The management of change in Hampton Roads Sanitation District - Essay Example

?Running Head: Management of Change Management of Change [Institute’s Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Company Background 4 Value of Planned Change 5 Change Implementation Methodology 7 Improvement brought by Planned Change 9 References 11 Introduction The world is developing and advancing at a rampant speed due to the technological innovations and boom in the industrial sector. Moreover, globalization has made a world a smaller place where the corporate world stands on a single platform where the environment is changing expeditiously. Similarly, the organizations are also running their businesses in a global competitive environment where capacity to manage the change have become one of the leading assets for them in order to flourish on whole. This ability to accept and manage the change with the global competition also facilitates the human resources of the organization to remain strong and above-board (Anderson, 2011). Organization Development (OD) is one of the chief concepts that relates to the organizational change management. It can come under definition as “Organization development is a system-wide application of behavioral science knowledge to the planned development and reinforcement of organizational strategies, structures, and processes for improving an organization's effectiveness” (Boonstra, 2004). In other words, enterprises implement the process of organization development through proper and careful planning in order to improve and benefit their business processes, functions, employees and other stakeholders (Cummings & Worley, 2008). The process of improvement through organization development can be for either the entire organization and its processes or a smaller portion of the enterprise. This process starts from collecting the information and identification of the problems/concerns in order to create an understanding about the existing state of affairs of the organization. An appropriate solution, strategy, or guiding principle comes under establishment based on the recognized opportunities for change (McLean, 2005). The organizations focus and give emphasis to productivity, profitability, and quality of work since the company’s accomplishments and success lies behind these factors. Due to this reason, organizations are now investing maximally on their employees, as this has become an escalating trend in the contemporary business environment (Jones & Brazzel & NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science, 2006). Likewise, the attitudes of the employees have also changed as they work to get a feeling of accomplishment and recognition. In the same way, the customers are also demanding quality products or services, fast delivery, competitive prices and other attributes compatible to innovation and complex environment that add the worth of the product. With all these aspects of organization, employees, and the customers, the importance of organization development or an organization has augmented, as the efficient organization wants to meet the current and future challenges in order to survive and sustain (Kondalkar, 2009). Several organizations have already experienced and still in the process of undergoing the organization development and change process. Amongst numerous enterprises, Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) is one of the organizations that have undergone the process of organization development. Company Background Hampton Roads Sanitation District (HRSD) is an organization with more than 650 employees at the wastewater utility with a huge customer base where the billing system is direct to the customers without involving any third party. HRSD is a regionally based organization in Virginia that supplies to several cities, counties and military facilities in the region of southeast of Virginia. Moreover, HRSD supplies the facility to an area that comes under the population of more than 1.5 million natives. The utility operates on a system with various major and few smaller treatment plants where it treats and transports more than 150 million gallons of wastewater on daily basis (Surampalli & Environmental and Water Resources Institute (U.S.) Environmental and Multi-Media Council, 2004). After the evaluation of the demographics of the employees particularly the senior management, it came under prominent notice that the leadership was in catastrophe. Since crisis came under notice in the leadership of the organization, therefore, in order to ensure the continuity in a long-term leadership, HRSD underwent the Organization Development Program. In addition, there was a grave need to develop a team of senior managers that could deal with the prospective organization leadership depletion. This program imitated in the early years of the decade of 2000 and went for two to three years that included the implementation phase as well. The ‘learning and continuous learning’ was the principal ideology and ethics that became the foundation stone for the strategy development (Waltrip, 2006). Value of Planned Change The organizational development program came under commencement in the initial years of decade of 2000, however, the implementation phase embarked after a year of initiation and continued for two years. Since the company evaluated the demographics of the senior leadership from time to time and the statistics of the assessment of the opening years of the twenty first century demonstrated that few of the senior management people were eligible for the retirement. Therefore, in order to assure the stability of the enduring leadership, the company determined to initiate a planning program. A team of employees came under development by HRSD who initiated the program in 2003 with the support of the consultants from an affiliated organization with Virginia (Waltrip, 2006). The problem solving method and procedure that came under employment by HRSD was already a verified technique. With the assessment of the leadership, the results of this problem undoubtedly signified that the need to implement the organization Development was to great extent. Consequently, the organization development plan came under development where the highlighting focus was on the ideology of learning that is a controlled process. Elucidating the learning ideology, the principles also stated that every employee is and should be a learner, learning is obligatory on a continuous basis and supervisors or leaders are the teachers in the learning process (Waltrip, 2006). The plan and the proposal of the organization development program incorporated the following: Descriptions of the job positions came under revision and updated that took account of technical capabilities and proficiencies essential for the job specifications. The job descriptions should come under harmony by setting and defining a standardized leadership skill model. The individual assessment during the placement for the job would come under performance based on the defined leadership skill model and job descriptions. Moreover, the assessments during the interview would also include exercising methods such as 360° evaluations and “Panel Plus” interviews. Plans should come under initiation and development that could facilitate the employees in their learning process on a permanent basis, as they want to grow and look for opportunities that could make them advanced in their positions or rankings. A program should also come under development that can measure the performances of the individual employees as well as organizational