Contemporary Change Management Practice Applicability

Introduction

Change management has numerous definitions. According to Conner (1992), Change management can be defined as a set of prescriptions, techniques, and principles that are useful to the human aspects of implementing main modification initiatives in organizational settings (Appelkbaum et al., 2012). Fincham and Rhodes, although not fully basing their definition off from Conner, defined change management as the leadership and direction of the process of organizational transformation, especially concerning the human aspects and overcoming the resistance to change (Child, 2015). In contrast, Moran and Brightman focus on the organization itself when defining change management. They defined it as the procedure of frequently renewing an organization`s course, arrangement, and competences to adapt to the daily evolving external and internal customers’ needs. Hayes offered the same description. Taking into account that change management involves fine-tuning the organization to make it effective continuously. However, Hiatt and Creasey`s definition is the one that provides crucial information from which this report will derive its meaning (Hiatt, 2006). They claim that while numerous methods can be used to design the solution to a business opportunity or problem, change management is the method, procedures, and tools to manage the People-side of the business change so as to achieve the most successful business outcome, and to recognize effective change within the social infrastructure of the workplace (Appelkbaum et al., 2012).

Change and Resistance

Businesses and organizations that are adequately flexible and can find their feet in a shifting business environment are in a better position than their rivals to exploit emerging opportunities and avert threats (Child, 2015). The main change drivers differ from one organization to another. However, the room of modification will have an impact on how to approach the change. Change can be divided into three main areas namely open-ended, closed and contained change (Hamel, 2008). Open-ended change is very unpredictable due to its highly unstable nature. Most of the time it involves coming across and dealing with the unknowns; an example is introducing new, untested software to the operations of a business (Appelkbaum et al., 2012). Closed change, on the other hand, refers to a situation in which it is easy to determine the processes that necessitate change. It is the improvement of a system to raise its effectiveness or efficiency of delivery (Hiatt, 2006). Lastly, contained change is the change that occurs on a much wider scale and cannot be easily predicted. It takes a longer time to go through this kind of change as it involves numerous individuals and consultations before implementing the solution. When looking into change forecasts the Political Economic Socio-Cultural Technological and Legal (PESTEL) method is the best to use in looking into the external factors that may affect an organization's future (Hayes, 2018). This process enables an organization to identify areas that have issues or need to be addressed in comparison to what their competitors' result is giving them an edge over the competitors (Child, 2015). However, to have accurate information, the PESTEL analysis should be carried out regularly.

Change is a crucial process that is highly dependent on the people factor to be successful. With change comes resistance, which should and can be expected, thereby prompting relevant measures to address it to be put in place (Hiatt, 2006). Failure of strategies arises due to minimal or no support at all across an organization. If major stakeholders are not brought on board and made to understand the strategy, they fail to commit and make follow-ups leading to contribute to the failure of the strategies (Appelkbaum et al., 2012). Communication is key in these processes. Organizations need to make sure they have a good in-depth explanation of why it is necessary to implement changes and the consequences of not doing so. Most of the employees are resistant to change due to fear of the unknown such as new team formations necessitating the need to gain new skills and the nature of the person who takes over the management if it does change too. With the full support of the staff members, the change is much smoother (Hamel, 2008).

Models of Change

The force field analysis model by Lewin provides information on areas that might experience resistance during change and strategic changes that organizations need to take part in. Having a clear picture of the politics of an organization is a powerful tool that can be a useful tool in coming up with ways of dealing with resistance (Chaldwell, 2003). This model depicts critical information on the factors opposing and supporting a specific idea. The analysis can also be extended beyond the data to look into potential qualitative factors that might affect the idea of being looked into succeeding or failing. The main disadvantage of this model is that there will not always be an agreement. It might create a division that works against its objective. For this analysis to work, it requires everyone to be fully involved and participate in the process (Todnem, 2005).

Kotter's model of change is more complex and is made up of eight steps. Establishing a sense of urgency, developing a guiding team, coming up with a vision, relaying the vision so as to convince people to come on board, empowering action, coming up with short term wins, merging the improvements and creating more change and lastly institutionalizing the new methods so as to allow the change to stick (Kotter, 2008).

The three-step model by Lewin was one of the widely used models of change in the 20th century (Hamel, 2008). It involved three steps to change that included Unlocking current behavior, moving to another level and refreezing the behavior after attaining the new level (Todnem, 2005). This model became very influential, with a majority of the change process theories basing their facts and ideas upon it. The main disadvantage of the model is that it does not offer users the chance to evaluate and improve changes. It is best suited for organizations that are looking to make contained or closed changes (Chaldwell, 2003) .

