Introduction

Organisational change is the procedure of growth; decline as well as transformation in an organisation. Organisational change is necessary timely to improve the infrastructure and work culture. However, implementing the changes plays crucial role as it is a vital step (Kilbride et al. 2011). After implementing the change, appropriate analysis is necessary to check whether the change provides benefits to the organisation or not. Moreover, the study focuses on various factors that are necessary to be changed in the organisation. The implementing process and benefits of these changes are analysed to check the sustainability of changes in the organisation.

Case Summary

Barnet Council had launched ‘Future Shape’, a major project in 2008 (Cameron and Green 2019). The organisation launched the project as the community involved initiative for the wellbeing of customers so that with low cost better services can be provided and thus cost of the company can be reduced also. However, it is necessary to analyse the need of this change in Barnet Housing department. The organisational change model helped the management to analyse the necessity of changes in the organisation and also helped to understand the effects of the changes on customers and employees, who are the important stakeholders.

1. Analysing need of organisational change in Barnet Housing Department

Barnet Housing Department needed the organisational changes to minimise the costs and employee resistance. Another reason of the change implementation is maximizing the service quality to develop the customer base and customer retention (Cipd.co.uk, 2020). This will help to maximize effectiveness of change. The changes are necessary to improve not only service quality in housing but also improve the experience of employees by open meeting with employers. It will help to recognise the necessity of change and start the change process to build the change relationships. The changes are necessary for the organisational transition, which will help the employees to understand the necessity of changes and the value of changes. Changes are necessary to develop the skills and working experience of employees so that they can take up the changes to explore themselves and benefit the organisation. In case of Housing, transformational changes are needed to be implemented so that organisation can develop their organisational infrastructure where staffs can get job satisfaction and production can be developed to develop customer expectations. Change process is required to understand internal circumstances with external events. As mentioned by Watson et al. (2014), recognition includes the complex perception process and decision making. Another thing is that organisation may fail to meet the criteria of changes. Initially, the change needs involving translating necessity for the change into the desire for change. It is necessary to select staffs who will manage the process.

To implement the change, two types of working groups need to be created that is external change agent and internal change agent. Both groups need to have a strong relationship to implement the change. As the organisation made open meeting with staffs, it became easier to note down their suggestions and add them in the change process. The change process should be employee friendly as they are the pillar of the organisation. Hence, they need to be motivated to develop the production to make the customers happy and retain them for long term. While implementing the changes, appropriate monitoring is necessary so that the change process can be implemented successfully (Veling et al. 2018). Sometimes review may be needed to check the progress of implementation process. Unnecessary steps can increase the costing and decrease the productivity.

2. Factors affecting changes in Barnet Housing Department

There are various factors that can affect the changes in Barnet Housing Department. Before launching the project, appropriate time and proper decision making is necessary. In such case, PEST analysis can help to understand the factors that can affect the changes and how to overcome those.  

PEST analysis:

Figure 1: PEST ANALYSIS of Barnet Housing Department

(Source: Senior and Fleming 2006)

Political factors: Before implementing the changes, the company needs to analyse the policies of UK government to bring sustainability in the organisation. Moreover, the organisation needs to verify the new legislative policies and the changes that occurred in political environment. Alvesson and Sveningsson (2015) stated that with time tax policy also changes; hence, while implementing any changes to an organisation, it is must to check whether new legislation is supporting the change or not. In such case, Barnet Housing Department has included all their stakeholders in the change process that has strengthened the process.

Economic factors: The economic factors can include various issues; such as exchange rates, expenses of raw materials, labour and borrowing. Moreover, the disposable income level also can be changed after the change implementation (Senior and Fleming 2006). However, the company is making changes to cut down internal costs; although the implementation process is costly that can affect the trade cycle. Moreover, it can affect the market position of the company if any compromise is seen in case of production. If the company can invest a lump sum initially that will provide a long term benefit and will help to achieve the goal.

Social factors: Socio cultural factors may include demographic trends, business ethics, social mobility and life style choice towards socio culture. Demographic trends for example, changes of birth rate and ageing populace can affect the change. Attitude towards training, education, leisure, labour and work may have effects on trained labour and consumption patterns. On the other hand, McCalman and Potter (2015) mentioned that the socio-cultural factors can have affect on business ethics by which business can be done in various parts of the universe.

Technological factors: The technological factors can include issues like investment competitors have a level that are doing research and trying to develop the outcomes of investment. Raw materials appropriate distribution, availability of products and production process play important role to develop the technological factor (Paton and McCalman 2008). It is necessary to check the obsolescence rate and requirement of reinvestment in plant as well as people.

