BEST APPROACHES IN CHANGE MANAGEMENT

In the past century, organisational change has become an unavoidable aspect of organisational life. Especially during the past five or six years of recession, many well running organisations in a wide array of sectors have been forced to charge their strategy,processe and managent for some organisations, these charges have had a positive impact and allowed them to grow and prosper like late Steve  Job’s  Apple, the large Eastern African Company  East African Breweries Limited and the Kenyan Telecom giant,safaricom.However,up to 20%of all corporate charges have not so positive outcome :these charges often result in downsizing ,restructuring or even worse- filing  for bankruptcy.

                                                         Your situation

For communication to be effective and for any charge to be successful, it is important to fully understand you own organisation and the individuals in it.Each situation and company is unique and it is of utmost importance to customise your strategy to your particular situation.Therefore,before we touch upon our advice for effective communication during change processes, we would like you to look at three factors which are crucial to determining the right communication strategy.

Organisational culture-Structure of responsibilities, reporting lines and operational processes

Organisational culture-Goal, value, mission and behaviour of the group.

Individual perspective-Behaviour, attitude, goal and value of the individuals.

If you, as an initiator or change agent, are able to identify and describe these three factors, you are already one step closer to moulding you change strategy and the needed communication thereof.

However, as you may probably find, this is a more challenging task than expected. At the same time, we are positive that  you have your company’s mission statement, main values ,and vision written in document and and may be even published on you website.

But the question arises__do you employees live by that vision and practice you main values on a day to day basis? Do you actually know their attitudes toward their professional responsibilities and how pro-actively they work? Here we came to the essence of your problem-are you aware of your employee’s behaviour, attitudes, goals and values.

Internal communication

Psychologists say that successful implementation of Organisational changes is langely dependant on employee’s willingness to change their behaviour,attitudes,gaols and values.However,many changes processes cause distress and uncertainty in employees due to ambiguous or contradictory communication which, in turn, influences their willingness to change negatively.One approach to eliminate this uncertainty and stress during change is to increase transparency within the company by providing employees essential information.

However, the extent to which this information is likely to reduce these feelings of uncertainty and stress is dependent on the extent to which this information addresses employees’ real concerns, interests and needs.

In short, it is of importance that the change is also tailored at the need of the employees and that the communication is transparent for the change to be successful in terms employees engagement.

Tools as to how you can measure the need of your employees are for example an annual employee engagement survey. IN this survey you could incorporate question with regard to people‘s engagement for and identification with the organisation

However, if you are the initiator of change or change agent of a smaller organisation, we would highly recommend talking to your employees personally or to have the managers interact with the employees to reay get a feel for their acceptance, needs and preferences.

Processes and outcome

Literature and experience in organisational change suggest that the main concerns employees have regarding organisational changes are two fold about the change processes and the change outcome itself.

Information about the process of an organisational change include, for example , information about  the time –frame 0f the change itself, opportunities for management employees dialogue, strategic planning session, or how the change will be realised.

Whereas information about the outcome of a change, in contrast, cover issues as future salary, team composisition,cand the amount of hours the employee is expected to work after the change or what might be affected, our advice is to focus  your communication on those two pillars. Previous (unpublished) research done by the authors suggests that people who are highly engaged within the organisation are very interested in information in general-hence both process and outcome information.

Morever,we also found that people who identify themselves highly with the organisation were more interested in the process information than the outcome information .However it is of course of utmost importance that you identify these relationships in your own organisation since they might differ against a cultural and organisational context and the needs of the employees.

Change strategy

To effectively communication your strategy to your employees, you will have to use all the resources you gathered regarding your organisational structure, culture and your staff individual perspective  .Once you have your document s and information such as your organisational chart,youstrategy for  the organisation and the changes and the type of information you would like to communicate lined up, you can start formulating your strategy regarding the organisational change.

               Planned changes

• Look at all the (operational) process within our organisation/division which are subject to change.Identfy which process will change in what way and try to categorise the information per division/employee.
• Look at the needs of your employees. Use an engagement survey to gather this needed information,or schedule face-to -face interaction with your staff.
• Communicate the (planned) changes clearly .Focus and elaborate on what will change and how it will change for each operational process.

Right information

• Now combine the information gathered .Ensure that you communicate the right information to the right team /individual.
• Beware of the organisational structure and hierarchy____communicate to your line management first and focus on how they can help make the change successful whereby you emphasise their ownership of the change process.

Safe room for dialogues. Allow you staff to ask questions for you to get a better feel for their needs for information .Organise round table give regular updates and keep the information flowing. Use these moments to communicate the decisions clearly-explaining how and why things change –and perhaps adjust the type of information for each group