In Cameron and Green's view and model of change, change is viewed as a continuous cycle that contains seven steps — creating the necessity for change, putting together a change team, establishing vision and values, communicating and engaging with necessary stakeholders, empowering others through the change process, taking note of advancements and energizing it and lastly unite everything from processes to people (Dogru, 2019)

Analysis of the Study Organization

The organization's strengths were based on several policies, changes, and strategies that had been put in place, as discussed below. The organization has strong formalized partnership arrangements between it and the unions. These arrangements aim to encourage positive consultation concerning change initiatives within the organization proactively. Secondly, annual appraisals are in place and are conducted by managers basing on discussions around performance. The managers are also involved in setting new objectives and targets. Thirdly there is efficient staff training. The staff in this organization is expected to engage in mandatory training to ensure capability and competence by accredited bodies (Hiatt, 2006). The fourth strength of the organization is how it encourages teamwork. A majority of the staff have a clear demarcation of roles, although team working is encouraged where a range of supporting skills and knowledge may be required to complete a task effectively. The other strength is the exercise of rewarding staff with an annual bonus for their conformity to the practices, procedures and achieving objectives to the deadline (Goksoy, 2016). Other benefits include sick pay and pension schemes. Having a flexible contract offer where the staff is allowed to either work part-time and specific hours or fulltime is another bonus and strength that the organization is exercising that adds value. Lastly, having a customer base strategy attempts to reach out to the huge customer numbers running into hundreds of thousand that the company serves.

Weaknesses of the organization are also evident when you sit down and analyze it. As highlighted below, these are some of the weaknesses that are evident in this organization. For many years, the organization was stable and resistant to change making it hard to move to the next level. With the poor services offered in terms of customer service, the complaints levels are higher than the industry average. The organization is heavily regulated in terms of its prices, services, health and safety requirements and corporate social responsibilities (Hayes, 2018). Internal and external inspections and audits are frequent and rigorous. The company does not offer employees flexible working arrangements that might aid in proper and efficient service delivery to the clients. There is minimal cross-functional working. Managers are encouraged to focus on the achievement of their departmental objectives, which results to minimal cross functional working. Managers in the organization are adopting differing approaches causing confusion. The organization and department are struggling to adopt a consistent approach to managing the change and managers are adopting differing approaches (Hayes, 2018). Lastly complaints have been related to the disconnection policy. This policy is out of line with other energy suppliers suggesting a disparity in treatment and the manner in which they operate.

The opportunities of the organization can be realized through three major sectors renewable energies, improving customer service and offering financial incentives. Renewable energies will attract another market segment, which day by day gets bigger and bigger. The new generation demands it. Nowadays, customers are more sensitive about the protection of the environment and climate (Dawson, 2003). When it comes to customer service, improvements can be made through new technologies and change policies. New technologies will help massively customer service especially in the specific organization in which customers are not satisfied by the customer service. (Make a website- join the online chat, social media, Application on smartphones and tablets). Apart from this, new policies will help to keep the existing customers, help them with any issues that may have such as disconnect policy, which is one of the main disadvantages of the organization in the relation of its competitors and will attract new customers. Lastly, the organization is looking into introducing customer service incentives in the next year providing an incentive of circa £15 million for achieving customer service targets and a penalty of circa £30 million for underachievement

When looking into the organization, it is working towards the mission that it has set out. The employees are provided a precise and clear job, and role description as the level of their performances are looked into closely by the managers who set new targets after appraisal. There is a robust system that is the main objective of the organization put in place offering a high degree of order as it generates the end service or product. A look into the organization suggests the possible existence of political systems looking into the culture and forms of domination in existence. Divide and rule is the topmost idea that comes to mind when you take into consideration the physical gap between the management team and the staff in general (Dawson, 2003). The forms of changes that were introduced recently by the organization have not been a success. This has negatively affected the morale, effectiveness, and efficiency of workers due to confusion. There is a need for logical change management that will look into these issues.

