Managing resistance to change

For change to take place, it has to be communicated, understood and accepted by all the employees. Unfortunately, a lot of companies even in this age of globalisation and digital communication, companies still fail to inform their employees, on a timely basis, the reasons and explanations of why those changes are vital!. According to Kubler-Ross, people go through five stages of anguish when confronted with change, while Shaul Oleg emphasises that good management skills are required during the process of change. Can we then conclude that most managers do not possess management skills? However, the logic side tells us that the best way to overcome resistance to change is to involve those who will be impacted by the change process. Thompson and Sanders obviously argue that employee involvement may not be sufficient. Bruhn, Zajaz and Al-Kazemi claim that employees’ participation should span throughout the different steps in the change process.

Kotter and Schlesinger propose a number of approaches to overcome the resistance to change. The first approach is education or training of employees to provide them with information about the changes, the reasons for the change and the implications of those changes. Next, they suggest identifying those who are resistant to change to be involved in the design and implementation of the changes. Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) claim that people are resistant to change because they believe they will not be able to adapt, hence it is important for the organisation to provide the necessary skills and support. Another method used to for resistance to change is to negotiate with the key players and to offer some kind of incentives. The last method they propose is to use coercion, especially if the company has no time to waste and the change is critical for the success of the business.

Companies can use forums to engage with the players concerned, engage in an open communication by listening to the stakeholders and addressing their needs. It is advisable and wise for a big organisation to use a structured method such as Kotter’s eight critical success factors or Adkar model to overcome any resistance to change and ensure that change is sustainable and in the best interest of the organisation. A successful change implementation leads an organisation to move to a better future state. Different projects are implemented which can cause localised or global change in the organisation. A learning organisation can create an environment where employees have the facilities to learn and continuously contribute to transform the organisation in order to remain competitive. This environment promotes innovation and increase the pace of change.

Business process reengineering (BPR) seeks the complete redesign of the business processes to bring drastic improvements in quality, service and costs optimisation. Kaizen is a continual method of improvement of all activities in the organisation. It acts on all non-added value activities, which are called wastes. This environment promotes teamwork, discipline, improved morale, quality of products and services. Delayering is another possible method to introduce change. It aims at reducing the levels of responsibility in order to have a flat organisation for quick and improved decision making. Among those competing projects, Kaizen is a long term project which can transform the whole company, the way people think and work in an organisation and improve the overall efficiency. 

Change needs a strategic plan and should be a segment of every project implementation.