QUESTION
Managing resistance in organizational change:
SOLUTION
An organization is an integration of regular changes and innovations that come from goal setting and its accomplishment in a particular span of time. As time passes on, organization and its entities respond to market trends and behave similarly in order to achieve desired goals and in the process of doing so, they undergo various changes as well. In process of undergoing such changes organization and its human resource show certain resistance to those changes and that resistance to change can be considered as a hurdle in ongoing process of development of the firm and its employees. On the same time, resistance is a natural process and is bound to happen. Change takes us from known things to unknown things where challenges will be more, therefore people afraid and resists changes in organizational context. In order to manage with resistance in organizational change and development process, we must look at the company management from strategic HR management point of view. Strategic implementation of human resource will help the management recruit the competent enough employees who could bear such changes and move positively with them, train the employees for pressure handling on the job, organize the human resource in such a way that resistance is easily managed in time of organizational change and also should have employee motivation programs so that employee doesn’t show resistance to change. In process of doing so many things have to be considered by the management starting from its strategic recruitment techniques to high rewards and recognitions. [Val et al, 2001] Managing resistance should be an ongoing process; it can never be momentous or immediate therefore considering management of resistance as a preliminary stage of changing the environment would be wrong.
Detailed analysis:
In order to manage with organizational change, first thing is that company should focus on putting right people on the job. The employees of the firm should be highly competent and scrutinized for their maturity of handling situations so that resistance should not occur. The recruited employees should be positive, energetic, hard working and powerful managers. These some qualities or similar others can help a firm to have such workforce who would be more flexible and easily adaptable to changes in the firm. Secondly managing the resistance can be easily fetched with job rotation of employees and cross-selling being implemented in the firm. Job rotation on yearly or quarterly basis will enable the employees to be perfectionist in all kinds of job and also be easily adaptable in changes in their routine work. Cross selling is the art of doing other related work of the firm in order to fetch some extra incentives or monetary rewards, with the help of cross selling, an employee can learn to work more apart from their assigned work and gin a habit of doing so as cross selling or extra work is directly proportional to monetary benefits and recognitions. Here, we saw that how strategic recruitment and putting right people on right jobs can can fetch desired outcomes in terms of resistance to change. Recruitment of new employees on the job should be based on high competence, excellent performance in the past, motivated positive employees, energetic and hard working ones can help to manage with the resistance problem during changes in any organization. Job rotation of old employees and cross selling linked with monetary rewards; all these can help an organization to prepare the employee for the time of organizational change. [Bovey and Hede, 2001]
Another method which may help in managing resistance to change is with the help of training and developmental programs which will enhance the potential of old employees and motivate them for good work and make them correspond with present day trends. Training sessions on how to handle organizational pressures, how to adapt to changes in the firm, motivational trainings and technical trainings which will in all ways increase the potential of employees on regular intervals so that they remain highly motivated on the job. Training sessions are of great help for old as well as new employees because it builds a notion of learning in them which will in long run help those employees to manage positively with the organizational changes. [Lunenberg, 2010]
Organizing the human resource department and its management is very important in order to manage organizational change. Organizing things properly and systematically helps any firm to achieve their desired goal with more ease and comfort. Employees are organization’s biggest strengths in current times, human resource is an asset to the firm therefore firm must think positively and implement some organizing sessions so that the HR department and its functions are well-knitted and managed. In the process of doing so, firstly firm should focus on proper and quick grievance handling department where employees’ grievances should be heard and quickly resolved, secondly firm should organize their manpower according to their performance and performance should be appraised and rewarded fully so that their motivation for being on the job should surpass their resistance to organizational changes. Training sessions which are organized for letting the employees known about the upcoming changes in the firm should be evaluated and transformed for betterment every next time so that employees are better and more transparently conveyed about the changes happening in the firm.
Motivation of employees should be focused on so that they could easily handle any issues relating to new policy introduction or any other firm related changes. Employees motivation programs like regular performance based rewards and recognitions, motivations programs like management games and employee engagement programs, work life balance of employees where employees should have easy space between their work life and family life, managing workforce diversity and similar other motivational thoughts and practices that could make the employee force more and more motivated to work in the firm and have trust on the management towards employee development and their rights being reserved.
Another aspect of resistance to change as seen is that people become defensive towards resistance and related concept. This can be decreased by having psychometric testing of the employees before introducing any new concept or technical change in the firm. Study of managerial psychology says that employees on the job are resistant to change because they have external and internal stressors who build unacceptable feelings, impulses and thoughts in the employees towards the change which is going to take place or has taken place. For knowing such maladaptive mechanisms, organization can have a survey of the employees on the change which is about to happen so that any major hindrance is not created by the employees in the firm. [Maltz, 2008]
Evaluation:
Thus it can be said that while in the process of evaluating the resistance for change, several facts and figures came out and observation of various researches and articles of HR practitioners and authors has helped me conclude that managing resistance to change is a process having two stages: one is preventive and other being confronting. In process of preventive management of organizational resistance to change it was seen that these methods could be helpful like: strategic implementation of human resource, recruitment of competent employees who could bear such changes and move positively with them, organize the human resource in such a way that resistance is easily managed in time of organizational change and by having employee motivation programs so that employee doesn’t show resistance to change. In process of doing so many things have to be considered by the management starting from its strategic recruitment techniques to high rewards and recognitions. When we move towards confronting mechanism what could be followed is train the employees for pressure handling on the job, increasing their reward for good work and high monetary benefits, undertaking psychometric tests so that employee acceptance of the change and its degree could be calculated.
Conclusion:
Considering the present day modern corporate world, it can be said that organizational change and resistance of its employees towards such changes is an empirical observation in organization of all types, shape, size or industry. The general aim of the managers or key officials should be adaption of the employees to the new environment. Changes whether continuous or spontaneous, is a negative mechanism to people who are adaptive and comfortable in earlier state. If the people or employees are uncomfortable or less satisfied in the earlier state, their resistance to change is lesser. All such resistance to change can be avoided by strategy formulation in earlier stages or by extracting the vision or ability of the company to look into near future. Denial or refusal comes only when proper communication is not there, when assumptions and distorted realities are considered as reality, such situations should be avoided by organizations because they create translucent atmosphere in the firm and it can always be momentary and not long lived. For long lived reality, it is better to communicate all facts beforehand so that transparency becomes key reason for less resistance to any kind of organizational changes. Organizational silence limits the information flow thereby creating resistance or denial of employees for organizational changes.
References:
- Pardo del Val, Manuela & Martínez Fuentes, Clara, spain, 2001, resistance to change, retrieved from http://www.bovey.com.au/files/rdm.pdf
- Waney H. Bovey, Andrew Hede, 2001, resistance to organizational change, Journal of managerial psychology, vol-16, no.-7, page no- 534-548, retrieved from http://www.bovey.com.au/files/rdm.pdf
- Fred C. Lunenberg, 2010, forces for and resistance to organizational change, national forum of educational administration and supervision journal, vol-27, no-4, retrieved from http://www.nationalforum.com/Electronic%20Journal%20Volumes/Lunenburg,%20Fred%20C.%20Forces%20For%20and%20Resistance%20to%20Change%20NFEASJ%20V27%20N4%202010.pdf
- Marc Maltz, 2008, managing resistance to change, retrieved form http://triadllc.com/pdf/ManagingResistance.pdf
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