performance. Trust was one of the leading and critical concerns that HRSD lacked within the organization, which came under evaluation. Moreover, the employees had a feeling of fear amongst them that their appraisals, promotions and the increments in the monetary rewards would come under the basis of evaluations. One of the crucial concerns that HRDS came across during the assessment for which the organization development programs came under development comprised of the culture of the organization where the feedback on an official basis regarding the performances was at a very negligible or smallest level (Waltrip, 2006). The successful execution of the OD program came under achievement as HRSD made the maximum employees employ and exercise in the development of the empirical program. In addition, the initial phase of the program came under implementation only with the higher-ranking management people in order to make the other employees calculate the consequence without any hazard. The successful implementation also included the widespread communication process performance with all the employees who came under influence by the OD program. Lastly, for effective implementation, the feedback system came under usage and made alterations and revisions accordingly (Waltrip, 2006). Change Implementation Methodology The program commenced by the analysis of the demographics of the middle management in order to classify the individuals who can become the targeted group for the improved development. However, the results concluded that this pool was more or less the same as compared to the senior management people. Therefore, the analysis broadened its range to the front line managers and found out that this pool contains the competent and skilled candidate that can come under replacement with the existing senior management people (Waltrip, 2006). According to the analysis by the Organizational Development team, the outcome demanded that there is a need of an enduring and long lasting program in order to make the prospect leaders prepare. After the endorsement of the strategy, based on the learning principle, a considerable improvement in the establishment of the organizational development program by the team came under view. The initial planning included the assessment on individual basis, since the individual evaluation was one of the imperative barriers that added to the cultural hardship of HRSD, which needed to overcome. The past tends of several years provided with evidence that the performance evaluation did not made any effect to the performance improvement, therefore, it became one of the threats to the employees, and resistance to evaluation came under common findings (Waltrip, 2006). This fear amongst the employees made the management comes to a decision that the significance must come under emphasis that the idea that lies behind the assessment is to have the development amongst the employees, rather than assessment. They provided with a conclusion that the results of the assessment would come under provision to the employees only and not to their managers in order to ensure and prove them (Bolman & Deal, 2011). Although the program encouraged the employees to share their assessment with their manager but it would be totally on the part of the employees. Another major concern that the employees faced and created a fear amongst them was that the assessment did not came under fair marking by the managers. Therefore, the solution that came under provision by the team with reference to this problem was the introduction of 360° evaluation that came under completion by the individual employees, their supervisor, their peers and their direct reports (Bolman & Deal, 2011). Panel Plus interview was another solution to the same problem where the evaluation came under performance by the team of consultants using a panel of experienced evaluators. Leadership was the area of concentration in the initial assessment rather than focusing on the technical skills. This was due to the reason that the senior managers of HRSD came under recruitment because of their expertise in technical skills (Evans, 2001). Improvement brought by Planned Change The implementation of the OD program came under commencement with a pilot project that continued for few months in order to record the improvements of the Organizational Development program. The 360° evaluation appeared to be the most constructive and helpful portion of the program. Moreover, the Panel Plus evaluations witnessed as a supportive plan to the 360° evaluation as it strengthens the 360° evaluation (Waltrip, 2006). With the pilot testing, few modifications came under observation, which came under enhancement before the implementation took place. Nevertheless, the primary issue that came under notice by HRSD was that leadership drain began. Therefore, the created a two-track program that embraces learning and advancement. This approach underlines the principles that are learning is necessary and progression or advancement is voluntary. Employee training was one of the most important and essential factors that needs to come under accomplishment before the implementation. With a series of workshops, the training program came under performance that continued for few months (Waltrip, 2006). HRSD’s intention with this program was to train and prepare the potential leaders and to boost the performances of the existing employees at the managerial positions. Therefore, one of the considerable outcomes that came under achievement with the implementation of the program was that the pool of qualified candidates came under identification and recognition when the retirement rate of the senior management people came to escalate. The fear amongst the employees associated to the evaluation process also eradicated with the help of the 360° evaluations that came under usage for the development of the individual employee, rather than coming under performance appraisals. Moreover, with the organizational development program, the cultural fear that the employees also overcome and lucid expectations regarding performance came under developing. The overall outcome of the program brought positive affects and improvements in the organization and the senior management positions. Moreover, the program has been a careful support and endorsement by the employees. . References Anderson, D. L. (2011). Organization Development: The Process of Leading Organizational Change. SAGE. Bolman, L.G. & Deal, T. E. (2011). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. John Wiley and Sons. Boonstra, J. J. (2004). Dynamics of organizational change and learning. John Wiley and Sons. Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2008). Organization development & change. Cengage Learning. Evans, D. (2001). Supervisory management: principles and practice. Cengage Learning EMEA. Jones, B. B. & Brazzel, M. & NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science. (2006). The NTL handbook of organization development and change: principles, practices, and perspectives. John Wiley and Sons. Kondalkar, V. G. (2009). Organization Development. New Age International. McLean, G. N. (2005). Organization development: principles, processes, performance. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Surampalli, R.Y. & Environmental and Water Resources Institute (U.S.). Environmental and Multi-Media Council. (2004). Advances in water and wastewater treatment. ASCE Publications Waltrip, D. (2006). WEF. Retrieved on September 04, 2011. www.wef.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=3665 Read More