Proposal For Change Management In An Organisation With Diverse Workforce

Background of Change

Change management is increasingly becoming an important part of every corporate organisation in today’s world. An organisation evolves and improves continuously by this process. It is usually implemented and executed using a lot of variations in the systems that are responsible for operating the organisation as a whole.

It helps firms to undertake strategies that ensure expansion of the firm to areas where it has not started operating or functioning (Carnall, 2018). It helps the firm in reaching new levels of potential and increasing the cohort of target consumers. However, these changes are often hard to manage and leads to consequences of friction between the employees especially when the change management is introduced due to acquisitions. This is because two different firms with two organisational structures come together and hence it gets difficult to collaborate and compromise the values, objectives as well as the job roles (Hayes, 2018). In this essay the case of two firms – namely- Bow Valley Manufacturing and River Valley Manufacturing is considered. The persisting situation is discussed and evaluate and recommendations for handling the change are also provided.

In this particular case, the firms Bow Valley Manufacturing and River Valley Manufacturing are going through a situation of friction as Bow Valley Manufacturing is acquiring River Valley Manufacturing. This is causing the managers and the employees to go through psychological changes. The managers of Bow Valley Manufacturing think that the managers of River Valley Manufacturing are not enough cautious and responsible and lack the sense of achieving and being motivated due to lack of experiences and prior problems in the operation. The other firm which is River Valley Manufacturing, on the other hand think that the mangers of Bow Valley Manufacturing are very arrogant and hierarchical. Although the senior authorities and senior management thinks that there can be a smooth transition, they are faced with friction from the employees from both the firms. In the face of this situation, it is extremely important for the senior authorities of both firms to devise measures which will ensure that there is lesser friction between employees and other managers from the two firms and that the employees are provided with training so that they are able to cooperate and collaborate with each other. As the situation in this case involves organisational change it is very important to undertake a framework of planning, organising, leading and controlling the changes (Bradley, 2016).  The steps to be taken in these respects are described in the subsequent sections.

As this is a situation of dysfunctional change where there will be changes on the job roles of the employees from both firms, there can be many methods that can be applied to mitigate the friction. The most important of these options which will have to be implemented include trainings and workshops which will enable the employees to channelize their talents and skills in a new and innovative way and enable them to work with new processes. It will also help in increasing the transparency of the organisation and enable the employees from the two different firms to gel with each other. All of these processes will have to be based on the areas of problems identified (differences in the operational strategies and working environment of the two firms).

The major problems identified in the collaboration of the two different firms lies along the following two lines:

• Firstly, the employees of River Valley Manufacturing are used to a very stringent code of conduct and a formal way of interacting with other employees and are not used to informal gatherings and even conversations. The scenario of interaction amongst the employees of Bow Valley Manufacturing has been completely different where the employees at different hierarchical levels interact in an informal fashion and are used to behaving with respect but without any stringent codes of conduct.
• The second problem is an effect of the first, wherein the employees of Bow Valley Manufacturing do not have enough transparency in the operational systems and the financial objectives and goals to be achieved by the firm. However, River Valley Manufacturing utilizes the strategy of complete transition.

Hence, the training and workshops conducted as well as change in the processes will aim towards greater participation of the employees and initiatives to increase the level of transparency in the organisation. The entire change that is to be brought about and continued with is summarised within the following GANTT CHART.

Stages of the change	First two weeks	Third week	Fourth week
Mentioning the organisational changes	ü
Conducting the survey amongst the employees	ü	ü
Measuring the polarities of change		ü
Launching the change		ü	ü
Maintaining the change			ü
Communicating the change

Table 1: GANTT CHART

Source: Self Made

The only process by which the change can be introduced is through the centralisation of the operational and management systems such that the managers with the highest qualifications and expertise are able to make the major decisions for the firm and set goals at the same time (Jayatilleke & Lai, 2018). This will lead to some amount of efficiency as in this particular case of friction, the decentralisation of power can lead to the framing and implementation of improper decision  making which might produce biased results.  It will result in some degree of stability and growth.  The three steps to be taken with respect to the context of readiness of change include the following:

• The amount of support or conflict existing in the organisation should be calculated or monitored so that the change can be channelized and maintained by conducting surveys and interviews with the employees of both the firms
• The benchmarks for recognitions and incentives should include greater diversity and compassion on part of employees from both firms as a performance evaluation criteria and should be clearly conveyed to the employees. This should include customisation of plans including training plans. This will help in taking care of the polarities of the change introduced in the two organisations.
• Risk analysis before the implementation of new processes and systems should also be performed and the goals should be set accordingly.

Maintenance and monitoring of the change will strictly be through the process of performance evaluation such that the indicators of the performance will include the adaptability to the changes introduced and increased amounts of potential utilisation such that the amount of productivity after providing of the trainings is more than the previous levels, that is, there is greater capacity utilisation (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). The change management should be in accordance to every risk analysis measure that is carried out before the implementation of the change in the organisational structure or the process. The steps involved in this process include:

• Regular counselling of the employees with the new management body is equally important so that grievances and issues can be sorted out in a formal way
• The new management should keep rules and regulations in place to solve grievances if any or even conflicts. This is because the board of directors and managers (deputy manager, operations manager and assistant managers) are the sole agents of change. They are responsible for intimating the employees about the change and taking care of the transparency of information across different levels of the hierarchy.

As mentioned earlier it is very important to ensure that there is increased communication among the employees and that there are increased amounts of cooperation at the same time. Thus, the change has to be communicated through the hierarchical channels in the different departments , that is, down the existing organisational structure. The responsibility of the communication of the change thus lies on the human resources management team. Communication being the most important aspect includes the following steps to be implemented:

• The new positions of the employees will be determined and communicated only after informed decision making amongst the managers of the two firms (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015).
• There should be increased communication channels amongst the employees of the two firms. Further, there should also be increased amounts of communication amongst employees of different hierarchical positions as this will help all the employees to know about the goals facing the firm. This will also reduce friction and help everyone to work towards the achieving of the goals so that there is easy execution of the new processes

References

Al-Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: a model for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 234-262.

Bradley, G. (2016). Benefit Realisation Management: A practical guide to achieving benefits through change. Routledge.

Carnall, C. (2018). Managing change. Routledge.

Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.

Hayes, J. (2018). The theory and practice of change management.

Jayatilleke, S., & Lai, R. (2018). A systematic review of requirements change management. Information and Software Technology, 93, 163-185.