3. Reviewing implementing the change process

Before implementing the changes, it is necessary to identify the problems of the organisation and determining causes to plan the solution.  With the help of McKinsey 7 model, it will be easier to identify the need of organisational changes and how it affects the organisational structure and other factors of the organisation. The model was developed in 1980 that is the powerful tool to assess and analyse changes in the organisation (Shelygov et al. 2019).

McKinsey 7 model:

Figure 2: McKinsey 7 model

(Source: Cox et al. 2019, p.317)

The 7 aspects of the model help to analyse the effect of the aspects on the company. The aspects are divided in two types of elements that are hard elements and soft elements.

Hard element: These elements are listed within direct control of the management because the elements can be defined and identified easily. The elements include:

Strategy: The new Assistant Director of Housing has made a strategy of customer-driven culture to provide effective and efficient services. For this purpose, she decided to involve all the prime stakeholders for example, employees and customers in the decision making.

Structure: The new Assistant Director has made a lean team where the job roles of employees are changed with others to provide them job-satisfaction and develop the quality of service. (Rosenbaum et al. 2018).

System: It includes the daily activities of the staff members that helps to everyone in the organisation to be involved in the assigned tasks to ensure the competition (Cox et al. 2019). The Barnet Housing Department has arranged an open meeting with the employees so that their needs can be analysed to assign tasks.

Soft element: These elements are less tangible, which are difficult to be identified and defined. Organisational culture more governs such elements. The elements include:

Shared values: Before implementing the change, it is necessary to identify the problems to clarify the future opportunities (Coleman and Thomas 2017). Thus the company can involve their stakeholders in the change process. Management should provide training so that the employees can understand the changes with need of change and how the cost can be effectively managed (Stouten et al. 2018).

Style: It lays importance on leadership style. Transformational leadership style has been followed in the change management so that the employees can be motivated.

Staff: A lean team of twelve volunteers were made to implement the change process that was given different job responsibilities to increase their job-satisfaction. The team was experimented with new activities (Schmidt et al. 2017).

Skills: With strong leadership skills, the volunteers tried to encourage the employees to develop the communication skill and apply them in the change process. A definite support structure was made to measure the change process (Shirazi et al. 2017). However, it can be costly in initial stage but will provide a long term success.

4. Analysing the associated benefits of changes and checking the sustainability of changes

If the change process can be implemented successfully, there are various associated benefits that the organisation can get. It can involve capturing the real-life pictures of housing. Different staffs had different responsibilities for completing the project. Moreover, the visitors will also get confidence after passing through various processes of verification, for which several staffs are appointed. Initially the process can be costly but it can provide cost affectivity for long time in future. It will provide cost effective benefits and verification process will also can be monitored easily. At every step, photographs were taken and it is very time consuming procedure and complicated. However, Butt et al. (2016) opined that while implementing the change process, the management can develop a lean team, which will eliminate the waste and improve the quality of service for the customers for the sustainability of the changes. On the other hand, the front line staffs will help them to identify the mistakes and help them to overcome. The lean team will help to identify the housing allocation process. In this change process, it is found the most of the allocated staffs have limited knowledge and typically obey the norms (Coleman and Thomas 2017). As a result, the service delivery is based around the professional boundaries instead of customer needs. However, the primary element of lean is found experimental and team experimented monitoring various effects for the customers of housing property.

More holistic and generic approach is necessary to assess the needs in comparison to the present ones. After the experimental period, a new team was made who was provided training for their job role. Moreover, the new team started working by obeying the new policy of housing ruled by local authority. This had helped to match supply and demand proportionally. By this way, the housing service quality has been improved. To retain the sustainability of change, leadership with appropriate communication is necessary (Cameron and Green 2019). The internal team needed to work closely with the external team, for which strong communication skills and platform was necessary. By motivating both the internal and external team the management of the organisation can sustain the changes. Improvement of communication skills can develop the confidence among staffs and they can be able to apply it in lean approach (Cipd.co.uk, 2020). Making the lean team, the organisation can provide opportunities to staffs so that they can engage themselves to make the changes sustains for their own benefits.

Conclusion

Based on the above discussion, it can be said that organisational change helps to develop the organisational culture with the strong leadership and infrastructure. Before implementing any changes, the need of changes are examined to know the positive and negative effects of the changes on the organisation. Moreover, the changes can help to develop the organisational position in the market and develop the customer base. To retain the customer base, employees are motivated and safe workplace is provided to them. This work culture is necessary to develop the productivity and retain the talents in the organisation. Moreover, this approach strengthens the employee-employer relationship. Hence, it can be said that the implemented changes are sustainable and cost effective also.

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