Problems at Perrie - Research Paper Example

Indeed the company has witnessed an economic downturn with the dwindling of the sales and resuscitation from this economic downturn requires the company to respond to the imminent business disruptions by promptly responding to change. The need of the hour is a viable change management that calls for an apt handling of the shifting consumer preferences, influx of enhanced competition and economic downturn in a way that steers the organization from the immediate state to a desired future situation.

No wonder the employees are evincing some typical reactions to change. First and foremost the employees are interpreting change in correlation to the direct impact it will have on their earnings and job security. Besides, a call for change by the management is making employees angry and quiet resistant to change. The employees being comfortable with the hitherto business practices are certainly panicked by the emergent business scenarios. The reactions being evinced by the employees are certainly normal, but if not managed in a deft way may inhibit and curtail any viable attempts to change, thereby translating into a drastic impact on the organizational sustainability and its capacity to change in the light of the incumbent circumstances.

One essential element of this resistance to change is that the employees are misinterpreting the change initiatives taken by the management in the light of their own fears and apprehensions. Besides, the employees are also fearful of the uncertainty inherent in the current organizational situation. They believe that any change initiative may directly impact their job security and hence are getting increasingly unionized. Employees also have a low trust regarding the Perrier’s capacity to change and the organization’s ability to usher in new initiatives.

To manage change, the management needs to accept the fact that its personnel have got increasingly unionized to resist change. To effectively manage this change, the management first and foremost needs to address the human side of the situation. The employees and the CGT being the key stakeholders in any change management initiative, the management should take the employees into confidence and must explain to them the immediate business scenario, its implications and how it intends to manage the consequent change.

Besides, the change initiatives should be ushered in at the top level and the organizational leadership should get proactive about change. This will motivate the lower rung employees to embrace change initiatives. Third and the most important thing is that the management should be willing to involve every layer within the organization in the change process. No doubt, change has emerged to be unsettling for all the employees at Perrier and hence they naturally expect and look to the organizational leadership for direction and guidance.

The resistance to change at Perrier is essentially a human problem and hence needs to be dealt with in a very sensitive and deft manner. So far the top management at Perrier has only zeroed in on the resistance to change in terms of the lower wrung employees, without delving on its own role in causing the resistance to change. However, the top management also need to delve on the point that the resistance to change may be ensuing from the top rungs, thereby gradually percolating to the lower levels.

So it is the pivotal need of the hour that the top management