The threats that the organization is likely to face include Continuous competition political regulations by the country that impact negatively on the businesses operations. The second threat is financial penalties. Customer service incentives will introduced in the next year providing an incentive of circa £15 million for achieving customer service targets and a penalty of circa £30 million for underachievement). This organization is highly likely going to fail to meet this targets if change is not implemented swiftly. The other threat is based on financial penalties of up to £2 million that will be levied if the department cannot demonstrate it has effective policies relating to ethical practice. Ethical practices are very vital to any businesses and not adhering to them can end up hurting the organizations profits. Lastly there is a huge risk the organization is subjecting itself to. In case of failure there is no other chance for the organization to uphold its standards. This may force the organization to shut down due to non-compliance

Recommendations

These are the practical solutions that the organization can use to manage change and improve its performance. Kotter`s Eight-Step change management model will come in handy in improving the current situation that the organization is in. For this to work there has to be cross-functional working that will enable employees to be brought on board at the initial stages of implementing changes (Kotter, 2008). Communication should be improved to eliminate any possibility of a misunderstanding through the process. Kotter's model is the most suited to bring this change as there should be a practical dimension when looking into an organizational change as a whole. This will drive the organization into attaining its customer service and ethics goals and also complying with the set laws and standards. Here are some of the activities that the organization in the case study must look to implement (Kotter, 2008).

There is a sense of urgency that has been created by the targets and legislation of the organization. This brings us to the first aim of establishing a sense of urgency (Brown, 2014). A guiding team should then be put in place (Goksoy, 2016). There is a need for clarification on the process of making decisions among the management. This can be realized through more standardization. A great way for the management to put across ideas and assign responsibilities can be achieved through time to time cross-functional meetings. This makes it possible for change to be implemented to operational managers (Dogru, 2019). There needs to support from the different levels of management to make it possible to share the ownership of change. In the future, the management should consider doing away with the control mentality and adopting a mentoring method to enable the organization to be more positive and customer service friendly. The third thing to do is come up with a vision. There needs to be an improvement in the channels that are used for communication (Jack et al., 2007). This means that there should be more and more management interactions between units in the organization. The vision that is going to be cast should be strong and spoken equally among the departments and all management sections. After developing the vision of communicating it for other people to buy it is the next crucial step. Resistance arises due to a feeling of change being forced. This stage requires the vision to be put across in a unified way. Proper channels that can offer feedback should be made available to make the employees get in line with the changes. It is important that the channels that will be used to pass on the message make sure that it is clear and fully understood by everyone involved in the process (Dawson, 2003).

Action empowerment comes in next. This is an important part of aid the employees in getting a clear picture of change (Jack et al., 2007). The leaders of the organization should make sure that everything is clear and going on as planned. The sixth stage is coming up with short-wins. This is the stage in which implementation is broken down into phases for smoother transitioning or implementation. It allows the employees to provide feedback about the change (Dawson, 2003). The second last process is merging the improvements undertaken and implement more change. Alterations are made in this stage basing on the feedback received. This shows that the employees’ feedback is valued. Lastly, new changes need to be institutionalized. The change process brings about new natural leaders that should be recognized and assigned responsibilities of maintaining the newly developed standards (Brown, 2014).

As a heavily-regulated organization, the case study organization is significantly influenced by the government, too. There is growing pressure attributed to terms of ethics and CSR from society and the government. This requires skills to implement changes soon. Weick and Quinn support this idea as they agree that change does not start due to it never stopping. It is a continuous cycle (Brown, 2014).

Conclusion

The models discussed in this report do similar things, but for different kinds of change. The form that is most suitable for the case study organization is an open-ended solution. An in-depth model is best suited to achieving the goal (Dogru, 2019). Since the organization has a complex bureaucracy, the recommendations are not too extreme, while management retains responsibility for making the final decisions. Operational staff can become leading change agents with the support of a more structured process (to follow). Management will communicate more closely with each tier and other units to develop a more standardized approach to management while promoting the opportunity among departmental staff to become tomorrow`s leaders by rewarding them for performance and innovation (about customer service and CSR) (Dogru, 2019). Customer service will be raised to new heights through finely-honed systems that recognize the input of those responsible for making them a success (operational staff). Management needs to stick by and follow up on the policies and change implementation processes developing a workplace that is healthier and encourages positive growth by the employees. As clearly seen from the analysis and discussion above the study organization is ripe for a contemporary change management process. There are recommendations on the things that they can put in place to ensure they deliver more efficiently and attain their future targets. These things include their communication, service charges, disparity between the management and the staff and many others. If they are able to focus on these issues then they will have a smooth transition and become a force to reckon with in the market. The gaps that they have in their institution is costing them a lot of money which can be easily avoided through implementing the outlined changes as discussed.

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References

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