Change Management Part I: Barriers to Organisational Change

For organisations to be viable in the long-term, over time they need to be able to adapt their operational processes, strategy, products, and services. In the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, even entrenched market leaders face considerable risk of competitive disruption. Kodak, who once held a monopolisation of the film and camera industry, faded into relative obscurity by failing to recognise the threat of a superior substitute product in the digital camera (Porter, 2011). Uber, and the onset of the ridesharing economy, completely transformed the industry by removing the power from the taxi drivers and placing it in the hands of the consumers (Motala, 2016).

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While most organisations strive for innovation to provide better outcomes for their customers and maintain market share, the fact that businesses are so prone to competitive disruption highlights the difficulties and barriers that are faced when trying to drive change. A critical component of change in an organisation lies with its people, and there are several kinds of resistance. Uprooting and replacing any kind of entrenched process or strategy is likely to yield opposition, with that often being of a political nature. Political resistance boils down to individuals feeling threatened, whether over job security, loss of importance, modified KPIs or an increase in the scrutiny of performance (Lientz & Rea, 2003). One of the key hurdles faced in efforts to advance gender equity and diversity in the workplace bears witness here, with the notion of the ‘Old Boys’ Club’ a proverbial handbrake for women seeking equal opportunities as their male counterparts in the workplace (Stapleton & Michelson, 2021).

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Other people barriers faced in driving change may be less discriminatory in nature, yet equally as challenging to overcome. Employees may find it difficult to buy-in when confronted with change due to a lack of understanding of the proposed change and its benefit to the organisation. Organisational planning that neglects to clearly articulate the need for a change will typically be doomed to fail (nibusinessinfo.co.uk, 2022). Other forms of cognitive resistance include the motivation of employees to be involved in the change. Motivation issues in employees can arise for several reasons, including a belief that there is no underlying benefit arising from the change, and change fatigue due to multiple projects occurring across the business at the same time. Fatigue in employees ultimately leads to burnout and frustration, lowering an employee’s willingness to participate in a scheme and reducing their productivity (Malik, 2021).

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To drive business productivity and innovation, it is imperative for businesses to hire the right people for the right role that also fit the company ethos. This responsibility falls to Human Resources, who outside of hiring and onboarding, are also responsible for programs that keep the employees engaged. Without the right people, businesses face an even greater challenge in driving change due to a lack of employee motivation, prowess, or resource availability. For Australian businesses, this issue has been exacerbated due to COVID-19. Australia has long been suffering from shortages in home-grown skills, with sectors such as IT being bolstered by skilled migrants. However, due to international border closures and drastically reduced net migration, Australia is facing a skills shortage crisis (Masters, Barnaba & McMenamin, 2021). In the US, significant job vacancies are also being experienced through ‘the Great Resignation’, an economic trend of high employee turnover rates due extreme workload increases brought about by COVID-19 (Cook, 2021). The current lack of skills availability is a significant challenge in organisations enacting change.

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For businesses to enact change, they need to be targeted and precise with their allocation of resources. This fact holds significant importance when considering operational effectiveness changes designed to move a firm closer to the productivity frontier. Change is paramount to firms increasing their operational effectiveness through enhanced processes, reduced waste and productivity optimisations, however, without a high-quality implementation strategy and sufficient manpower to see the project through to completion, sustained improvements and long-term ROI are difficult to realise (Alsher, 2016). Organisations also fall foul to attempting to change too many processes at once, leaving programs half-baked and employees overwhelmed (Malik, 2021).

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A further key barrier lies at the conclusion of the change process in the onboarding, training, and adoption of the change by employees. Corporate training often misses the mark for a number of reasons, including overloading employees with unnecessary information, undertaking training at a time where the skills cannot be immediately applied, learning to tick off a meaningless KPI, and a lack of follow-up to cement the knowledge (Glaveski, 2019). In instances where corporate training is business critical such as cybersecurity awareness programs, training can also sometimes miss the mark due to a lack of employee engagement and boring content (Reeves, Calic & Delfabbro, 2021).

References

Alsher, P. (2016). Change Management and Operational Excellence: A Great Solution Poorly Implemented Won’t Produce Sustained Adoption. Retrieved from https://www.imaworldwide.com/blog/change-management-and-operational-excellence-a-great-solution-poorly-implemented-wont-produce-sustained-adoption

Cook, I. (2021). Who Is Driving the Great Resignation? Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2021/09/who-is-driving-the-great-resignation

Glaveski, S. (2019). Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2019/10/where-companies-go-wrong-with-learning-and-development

Lientz, B., & Rea, K. (2003). Breakthrough IT Change Management. Breakthrough IT Change Management, Butterworth-Heinemann, pp. 33-47.

Malik, P. (2021). 7 Barriers to Organizational Change (And How to Overcome Them). Retrieved from https://whatfix.com/blog/barriers-to-organizational-change/

Masters, J., Barnaba, M., & McMenamin, J. (2021). No silver bullet for skill shortages. Retrieved from https://www.ey.com/en_au/economics/no-silver-bullet-for-skill-shortages

Motala, M. (2016). The "Taxi Cab Problem" Revisited: Law and Ubernomics in the Sharing Economy. Banking & Finance Law Review, 31(3), 467-511.

nibusinessinfo.co.uk. (2022). Change management. Retrieved 17 February 2022, from https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/barriers-organisational-change-management

Porter, M. (2011). HBR’s 10 Must Reads: On Strategy. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press.

Reeves, A., Calic, D., & Delfabbro, P. (2021). Get a red-hot poker and open up my eyes, it's so boring: Employee perceptions of cybersecurity training. Computers & Security, 106, 2021,102281. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2021.102281.

Stapleton, P., & Michelson, M. (2021). Disbanding the Old Boys’ Club: Strategies for Departmental Gender Equity. PS: Political Science & Politics, 54(3), 520-523. doi:10.1017/S1049096521000032