Organisational change: Recruiting versus Promoting

Organisational change happens when a company reviewed the current state of the business, evaluated it against a desired future state,  and make the decision to implement the changes necessary to move the business towards that desired future state.  It is a painful but necessary process, and often the cause of disgruntlement at the work place, whether it is a minor or major change.  The disgruntlement is often caused by what floor level staff experience as insensitivity from management towards the human element of the change.  They often feel like change are imposed on them and they were not considered in the decision.  Management feel disgruntled because it was purely a business decision and what is good for the business must be good for the staff. The biggest problem is communication, even in this modern day, with the resources available and countless books written by the likes of Maslow, communication is still the biggest contributor to the disgruntlement experienced when changes gets implemented.

My husband recently complained to me, his issue was that the company recruited people from outside of the company instead of promoting internally staff who already possessed the skills to do the job.  After quietly listening to him I reminded him that he too was recruited from outside… 

That is one of the most misunderstood processes in successful change management, employment of staff from outside the organisation into positions over staff that are already in the organization.  Irrespective of their reasons behind or their understanding of the process, management has to maintain a reasonable balance between recruiting staff from outside the company and promoting internally.  The culture in an organisation will remain stagnant or deteriorate if all placements and promotions are made internally only. Movement of staff internally has to be done in such a manner that does not affect business negatively, if too many staff are promoted from core positions simultaneously, those functions may break down and bigger problems are then created.  Human Resource Management has to have an documented plan as to how they will go about maintaining that balance and communicate this to the employees in order to minimise friction.

Some things management can do to minimise the disgruntlement experienced by staff:

• Communicate the company policy with regards to recruiting and promoting staff.
• Communicate the ratio of staff that will be potentially recruited from external resources to internal promotions.
• Communicate why internal applicants were unsuccessful
• Communicate the intention to advertise both internally and externally
• Refrain from deception,

It is impossible to please everyone, and resistance to change is as inevitable as change itself, but if the communication challenge is bridged, half the battle is won…