus increased accountability and responsiveness to organizational health processes.

Further, this change leads to increased effectiveness since the committees have been given more powers as compared to what they used to do in the past. By defining specific roles that they do, the new act grants more powers to the committees which makes them more effective. Power leads to authority which makes an individual gain control of situations by directing people to the required direction. In the previous act, the responsibilities were not clearly defined making it difficult for the committees to function well. Benchmarking is a strategy that allows comparing practices from one organization to the other or different work practices. When the standards are similar across the country, benchmarking can be used to compare practices and find ways of improving the organization and the committee at large.

One disadvantage of the changes is the fact that making the committee structure and functions similar across creates challenges in managing unique areas that relate to specific states. Different states have different organizational issues that require unique methods of intervention. When organizations have the liberty to structure the committee based on the different needs that the organization has, then it becomes easy to manage organizational issues since amendments can be made to meet the needs of the organization and its workforce.

Resistance to the change

Secondly, making the structure similar across the whole country reduces workplace creativity since the organization will be forced to align the committees based on the new requirements. Therefore each activity that takes place in the organization has to be aligned with the new requirements rather than the freedom to design the structure based on the needs of the organization. The outcome will be unmet needs of the organization due to the strict following of the new requirements.

According to Ishak, Eze, & Ling (2010), human resource policies can be communicated to employees in different ways depending on the nature of the organization. The best way to communicate the new policies is through orientation and designing of new policy booklets. Orientation allows human resource teams to highlight the new changes in the organization and how the changes will affect employees. In this process, the human resource manager is charged with the responsibility of building the capacity of the team by elaborating the new changes and how they will be implemented or affect the organization. This process ensures that the human resource team understands the new policies in the organization and the role that they will have on the performance of the organization. The Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (SRC Act) requires employers to implement changes in a way that does not affect employees and if they are affected in any way either mentally or physically, then the employer will be forced to compensate the employees (FederalRegisterofLegislation, 2018).

Further, the new policies need to be printed out in manuals or books for employees to read. Since each employee is supposed to access organizational policies in relevant areas of work, it means that then policy documents have to be renewed every time there are new policies that are developed. Further, specific policy areas can be highlighted through memos or notice boards where other organizational communications are channeled (Sinisammal, Belt, Harkonen, Mottonen, & Vayrynen, 2012). In most cases, organizations use notice boards for general communications and memos for specific communications. When new policies come up, they do not affect the whole organization but rather specific areas that need to be addressed when the new policies are effected.

The new change process will be implemented through an eight-step process that will focus on initiating the change process and the new requirements in the organization. According to Russell (2013), the first step is to create the sense of urgency for the change process. This is due to the new regulations that have been made thus calling for the need to change the nature of the workplace. This is based on making employees understand the importance of the occupational health and safety act for creating conditions for the health and safety of workers.

Advantages of the amended Occupational Health and Safety Committee structure

The second step is to create a vision for change so as to direct and align employees with the required changes. This is through defining clear and compelling statements that reflect the future that the organization seeks to look like.

The next step is to communicate the vision that is to be achieved so that ascending and descending voices can be determined. This is based on the commitment of leadership to implement the change process. The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (WHS Act) requires employers to look after the health and safety of their employees through ensuring the workplace has conditions that meet the requirements of the law (Australian Government Comcare, 2018). This means that changes have to be communicated well for employees to understand.

Then this is followed by removing obstacles, for change due to any descending voices that arise from the organization. Lawrence (2009) suggests that there is a need for management to put strategies in place for addressing the obstacles for change before the change initiatives can be put in place. This entails working on organizational areas that obstruct the change process and at the same time dealing with the leaders who may obstruct the change process.

After addressing the resistance to change short wins need to be created to make employees realize the benefits within a period of six to eighteen months.  This allows employees to understand the short-term benefits that the employees will benefit from the organization (Ford, Ford, & D’Amelio, 2008). Short wins make employees realize the importance of the new changes and the benefits that they can derive from the organization.

The last step is to build on the change by anchoring the changes in corporate culture to make it part of the firm. This entails showing how new behaviors will be used to improve performance in the organization and making them part of the organizational process (Burnes, 2016). The change process needs to be rolled out drastically allowing employees to adjust to the new changes.

References

Alberta Government. (2018). Alberta Occupational Health and Safety Act Highlights of changes effective June 1, 2018 . Alberta Government.

Australian Government Comcare. (2018). Looking after your employees during times; self-assessment tool. Retrieved from Australian Government: https://www.comcare.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/40110/Looking_after_your_employees_during_times_of_change_PDF,_90.8_KB.pdf

Boonstra, J. (2004). Dynamics of organizational change and learning. Chichester: Wiley.

Burnes, B. (2016). No such thing as … a ‘one best way’ to manage organizational change. Management Decision, 34(10), 11-18.

Federal Register of Legislation. (2018). Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988. Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988.

Ford, J. D., Ford, L. W., & D’Amelio, A. (2008). Resistance to change: The rest of the story. Academy of Management Review, 33, 362-377.

Ishak, N., Eze, U., & Ling, L. S. (2010). Integrating knowledge management and human resource management for sustainable performance. Journal of Organizational Knowledge Management,, 1-13.

Lawrence, P. (2009). How to deal with resistance to change. Havard Business Review.

Lunenburg, F. C. (2012). Organizational Structure: Mintzberg’s Framework. International Journal of Scholarly Academic Intellectual Diversity, 14(1).

McKenzie, J., Winkelen, C. V., & Grewal, S. (2011). Developing organisational decision?making capability: a knowledge manager’s guide. Journal of Knowledge Management,, 15(3), 403-421.

Pettigrew, A. M., Woodman, R. W., & Cameron, K. S. (2001). Studying organizational change and development: Challenges for future research. Academy of Management Journal, 44(4), 697–713.

Russell, J. E. (2013, December). How to create change in the workplace. The Washington Post.

Sinisammal, J., Belt, P., Harkonen, J., Mottonen, M., & Vayrynen, S. (2012). Managing Wellbeing at work during 2010s – Expert Viewpoints. Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology, 2, 25-31.

Thomas, R., & Hardy, C. (2011). Reframing resistance to organizational change. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 27, 322-331.